This Man Is A Murderer.
Gov. Mike Parson refused to pardon Marcellus Williams and now he is dead.
Marcellus “Khaliifah” Williams is dead. The state of Missouri killed him. The US Supreme Court — save for Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor — killed him. The Missouri supreme court killed him. But most of all, Governor Mike Parson killed him.
Because Governor Mike Parson had the power, as one individual, to look at the evidence in the case and to say, “You know what, there’s too much of a question here. There is another person’s DNA on the knife, there was another person’s bloody footprints on the ground, and not a drop of the forensic evidence points to him” and grant clemency. He also could have allowed the independent investigative board set up by previous governor Eric Greitens (also a Republican, by the way) to finish its investigation. But he canceled that, didn’t he?
“Capital punishment cases are some of the hardest issues we have to address in the Governor’s Office, but when it comes down to it, I follow the law and trust the integrity of our judicial system,” Parson said after refusing clemency.
Mike Parson has never granted clemency in a death penalty case. He also refused to grant a pardon to Kevin Strickland, who spent 43 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. He refused to grant a pardon to Lamar Johnson, who spent 27 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. Both men have since been fully exonerated and are now finally out of prison. In Strickland’s case in particular, Parson said he just wasn’t convinced of his innocence despite the fact that the actual perpetrator of the crime he went to prison for was convicted for it and had already finished serving his sentence at that time.
It is very possible that Mike Parson is uniquely bad at determining whether or not someone is guilty or innocent.
You know whom he did pardon, though? Mark and Patricia McCloskey, who famously pulled out their guns and threatened Black Lives Matter protesters walking by their house. He’s also signaled that he will pardon Eric DeValkenaere, a white Kansas City cop who unlawfully killed Cameron Lamb, a Black man, in 2019 and was convicted of second-degree manslaughter and armed criminal action.
“There’s not a week that goes by that somebody’s not reaching out to me about that issue and we’re going to see what happens here before long. I’ll leave it at that. But you know, I don’t like where he’s at. I’ll just say that,” Parson said of DeValkenaere’s case on KCMO Talk Radio in August.
It’s just incredible how much empathy this man can generate as soon as the person he wants to pardon has white skin.
Mike Parson is a killer. He killed an innocent man and he should feel badly about that, but he won’t. He should at least be kept up at night wondering if he made the wrong decision, but he won’t.
This never should have been in his hands to begin with. The fact that the death penalty is still a thing here when the whole entire rest of the world has moved on is beyond shameful. No one should be making these decisions, particularly someone as goddamned stupid and cruel as Mike Parsons.
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"I follow the law and trust the integrity of our judicial system,” Parson said after refusing clemency."
I'm sure he feels the same way about elections, right?
It is because of people like Parson and the six Nazgul on the Supreme Court that I have changed my position on the death penalty: I am now 100% against it. I used to believe that it should exist to rid the world of monsters like Anders Breivik or Sam Little. In *theory*, I still feel this way. But in practice - i.e. the real world - the death penalty is *not* reserved for cut-and-dried extreme cases like theirs, and I have come to realize it never, ever will be.
Having the death penalty as a legal option is like handing a butcher knife to a psychopath. And the psychopath is someone like Parson.