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Notes -
Yesterday a man named Marcellus Williams was executed via lethal injection in Missouri. He was convicted of the murder of a local journalist. The main points of the case are that
a) no forensic evidence at the scene (the victim's house) connected him to the crime; DNA fragments on the murder weapon (a butcher's knife from the kitchen) were not his; a bloody footprint was not the same shoe size he wore.
b) He sold a laptop taken from the house to someone else;
c) Two people, a former jailmate and ex girlfriend, both told police that he had confessed to the murder. However, they had a financial incentive for doing so.
On balance it seems fairly likely that he did it; being a career criminal, having two unrelated people tell the cops you did it, and having possession of an item from the crime scene is pretty damning. It also can't be that hard to avoid leaving behind forensic evidence - use gloves, shave your head or wear a balaclava, even deliberately wear differently sized shoes. But when talking about the death penalty, we must take the 'reasonable doubt' thing extra seriously. So what do you think mottizens?
Those aren’t the main points.
The murder weapon was improperly handled by the police, and they did not use “touch DNA” at that time. This means that DNA could not be factored into the murder, not that DNA either exonerated the suspect or acts as evidence against his involvement through omission. The DNA on the murder weapon was from the police, and it’s greatly misleading to just write “the DNA wasn’t his”.
From my reading, the shoeprint sole pattern wasn’t his. That’s not a big deal because the perpetrator would have disposed of his bloody shoes if they were sufficiently bloody as to leave marks (they were). The Appeal to the Missouri Supreme Court makes no mention of shoe size.
You are wrong that there was a financial motive. The girlfriend never requested reward for information about Ms. Gayle’s murder. (Don’t make top level posts explaining the “main points” if your main points are wrong, this isn’t Reddit).
You ignored significant other main points:
The jailhouse informant provided information about the crime that was not publicly available, yet consistent with crime scene evidence and Williams’ involvement. Other individuals were present when Williams bragged about this murder, and they were disclosed to Williams’ team before trial and have been discussed in subsequent proceedings. “On August 31, 1998, Williams was arrested on unrelated charges and incarcerated at the St. Louis City workhouse. From April until June 1999, Williams shared a room with Henry Cole. One evening in May, Cole and Williams were watching television and saw a news report about Gayle's murder. Shortly after the news report, Williams told Cole that he had committed the crime. Over the next few weeks, Cole and Williams had several conversations about the murder. As he had done with Laura Asaro, Williams went into considerable detail about how he broke into the house and killed Gayle. After Cole was released from jail in June 1999, he went to the University City police and told them about Williams' involvement in Gayle's murder. He reported details of the crime that had never been publicly reported.”
Gayle’s personal items were found in the trunk of Williams’ car. “Asaro told the police that Williams admitted to her that he had killed Gayle. The next day, the police searched the Buick LeSabre and found the Post-Dispatch ruler and calculator belonging to Gayle”.
This was his face around the time of the murders. The media likes to show him as a weak old religious man today.
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This is sufficient to use the death penalty. There is zero chance (zero.) that he otherwise came into possession of these personal items, and he happened to have these worthless items in his possession (of no monetary value), and his cellmate just happened to accuse the wrong person who happened to have these possessions, and that he happened to guess the right details, and that the made up confession happened to also be reinforced by two separate made up testimonies that the confession occurred, and that the black hood girlfriend with a strict no snitching policy happened to rat our her boyfriend immediately. No. Come on. He did it. It’s not a question.
My takeaway is that he would have gotten away with it if he had the restraint to not go around confessing to murder. Probably would have helped to not steal from the house after it's a murder scene rather than a robbery, but it sounds like no one would have bothered to look in his trunk if he just shut up about it. The implications are discomfiting.
Discomfiting because... ?
The face value implication that he was too stupid / psycho to resist blabbing to people about this brutal murder he did against a totally innocent woman after breaking into her home? Or something else?
Because it implies that the police are incapable of anything beyond security theater. A lot of other evidence is accumulating behind that hypothesis, and it bodes ill if you value a government monopoly on violence.
Don't be in the bottom half of murderers or bottom quarter of rapists and you'll probably get away with it.
Alternate take: it's the bottom half of murderers killing the bottom half of victims who are most likely to get away with it. In 2022 cook county (Chicago) had a 20% clearance rate (154/756). Maine had a 90% rate (54/60)
The bottom half of victims get the "he already had crack sprinkled on him, let's get out of here" investigation technique.
A gang member shooting a guy who looked at him wrong just has to be clever enough to use his girlfriend's car for the drive-by. A white collar guy who wants to murder his boss or an annoying neighbor needs to be Moriarty with a forensics post-grad.
(And cynically/realistically, only one of those two will get a billion dollar foundation helping him avoid justice, unless the professional's name is Leo Frank)
In addition to what hydroacetylene says, the majority of gangland shootings involve huge numbers of suspects at scenes with very large numbers of people were any one of them might well have a gun and fire it. White collar murders typically take place at locations where DNA evidence is much more compelling because, for example, a killer actually tries to dispose of the victim (almost guaranteeing a DNA trail) rather than using the spray and pray method and running away, which leaves no DNA.
In addition, the police are a taxpayer funded service and therefore try harder in cases where actual taxpayers get killed.
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White collar people who commit murder almost always murder eg a cheating spouse where the prime suspect is immediately obvious. You don't have to be Sherlock to figure this stuff out(and you wouldn't be able to get away with it by being Moriarty either). On the other hand the bottom half of murders are much more random.
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