The Stephen A. Smith ShowInterview: Wrongfully Executed Inmate's Attorney explained why he should be alive today.
Stephen A. Smith is a New York Times Bestselling Author, Executive Producer, host of ESPN's First Take, and co-host of NBA Countdown.
When this particular day, if I see him a bit melancholy, if not downright sad, it's because of where we're getting started with some news out of Missouri, the state of Missouri, where the state executed a man whose murder conviction was questioned by a number of people, including the prosecutor himself. The victim's family also pushed for the man to not be executed. I'm talking about mister Marcellus Williams, who was fifty five years of age, who died by lethal injection yesterday around six pm Central time. He was convicted in two thousand and one of killing Felicia Lesha Gale, a former newspaper reporter found stabbed to death in her home in nineteen ninety eight. Williams case drew national headlines as his attorneys appealed the conviction based on what they described as new evidence, evidence that included alleged bias, in jury selection, and contamination of the murder weapon prior to the trial. The family of Felicia Gale even asked that Williams be spared death. However, the US Supreme Court denied the stay of execution yesterday, a day after Missouri's Supreme Court and Governor Mike Parson refused to grant a stay as well. The Supreme Court offered no explanation for its decision. However, in the third appeal, Justices Sonya Sotomayor, Alana Kagan, and Katanji Brown Jackson all said they would have granted the request to pause the execution. Before as death, Williams wrote a final handwritten statement seen here that reads, quote all praise be to Allah in every situation, end quote.
This is a very.
Alarming situation and as far as I'm concerned, any human beings should speak out against it, but especially if you're black.
This black man was murdered yesterday. Let's call it what it is. It's murder. There's no excuse for it. And I'm gonna tell you why.
If there's DNA evidence that contradicts.
What prosecutors asserted.
That led to a conviction, that's a valid point to stay in execution. If the prosecutor himself herself themselves.
Acknowledge that based on evidence.
That can now be refuted, this should be a stay of execution. That's another reason not to execute the man. If a former governor, as in Governor Eric Critons Critens, g R. E. I. T. E. N. S.
Eric Critens.
He is the predecessor of Governor Mike Parson. He granted Williams a reprieve. He was persuaded by arguments that new DNA evidence, new DNA testing exonerated Williams.
He did that years ago. Remember, Williams was.
Twice bared from execution, first by the State Supreme Court in twenty fifteen and then in twenty seventeen. So let's get this straight. Governor Passes is ignoring a ruling by the Supreme Court, the State Supreme Court from nine years ago. He's ignoring or ruling by his predecessor from seven years ago. He's ignoring prosecutors, he's ignoring DNA evidence.
And on top of it all, the victim's.
Family didn't want him execute it.
Now, according to reports, and I'm.
About to speak to somebody to find out whether or not they can verify this or not, the victim's family was against capital punishment, no matter why. But nevertheless, look at that preponderance of evidence. Think about that for a second. It think about the kind of stuff that we're talking about. How could you possibly justify executing this man. To this day, we don't have a justifiable explanation from.
Governor Parson.
Because the bull that was supposed to investigate the matter in hand down a ruling was something that was disbanded by him.
Did you just want to kill a black man? I mean, it's a legitimate question to be asked. Is it all right that you just murdered him?
Is it okay that he was potentially innocent? And you didn't give a damn because the word potential doesn't matter to you.
What is it? What was it? I mean, you talk about some nonsense right here. This is why we have a country that's so divided. This is why we have a country.
That looks at things in two different ways, because you can't come together on a dad thing.
Who can't come together on this.
When you got a prosecutor, when you have evidence, when you have a former governor, when you have the state Supreme Court.
All giving a ruling.
In favor of staying in execution.
And you still say.
Bump that the man dies and have him killed by the state via lethal injection.
In front of his family. When a man proclaimed.
His innocence and stayed that way for over twenty years, and you do it anyway, You don't give a shit, you don't care.
I'm not one of these people.
Ladies and gentlemen that's diametrically opposed to capital punishment.
I'm one of those people depending on how heinus the crime. And it's finite and.
Definitive that you are guilty, particularly if no contrition or no remorse was shown. I have no problem with you dying zero.
Zero, but only under those conditions.
If there's a sentilla of doubt, a sentilla of doubt.
You don't do.
What Governor Parson did. And to do something like that, and to make this decision, it's criminal.
It is an absolute crime.
And I can't even tell you how sad I am for Marcellus William's family because he went to his death proclaiming his innocence, and he had an abundance of people and institutions supporting him, and the Governor of Missouri didn't give a damn. You might you might be able to sleep well at night right now, sir, cause you appear to have no conscience. We'll see how long that lasts, and whether or not that truly comes back to haunt you someday.
We'll see. We'll see.
Joining me now, is mister Jonathan Potts, Marcellus Williams's attorney at the BCPL in Saint Louis, who fought to stay his execution. Thank you for joining us, Jonathan, I really really appreciate you taking the time take us through the last twenty four to forty eight hours in your efforts to stay the execution of mister Williams.
Please.
Yeah, there's been pretty much a knight fight that went on over the past forty eight hours or so. We were filing briefs over the weekend, with the Missouri Supreme Court arguing it on Monday morning, and then trying.
To get the US Supreme Court to hear the case.
Ultimately, they declined, and mister Williams was executed last night at about six pm.
Who was in attendance for his execution?
There were two members from our legal team as well as mister William's son, Marcellus Junior, who were there to witnesses.
Any members from the victims family and attendance?
No?
Why did they not show up?
Are you aware of the reasoning that they had or reasoning that they gave for not being in attendance?
No, I don't know why they weren't there. I can imagine it's emotionally trying for them too. But the important thing to remember is that the victim's family was not in favor of executing mister Williams.
And why did they reach a conclusion that they were not in favor of this execution?
Specifically from the beginning, they were honoring the wishes of the victim. I want to be clear, mister Williams is innocent, but the victim's family has always said that no matter what happened, the victim would not have wanted anyone to be executed. Her husband didn't want anyone to be executed, and her family didn't want anyone to be executed.
The prosecutor, if I remember correctly, had a change of thinking and they were and ultimately ended up being again the execution. Is that correct and if so, what was their reasoning irrational behind it.
Yeah, it's even more than them just being against the execution. They were fighting to overturn the execution. We were having a trial last month where it wasn't even our team the defense team who filed it, but it was a new lawsuit filed by the prosecutor saying that this was an unfair and unconstitutional trial and that mister Williams execution needed to be stopped.
And they felt they didn't needed to be They needed the execution to be stopped because they believed that there was evidence that contradicted the guilty verdict.
Absolutely so. From the beginning, there was forensic evidence that pointed away from mister Williams. They were bloody fingerprints, bloody footprints at the scene that didn't belong to him, didn't belong to the husband, didn't belong to the first responders. There was other forensic evidence of the scene pointing away. We found new DNA evidence on the murder weapon that didn't belong to mister Williams. And what further testing showed is that the DNA on the knife belonged to the original trial prosecutor twenty years ago, and he had contaminated the evidence and it, frankly, had prevented us from being able to find the DNA.
Whoever was the real killer and.
In what way was the evidence contaminated.
We put the trial prosecutor from twenty years ago on the stand last month and we cross examined them and he admitted that not once, not twice, but five times before trial he had handled the murder weapon, which was a bloody kitchen knife without gloves.
He had been showing it to witnesses, just holding it, putting his.
DNA all over it and potentially wiping away any DNA from the actual killer.
And still they went ahead with the execution.
What rationale did the governor give for not paudoning him for not staying this execution or anybody else for that matter.
The governor just said that he had received due process and a decision had been made, and we obviously strongly disagree with that didn't receive due process. What we also learned at the hearing last month is that the trial prosecutor admitted that he got rid of at least one juror in part because he's black. It was a devastating thing to hear, and that alone should stop the execution, but it didn't.
He got rid of one juror because the juror was black.
That is correct, Stephen, what he said. I asked him when he was on the stand, and I said, you got rid of the juror because.
He was a young black man with glasses and he said, row, that was part of the reason. It was because he also had piercing eyes.
Wow, I'm thinking about the predecessor to the governor that's in office right now, and how his predecessor decided to stay.
The execution years ago.
So this governor didn't take that into consideration evidently, and I'm wondering why that was the case. Again, I know I'm being a bit redundant and asking that question, but I find myself a feeling a bit incredulous and just taken aback significantly by the fact that there was a prepondance of evidence. You've got a prosecutor that no longer supported the execution, you got the victim's family that didn't want the execution, you got DNA evidence that was compromised. You have a predecessor to the governor that's presently in office who stayed at execution. But somehow, some way, this governor decided to still go forward.
Yes, even the breadcrumbs are all there.
I think any person who is following this case knows exactly what happened.
And we received an outpouring of public grip support.
Basically everyone that we've heard from has been against the execution except for the governor and the Missouri Attorney General.
And I want to point out that what actually happened.
Is that the prior governor stopped a prior execution just minutes.
Before it was about to happen to appoint a special.
Board to look into mister Williams's case. And then what happened is that Governor Parson actually disbanded that board before it ever gave them a recommendation about whether to give mister Williams a partner communication of his sentence. We basically he didn't hear the answer.
What was his explanation for disbanding that board?
Didn't get one?
He didn't give one.
Yeah, I think enough time had passed and wasn't very interested in what he was going to hear.
How many executions have taken place in the state of Missouri recent memory.
I believe that there are three executions this year, and I think it's eleven executions under the current governor.
Under the current governor, how many of them has been black? Do you have an answer to that question?
I don't know off the top of my head, Stevens, but your guess is probably a good one.
And where do you guys go from here?
What have you learned or what do you take from a case such as this, because it has to be very debilitating, very very depressing, to be quite honest with you, To know that such a preponderance of evidence has been put in your favor to stay in execution, and you have to support the inordinate amount of support that you received, and still the execution went through, it has to be incredibly disheartening.
One would imagine.
It's more than disheartening. You know, we obviously cared quite a bit about mister Williams. When someone's your client for many years and you're working to try and save their life, it carries a very very heavy emotional pull, and when you see that person put to death under unfair circumstances, you start to have doubts about the integrity of the judicial system.
The important thing, though.
Is the reason that we take these cases on is we are trying to build back.
Public trust in the judicial system.
And the only way that you build back public trust is when that system is willing to admit its errors. Right now, the system wants to say, pretend the errors didn't happen. People don't believe that everyone knows mistakes are made. The only way that you're going to have the public believe that they're getting a fair trials is when you meant that a mistake was made, and you admit that mistake, you fix it, and.
You promise that it's never going to happen again. And that's not what happened here.
I'm thinking about the prosecutor admitting their mistake. I'm thinking about the preponderance of evidence that ultimately favored you staying the execution. And I'm thinking also about Governor Mike Parson, because that's his name, Mike Parson literally not providing an explanation really as to why he was dogged in his decision to execute mister Williams. I think that the credit's incredibly alarming, outside of the actual killing itself, please don't get me wrong, is the fact that the governor hasn't been required to give an in depth explanation as to why he reached the decision that he reached.
There was a board that was appointed for that specific purpose. They conducted an investigation for six years, and they were going to provide him with a report and recommendation.
And like I said, he dissolved that board before their work was complete.
And by dissolving that board, they can't give us an explanation because they're in no position to do so, and he refuses to give an explanation because he's in a position as the governor to do just that. That's the only thing that any of us can surmise, Is that correct, Jonathan.
Yeah, it's up to Governor Parson whether he wants to explain that.
What does that leave the BCLP moving forward? I mean when you talk about the reason for you exist is restoring faith. To have a situation where you have so much evidence in your favor and still come up short in staying this execution, where does that leave you moving forward?
So here's the thing, Steven, I'm actually I'm a sports lawyer. What I've been doing in these cases is this is something that I do pro bone now in my career. So far, we've exonerated three people murder and mister Williams unfortunately was executed last night. But we are doing this because we are trying to bring faith back to the community in terms of understanding that the court system is there to protect us. And the important thing isn't that you get it over with, but that you get it right. And I want people to know that we are going to keep fighting to make sure that execute that people don't get executed for crimes that they don't commit. And I worry about our kids. I worry about each other, and you worry about whether we really have our values properly aligned when we want to just kill someone because it's been too long and he's been sitting around on death roat for twenty years, so we need to get it over with.
Wow, Jonathan Potts, I really really appreciate your time.
Thank you so.
Much for joining the show, and I'm really really sorry for what the outcome ultimately ended up being. It certainly wasn't due to lack of effort and due diligence and expertise on your part and that of the BCLP. I can assure you of that. So I thank you from the bottom of my heart, and I thank you from coming for coming on the show.
I really appreciate it.
Thank you take it.
One of only Jonathan Potters right here on the stephen A.
Smith Show of the digital airwaves of YouTube and of course iHeartRadio.
It's a shame you heard what he had to say.
There's no excuse for this, and Governor Parsses needs to be made to account for why he made this decision. I mean his predecessor decided to stay the execution.
The prosecutor acknowledged it.
There were mistakes made, evidence was tampered with, et cetera, et cetera. There's no excuse for mister Williams being executed yesterday in light of that preponderance of evidence. When in doubt, preserving life should be the most important thing, more so than anything else.
But that clearly was not.
The case in the state of Missouri yesterday thanks to Governor Mike Parston.
What a shame, What a shame.
