Marcellus Williams has been executed via lethal injection in the U.S. The state of Missouri sentenced him to death for the 1998 killing of newspaper reporter Felicia Gayle. The death penalty has been abolished in 23 U.S. states, but Marcellus’ killing raises the total number of U.S. executions this year to 16.
Williams has maintained his innocence, but let’s get one thing clear—nobody should be executed by the state regardless of what they have done. Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) said in 2021:
The handful of states that continue to push for capital punishment are outliers that often disregard due process, botch executions, and dwell in the shadows of long histories of racism and a biased criminal legal system.
A number of civil rights groups, activists, and members of the public had urged the state of Missouri to stay the execution. Even so, a last ditch appeal was rejected by the Supreme Court on Tuesday. Both prosecutor’s and Gayle’s family called for Marcellus’ execution to be stayed.
Marcellus Williams: a modern day lynching
Undoubtedly, modern day U.S. capital punishment is rooted firmly in the US’ settler colonial history of slavery. DPIC explain:
The death penalty has long come under scrutiny for being racially biased… In the modern era, when executions have been carried out exclusively for murder, 75 percent of the cases involve the murder of white victims, even though about half of all homicide victims in America are black.
The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACD) found that whilst Black and Hispanic people form 31% of the population, they represent 53% of death row inmates.
Further, abuse and neglect are often factors for those on death row. A 2021 Guardian report stated:
As Ngozi Ndulue, DPIC’s deputy director, pointed out, all but one prisoner executed this year had serious impairments, including brain injury or damage, mental illness and intellectual disabilities, or had histories of gruesome childhood neglect and abuse.
The Equal Justice Initiative has also found that:
Our death penalty system treats you better if you’re rich and guilty than if you’re poor and innocent. As a result, a stunning number of innocent people have been sentenced to death.
The U.S. system of capital punishment is nothing but state lynching. As with other forms of structural state violence, it’s Black people, poor people, people with mental illnesses, who are killed.
Marcellus Williams should never have been killed by the state. However, this is exactly how the U.S. justice system is built to function. Marcellus’ murder is not an anomaly or an aberration; it’s precisely how the system is supposed to function.
“Grotesque exercise of state power”
As his final statement, Marcellus Williams said the following:
From the Missouri Department of Corrections:
•Marcellus Williams’s last meal was served at 10:53 a.m. It included chicken wings and tater tots.
• His last visit was with Imam Jalahii Kacem, from 11:01 a.m. to 12:32 p.m. The imam will be with Mr. Williams in the execution room— Alexis Zotos (@alexiszotos) September 24, 2024
Many people on social media shared Marcellus’ poem that he wrote about Palestine:
Marcellus Williams wrote this poem as he stared down his own unconscionable murder. these two struggles are the same. pic.twitter.com/IcxBycSNKE
— c0rr3na 🍉 (@itscorrena) September 24, 2024
His attention for Palestine while facing his own execution at the hands of the state is a heart wrenching testament to his commitment to liberation. Marcellus’ attorney, Tricia Rojo Bushnell , shared:
Khaliifah is a kind and thoughtful man, who spent his last years supporting those around him in his role as Imam. We will remember him for his deeply evocative poetry and his love for and service to his family and his community… The world will be a worse place without him.
Tonight, we all bear witness to Missouri’s grotesque exercise of state power. Let it not be in vain. This should never happen, and we must not let it continue.
Academic Dr. Kerry Sinanan urged the nurturing and insistence of life:
They are forcing us to watch spectacles of death so we feel hopeless & become selfish in our complicity. In the face of this, insisting on life-disabled life, 'guilty' life, poor life, Indigenous life, Black life, Arab life, all the wretched of the earth-as precious, is our task.
— Dr Kerry Sinanan (@kerry_sinanan) September 24, 2024
Abolition
Many shared a sentiment that petitions or politely asking political representatives to intervene had clearly not worked:
Politicians have no moral compass no conscious we cannot appeal to the devils. Marcellus Williams needed resistance not copy and paste email sent around. You cannot appeal to a system that continues to feast off our suffering. The walls of the prisons needs to be broken.
— Sara Bafo (@SaraSabriye) September 24, 2024
Just as Black people, poor people, and disabled people are at the mercy of the state when it comes to life, so too are they in death. Whether it’s a broken healthcare system, a deeply flawed justice system, the same people dying a slow death at the hands of the state during their lives are the same people executed by the state under the guise of justice.
Marcellus Williams should still be alive today. His family should still have him, and the world will be much more hollow without him. The principles of slavery have never been eradicated in American society. Instead, they have transmuted into modern-day lynching where Black people are murdered by the state.
Marcellus Williams should not be a tale. But, just as Refaat Alareer wrote before his murder by the Israeli state:
If I must die
let it bring hope
let it be a tale
We must follow Marcellus’ example and reach for one another. We must reach for our oppressions that overlap, for the state control that traverses borders, and we must reach for each other in the pain and death that forms state violence.
Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse