Thought Ideas....and this question

 “If there is even the shadow of a doubt of innocence, the death penalty should never be an option. This outcome did not serve the interests of justice.”, . .

Why Are Innocents Still Being Executed?

It’s a price some people are willing to pay.

By Elizabeth Bruenig

Illustration by The Atlantic. Sources: TNS / ABACA / Reuters; SCOTUS

September 29, 2024, 7 AM ET

On Tuesday night, Missouri executed Marcellus Williams, a man who may well have been innocent of the crime he was convicted of. 

No physical evidence linked Williams to the 1998 murder of Felicia Gayle in her Missouri home, and his trial was marked by a shoddy defense and a jury-selection process that empaneled 11 white jurors and only one Black juror (Gayle was white; Williams was Black). 
Williams’s execution had been scheduled and halted twice before amid concerns about his guilt; 
Missouri’s prior governor, Eric Greitens, not only granted Williams a day-of stay but also appointed a committee to investigate his case. 
The committee was dissolved by the current governor, Mike Parson, in 2023 without ever issuing a report.

Earlier this year, Wesley Bell, the current prosecutor of the district where Williams was convicted, filed a 63-page motion in court seeking to set aside Williams’s death sentence on grounds of possible innocence, and later offered Williams a deal that would have commuted his sentence to life without parole. 

But Missouri’s attorney general rejected the plan, and Williams is now dead. Bell issued a statement after the execution, saying, “If there is even the shadow of a doubt of innocence, the death penalty should never be an option.

This outcome did not serve the interests of justice.”, . 

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