The case against Marcellus Khalifa Williams, given his last meal and executed in Missouri on September 25, was riddled with miscarriages of justice, including a complete lack of DNA evidence, two known unreliable witnesses who had reason to lie to reduce their own sentences, and the personal interference of those with their hands on the levers of power. This includes the new Governor and the Attorney General, who after setbacks to the case, overturned legal precedent in the state to hurry Williams to his death.

It is imperative that we take this case to heart. Marcellus was an unwitting victim, but is also a shocking example of power dictating its fatal whims to those society deems lesser.

In the eyes of those in power, justice has been served. But this is not even the view of those who have actually suffered the repercussions of the horrific slaying of Lisha Gayle, her family, who repeatedly said they didn’t want Marcellus to be slain. Even the prosecutor filed a motion to overturn the trial.  

Williams was convicted of the 1998 murder of Lisha Gayle, a young white woman. The jury, in the deep south, consisted of eleven white people and one black person. A recent study of St. Louis county’s disparities in death penalty sentencing shows that the fatal sentence was three and a half times more likely to be passed down for a white victim than for a black one. Marcellus’ fate was sealed.

The justice system does not have justice as a major concern. It is concerned with the dehumanisation and destruction of black bodies, as is every state institution, particularly within the United States. A black man was killed in the South, but not by a lone vigilante, a mob, or mere agents of the state, but by the very instruments of the state set up allegedly to keep us safe.

If the gears of this so-called justice system can grind Marcellus to death under these conditions without the assent, approval or even agreement of the aggrieved parties, it becomes evident that this justice goes only toward entrenching power for those who hold it above us. And it does so by playing out the same tropes over centuries, that black bodies are dispensable, and can be summarily sacrificed to quench their need for blood.