Missouri’s Awful Attorney General
We’ve got a lot of anti-choice pro-Trump politicians in this state, but no one can beat our Attorney General Andrew Bailey.
More than 20 years ago a Black man, Marcellus Williams, was convicted of murdering St. Louis Post-Dispatch Reporter Lisa Gayle. Williams has been on death row since then, and has always proclaimed his innocence.
In 2017 he was granted a stay of execution by a Republican Governor when evidence showed someone else’s DNA was on the murder weapon.
After more years of legal wrangling and with a new execution date approaching, the current prosecutor, Wesley Bell (who recently won a primary to represent Missouri in Congress) and Wiliams’ attorney entered into an agreement where Williams would make an Alford Plea and be sentenced to life. Circuit Judge Bruce Hilton, a great attorney and judge but hardly a liberal, approved the deal. An Alford plea is not an admission of guilt but an admission that a trial would come out badly. The deal was struck to avoid the execution and give time for a further hearing.
Bailey, who has sued almost everyone in the Biden Administration and will probably be re-elected, filed a motion with the Missouri Supreme Court to stop the deal, even though Ms. Gayle’s family supports the deal and wants closure. The Court entered an order staying the agreement.
I don’t know if Williams killed Gayle or not. However, Mr. Bailey’s actions remind me of a Twilight Zone episode involving the death penalty, I Am the Night, Color Me Black (Season 5, Episode 25 or 26, depending on which service your use). In that episode a White man is set to be hanged for killing a KKK member and claimed he did so in self defense. On the morning of the hanging, the town newspaper editor, played by Paul Fix (think The Rifleman and the judge in To Kill a Mockingbird), points out the errors in the trial to the sheriff and his deputy (played by Goober in The Andy Griffith Show). The deputy wants to see the hanging. Ivan Dixon (Hogan’s Heroes) plays a minister who visits the prisoner.
The hanging is set for 9:30 am. At 8 a.m. the sheriff realizes the sun has not risen. At 9:30 it still hasn’t risen, it never does, and the hanging proceeds. Radio reports indicate that the small town where it took place is the only place in the state where the sun has not risen. Later reports indicate the sun also has not risen in Birmingham, Alabama (site of the church bombing) and North Vietnam.
If Mr. Bailey gets his way and Williams is executed, I wonder if the sun will rise over Bailey’s house.