Over the last five years, the Death Penalty Information Center identified concerns raised by governors in California, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Arizona, Ohio, and Tennessee that caused them to place or continue a hold on executions. These governors question whether there was due process in death penalty cases, and they critique the lack of equal treatment for individuals sentenced to death.
If recent history bears a pattern, the governors have a valid and grave argument. During the week of September 20-27, 2024, America witnessed five executions. Three of the executed individuals were black. Khalil Allah aka Freddie Owens in South Carolina, Marcellus Williams in Missouri, Travis Mullis in Texas, Emmanuel Littlejohn in Oklahoma, and Alan Eugene Miller in Alabama received the death penalty from their state with questions unanswered and concerns unaddressed surrounding due process and equal treatment.
Aside from racial disparities, death row also tends to hold a disproportionate population of individuals with functional disabilities and debilitating backgrounds.
“The overwhelming majority of those facing execution today have what the court termed … to be diminished culpability,” said Harvard Law professor Charles Ogletree. “Severe functional deficits are the rule, not the exception, among the individuals who populate the nation’s death rows. Many other…offenders endured unspeakable abuse as children.”
How well do courts address functional deficits when placing someone on death row? The 2002 U.S. Supreme Court case, Atkins v. Virginia, declared as unconstitutional the execution of inmates with “mental retardation.”
The case of Marcellus Williams, who was executed on September 24, stands out the most. The Prosecutor’s Office led the charge to vacate Williams’ conviction. Through a court filing, St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell wrote the following, “This never-before-considered (DNA) evidence, when paired with the relative paucity of other, credible evidence supporting guilt, as well as additional considerations of ineffective assistance of counsel and racial discrimination in jury selection, casts inexorable doubt on Mr. Williams’s conviction and sentence.”
How can due process and equal treatment take place when the government fails to consider new evidence? Why would a prosecutor’s office who won the initial conviction seek to vacate the conviction, and cite ineffective counsel and racial discrimination in the jury selection, if there was not reasonable doubt as to Williams’ guilt?
In his brief, pleading for a stay of execution to the United States Supreme Court, Bell cited concerns raised by Eighth Circuit Judge Jane Kelly that she was “deeply troubled.” The proceedings surrounding Williams’ conviction bothered her. Further, the wife of the deceased victim in the case objected to the imposition of the death penalty. The Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey and the Missouri Supreme Court, however, rejected efforts to stay the execution for Williams. Ultimately, reported Time, Missouri Governor Mike Parson and the United States Supreme Court also rejected efforts to stay the execution for Williams.
The Innocence Project, and organization that uses “DNA and other scientific advancements to prove wrongful conviction,” offered the following statistic;
For every 8.2 people executed in the United States in the modern era of the death penalty, one person on death row has been exonerated.
One person represents one life too many. Let’s ensure justice for everyone on death row.
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EDWARD WOODS III is the Public Affairs and Religious Liberty Director and Chairperson of the Conscience & Justice Council. Sign-up for the Conscience & Justice Council Convention at www.cjcouncil.org
This article is part of our 2024 November/December Issue
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