GOP Governor pardons white MAGA couple but executes an innocent Black man

This is what MAGA death panels look like

Missouri GOP Gov. Mike Parson proudly pardoned a white, MAGA loving couple who pointed guns at Black Lives Matter protesters.  But when it came to an innocent Black man, Marcellus Williams—who was Muslim--he was only too happy to see him executed.

NAACP President Derrick Johnson put it bluntly after the execution Tuesday night of Williams: “Tonight, Missouri lynched another innocent Black man. When DNA evidence proves innocence, capital punishment is not justice — it is murder.”

This incident so perfectly sums up MAGA. After all Donald Trump has defended white MAGA criminals--from the gun touting McCloskey couple who Parson’s pardoned to Trump’s Jan 6 terrorists—but has demonized people of color with lies that they are committing crimes. Trump even called for the execution of five young Black and Latino men—known then as the Central Park Five—by spending nearly $100,000 to place ads in New York’s City’s largest newspapers at the time demanding they receive the death penalty. (see ad below)

In fact, on Wednesday night I attended an event in New York City where one of the “Exonerated Five,” New York City Councilman Yusef Salaam, spoke movingly about the execution of Williams and how that reminded him of his own situation.  He first linked Williams execution with the infamous murder of Emmet Till by white supremacists. Salaam noted that while we will never know what Till’s last words were, with Williams we do because he wrote a final statement that read, “All Praise Be to Allah in Every Situation!"

Salaam then powerfully noted that if certain people had their way, he and the other four members of the “Exonerated 5” --Raymond Santana, Antron McCray, Korey Wise and Kevin Richardson--would have been executed before the DNA evidence was discovered that proved that they did not commit the crime.  

That is exactly what Trump had demanded. The evidence didn’t matter-just like with Trump’s demonization today of Black immigrants in Ohio. And tragically for Williams, Missouri’s MAGA Gov. Parson subscribes to that same view given the questions surrounding his case.

Williams was convicted for the 1998 murder of Felicia “Lisha” Gayle. However, this conviction was suspect from the start.  Forensic evidence found at the crime scene included fingerprints, footprints, hair and DNA on a butcher knife. However, the footprints and DNA did not match Williams--and suspiciously the fingerprints were lost by the police.  

The primary evidence used to convict Williams were two jailhouse witnesses who said Williams “confessed” to them. In exchange for their testimony, both secured reward money and shorter sentences in their own cases. Also raising red flags was that six of the seven potential jurors who were black were stricken from the jury pool.

It was these questions—along with Williams always maintaining his innocence--that prompted the Midwest Innocence Project and others to re-examine Williams’s case.  This led to the Missouri Supreme Court in 2015 sparing Williams from execution. In 2017, even the then GOP Governor of Missouri, Eric Greitens, granted Williams a reprieve from the death penalty after new DNA testing appeared to exonerate Williams. Gov. Greitens then appointed a board of inquiry to investigate the case. But before a report could be issued, MAGA Gov. Parson came to power and “abruptly dissolved the board before it issued its final report.”

At the time, Parson said it was “time to move forward” with the execution, adding, “we could stall and delay for another six years, deferring justice, leaving a victim’s family in limbo, and solving nothing.”  In reality, the victim’s family also came to oppose Williams’s execution.

But apparently Parson wanted to see Williams die to score political points with his GOP base as being tough on crime—at least when the person involved is not white. Parson didn’t care that the St. Louis County Prosecutor’s office that had prosecuted Williams had filed a motion in January to vacate the capital murder conviction given a recent DNA analysis excluded Williams as the source of DNA on the murder weapon. In addition, the DA revealed that his predecessors in the office “made constitutional errors that contributed to a faulty murder conviction.” However, the GOP controlled courts in Missouri along with GOP Attorney General sided with Parson.

Williams’s final plea was to the US Supreme Court just hours before the execution was to take place on Tuesday. While the court’s three liberal members, Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson supported the stay, the other six GOP justices refused to grant one. But again, this is no surprise since the GOP justices are just an extension of today’s Republican Party with their goal being to help them politically at every turn

The Midwest Innocence Project in a statement after the Supreme Court ruling were stunned, noting that, "The victim's family opposes his execution. Jurors, who originally sentenced him to death, now oppose his execution. The prosecutor's office that convicted and sentenced him to death has now admitted they were wrong and zealously fought to undo the conviction and save Mr. Williams' life."

Shortly before the lethal injection that killed Williams, GOP Gov Parson defended refusing to stay the execution in his statement, “No juror nor judge has ever found Williams’ innocence claim to be credible.”

Parson’s comment would be more credible if more than one tainted juror ever heard Williams’s case. And Parson’s comment was completely undermined by his pardon of Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the white MAGA couple who were charged with waving guns at a group of Black Lives Matter protesters despite no juror or judge finding them innocent.  Mark McCloskey even vowed after pleading guilty, “I'd do it again." 

But in that case the couple had been praised by Trump and even invited to speak at the 2020 Republican National Convention—and of course, they are white. Again, the treatment of these two cases perfectly sums up MAGA. One system of justice for their white supporters and a vastly different one for the rest of us.

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