Starting Friday, five states are planning to carry out executions within one week, including one man who is likely innocent. It is rare to have so many executions scheduled so closely together these days, but it is a reminder that the death penalty is not gone, reports LawDork. Missouri is scheduled to kill Marcellus “Khaliifah” Williams on Tuesday despite the fact that multiple officials, of both parties, have worked to stop his execution because of serious concerns about Williams’s conviction for a 1998 murder that he says he didn’t commit. Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey — a Republican who was appointed to the post after being the governor’s general counsel (and having been the general counsel for the Missouri Department of Corrections before that) — is forcing the execution forward. He is doing so over the objection of St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell — a Democrat who unsuccessfully asked the trial court to convert Williams’s sentence to life in prison.
The last time Williams was set to be executed, in 2017, then-Gov. Eric Greitens — a Republican — halted the execution over DNA-related questions, prompting an independent review. Greitens' his successor, Republican Gov. Mike Parson, shut down the review in 2023 — a move that eventually allowed another execution date to be set. A clemency request is pending before Parson, and legal appeals are pending before the Missouri Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court. On Friday, South Carolina plans to carry out its first execution in more than a dozen years. Freddie Owens is scheduled to die by lethal injection for a 1997 murder. He has asked Gov. Henry McMaster to grant him clemency. Texas plans to execute Travis Mullis on Tuesday for the murder of his infant son in 2011. Mullis maintains that insufficient evidence was presented at his trial about the extensive abuse he faced as a child. There are also two executions scheduled for next Thursday.
Comentários