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At exactly 11.14 p.m., Kelsey DeMarco was not walking to buy chips and pop to power an all-nighter before her exam, so she did not break off the heel of her left boot, and she did not then stumble into trash bins full of raccoons, only to be spotted by her ex-boyfriend Jean-Francois. Instead, Kelsey skipped it, and with the Skip app, had her chips and pop delivered, allowing her to study and totally rock her midterm. Smart move, Kels. Skip to the good part. With Export Development Canada, Canadian businesses are competing, leading and winning in more international markets. Like how agri-food businesses are strengthening global food supply and critical minerals are powering industries of the future. Their ambition can't be contained. And with EDC behind them, neither can their growth. Export Development Canada is the financial partner for Canadian businesses going global. Visit edc.ca for more.
For most of the history of professional sports, there was a wall between the game and gambling. Then suddenly it was everywhere. Ontario is all in on sports betting. Make every moment more with fandom. But that wasn't supposed to include the players themselves. Raptors board, Jontay Porter is under NBA investigation. Athletes are the perfect gamblers. Understood. The Big Bet. Available now on Spotify. Due to the graphic nature of some of the topics we will be touching on, listener discretion is advised. Good evening, good afternoon, good morning.
Don. Whatever time of day it is. Don. His show. Shut up. There's a night. And it's feeling all right. Where I for an I. We're back. I'm Matt. Shella. Hi, everybody. I'm Elisa. Nerf. Nerf.
I'm Ken. I'm just Ken. Just Ken. I love it. I love it. What are the songs? We're going to start with some levity. Unfortunately, we're going to have a case today that's not so light, but we do want to talk about it because it is important that we look back, especially in today's day made, at our U.S. judicial system, at its successes and at its failures and at its somewhere in betweens. We're not quite sure. This is one of those. Today, we're going to talk about a gentleman named Marcellus William. For those of you who may not be familiar.
Marcellus Williams was a gentleman who was executed in the state of Missouri in just the last year and a half, I want to say. It was 2024. Yeah, September of 2024. It's a case that we look at and say, if you think about it from the perspective of jurisprudence, due process, got his appeals, made the case for him, and it made it to its inevitable conclusion, it checked every box. It fulfilled that obligation to...
go through the process, basically. A lot of people really question, was justice served? It's one of the most controversial death penalty cases in recent American history. We're going to talk about this gentleman, Marcellus Williams, a man who was tried and convicted of a brutal murder, but whose execution was halted not once, but twice due to non-substantiating evidence, raising serious concerns about DNA evidence, witness testimony, coerced witness testimony. our legal system's reliability for all of us, and honestly, what justice as a whole means. Let's talk a little bit about, first, the crime, and then criminal and the victim. The crime itself, a woman named Felicia Gale, who was 42 years old at the time, on August 11th, 1998, in St. Louis, Missouri, which St. Louis County, Missouri, which we all know, or at least most people, St. Louis does have a violent reputation consistently for violent cities in the country. Not something that anybody from there sugarcoats or doesn't pass to, and unfortunately, you sometimes don't.
of more violent, vicious crimes. Not everything is a gang-related thing is drug-related or there are these that stand out. Felicia Gale was stabbed 43 times in her phone. No sign of forced entry. She was actually, by the way, she was a former St. Louis Post dispatch reporter, had some notoriety, known in her community, somebody who would have been, if you looked at her name, you'd have been like, oh yeah, Felicia writes for the paper. People knew her. Her jewelry and purse were missing.
Again, no signs of forced entry, not a real, like, I don't think it was a very discombobulated crime scene. From what I understand, the crime scene covered with forensic evidence, but no evidence as to who that person was. The perpetrator apparently left behind fingerprints, footprints, hair, trace DNA on the murder weapon, which was a knife from Miss Felicia Gale's kitchen. And none of that forensic evidence matched the inevitable tried and convicted criminal. OK, it makes you wonder how they get there. But let's talk a little bit. They all agree to stay in the 80s and 90s away from forensic evidence. That's what I'm wondering. Now, again, and you're right now, that's probably the most conclusive, I would say, evidence to anything. So how are you ignoring that? How are we looking at that? I would say the second best is most conclusive form of evidence is eyewitness testimony. Right. None of that. But no eyewitnesses directly leaking anyone to the scene.
But a suspect was identified, a gentleman named Marcellus Williams, by allegedly having confessed to two individuals, his then-girlfriend at the time and a fellow inmate. Just to talk a little bit about that, they were both actually incentivized by promises of leniency in their own pending criminal cases and with reward money. The investigation had actually gone fairly cold until an inmate named Henry Cole, who had a lengthy record, claimed that Mr. Williams confessed to him that he committed the murder while they were both locked up in the same jail. That's crazy. Literally, yes. This whole fucking case hinged on two people, one of which was in jail and was going to get rewarded for this. And have a sentence reduced. Yes, literally, yes. Oh, I hope he's burning in hell right now. Not only that, ready? The other witness was a woman whose name was Laura Asaro, a woman who had briefly dated Mr. Williams and apparently also had an extensive record of her own. Both of them, based on Cole alleging to talk to Mrs. Asaro,
apparently agreed, and again, I don't know if they communicated or how they could have communicated, that he had confessed to them at the time. Now, one thing I do want to say is both of them were also known fabricators. Neither of them revealed any information that was included in media accounts about the case or already known to police. Basically, they would have given the same confirmation, yup, nod and smile type of witness testimony instead of actually identifying anything that was news. They were also, there were inconsistencies in some of their statements with each other's accounts and in their own accounts. With crime scene evidence, again, none of the information they provided could be independently made, which it should be, honestly, if you're talking about a capital murder case. All of this needs to be proven by somebody other than two people who just said, oh yeah, he told me he did it. Yeah, he told me he did it. This is one thing that I do want to address. I think the main piece of evidence that was pointed to Marcellus was he sold a laptop that was from...
Felicia Gale's apartment. Yes. Aside from their testimony, the only evidence that connected him was a witness who said that he sold him a laptop from Felicia Gale's house. Was a witness of receiving a laptop? Apparently, yes. Bought this laptop, but even this part, there is a hold to it. Ready? The jury did not hear this, but Mr. Williams, the jury did not learn. Mr. Williams apparently told the witness he had received the laptop from Laura Asarim.
Whoa. A question on that. I don't know if you know this from your studies, Matt, but why is some information withheld from the jury? Wouldn't you think that they need all of the facts? I understand if it has nothing to do with the case or something, but I've never understood in cases when they decide to willfully withhold information or evidence or whatever there was found from the jury. Let's pull the class. Does anybody have an answer to Lisa's question? Our class is a little sleepy. I feel like they do that because whichever side that the witness is coming from, they want what feels like a clean case.
That's part of it, Noah. It turns into trying to get a unanimous jury. Then they want to just provide what feels like a very straightforward answer and clear idea. It would be wild on the defense to not bring that up. I was actually, I agree with that point. I do think, yeah, why would somebody withhold evidence, right? Or you wouldn't think it's actually, you can't really withhold evidence. The proper term is why would they not give that to the jury, right? Why would they not present that? And the main reason would be because a judge ruled it inadmissible. During pretrial arguments, both sides have the right to come to the judge and say, this evidence should not be submitted because X, Y, Z. They write a brief, they have their verbal public argument, and then the judge rules whether or not the evidence was collected and stored properly, whether it was presented properly, whether it's relevant.
then gets sent to the actual court case, which is presented in front of a jury. The main reason would be, to answer Lisa's question, somebody probably came in at some point and said, you can't fucking show the jury this because this is going to be prejudicial or this is going to potentially be biased or make the jury see something. Noah said, this does not present as a clean case. There's a reason we could appeal based on this. And the last thing a judge wants is for a circuit of appeals courts to overrule their cases and get back and be like, you fucked up five times this past year. More than likely, I would say the reason that wasn't included was because during all the pretrial...
And pander, pander, it goes back and forth. Some of that evidence was probably ruled as being inadmissible because if I had to guess, it's your say. He said, she said. Marcellus Williams is saying that I got it from her. She's saying he sold it for me or I never saw that letter, et cetera, et cetera. There's really no way to prove the veracity of either one of their statements. So you kind of have to look at it from a judge's perspective and say, I really can't admit this as evidence because the one guy could say yes, the other guy could say no. Who's to blame when the jury comes back and is like, we don't know.
I guess I would land on a story fabricator, too. If she could deflect it off, then it would take the right kind of judge to be protective of his own interests. Absolutely. That's part of it, though, is like a lot of this that we don't talk about is that at the end of the day, these are people sitting on juries. These are people that are judges that have their own self-interest and political beliefs and background information. Hell, maybe they think the defendant's cute. We don't fucking know. We've talked about this before, and I think we should do an entire case and get a lawyer on. Maybe my uncle would come on.
I feel as if, like, there's no such thing as an unbiased jury. I think lawyers specifically pick people that would help their version of events. I know that's not the way it's supposed to work, but I think that's the way it works. I said, like, all four of us have different opinions on X, Y, and Z, right? If we were put on a case that appealed to our specific interests, we're going to feel a different way about it than, like, no, it would. No one might feel differently about a case that we're presented with based on our own personal experiences, our own way of seeing the world. I don't understand. I guess there's no way. Each side gets to pick a certain amount of jurors.
I think so, right? Yeah, go back and forth to be able to... It's like a basketball game. I want this player, you want that player. So in theory...
I feel that you could pick people who you know are going to help your cause. And then the other side is doing the same thing. So it's like evening it out. So also each time one is chosen, the other side is able to say no question the choice. And then they can all look into something about this person, compromise their ability to be an unbiased juror. Frankly, part of that, they can go into what kind of videos in political affiliations do you have? And then it can turn into, OK, like you're already going to be like believing the witness or believing the defendant. So really out of that, then we got to get rid of you.
I'm so glad you guys are having this back and forth right now, because when you hear what happens next, I want to talk about one thing really quickly before I get into it, and we'll circle this. I just want to say real quickly that according to the Innocent Sprout, which we all know of, but they were one of the leading leaders in trying to get Marcel Williams to stay of execution. Incentivized informants are a leading cause of wrinkle. Jailhouse informant testimony, like whatever. multiple people, obviously, like after you're convicted, nothing like a jailbird, like the one that led to Marcellus Williams' convention, obviously, is one of the leading contributing factors of wrongful convictions nationally, playing a role in 15% of the 598 DNA-based exocteration cases. 11 of the 54 individuals exocterated in Missouri were convicted with the use of informant testimony. In capital cases, false testimony from incentivized witnesses is the leading cause of wrongful convictions. In the capital case, for those where if you're listening to our podcast, you know what we're talking about. The capital case is death penalty case.
False testimony from incentivized witnesses is the leading cause of wrongful convictions, with informed testimony present in 49.5 of wrongful convictions since the mid-1970s, according to the Center on Wrongful Convictions. If only there was a solution. Do you guys think, question for everybody here, do you think if it's a capital murder case and death penalty is on the line, or definitely death penalty, but even life, for example, do you think there should be, without a doubt, physical evidence not be able to use eyewitness testimony? Because, yeah, eyewitness testimony can be helpful, but it's also been proven to be fucking inaccurate. The way people remember things are different. I don't know. I always talk about this with Noah, but have either of you watched The Affair on HBO? No. Matt, it's a romp-drom situation, but...
It's about an affair. I think the way they film it is really clever because what they do is the first half of the show is filmed from the man's perspective. And then the second half of the show is filmed from the woman's perspective. And it's the same exact thing, but like the same exact scene, the same exact conversation, but little words will be different. Or like the color of his shoe is different or like the color of the wallpaper on the wall because it's them remembering what transpired. I thought it was really interesting because it shows that even the smallest little details are remembered differently by people. Yep, that's so true. And it's the same exact scenario. It's the same exact conversation. The air of it is the same, but those little tiny details you can see.
are a little mismatched. I feel the same way about eyewitness-type testimonies. Yeah, we could have seen the same thing, but one, if we witnessed something traumatic, our brain's doing all kinds of gymnastics to try to rectify what we saw. So how are we supposed to be able to recall something accurately with all of that in mind? Do you guys think eyewitness testimony and that kind of stuff should be a contributing evidence factor in death penalty cases when so much is on the line? Did you just kill a fly? To answer your question, I think there has to be some application of it because if there is a variable eyewitness...
It's very important in terms of confirmation, in terms of testimony that people can actually believe and hear. However, I do agree with you that life is on the line. We can't just be relying on what some guy said. I also think depending on where you are, the person is, what the account is, people will make decisions already prejudged. Do you guys remember that Netflix, I think it was like a miniseries, The Confession Killer?
No. Where that guy, I'm trying to look for his name, Henry Lee Lucas. Ah, yes. Confessing to hundreds of murders, just like for fun. He's really dallying around. He's like, oh yeah, I killed them. It made me think, Matt, when you were talking about the informant or the jailhouse, little people just throwing things out, throwing people under the bus. It's just wild. Separately, I wanted to ask if anyone has ever sat on a jury. I was going to ask this question too. I was about to. Were you? Never. Beginning of last year. I was literally going through the jury selection process. And in order to get to that, I had to switch two different buildings.
So what was that like? I've never actually been through that process. Very long. Partially because you go into one big room and then they're like, all right, we're splitting you guys up. So this group, if you receive this paper, then you're going into this room and the other group, then you're going into this room and going into the other room. They're like, actually, we need to go to a different room. So please go over here. What are they asking? I didn't even get to be asked because we eventually, after I moved all the different rooms and different buildings, then we were sitting in a proper courtroom, all seated, waiting to be brought up to the prosecution and defendant and to actually be interviewed and talk.
Before we did that, they listed out our different rights and different aspects of the case that were very general, just to really give an idea of if we were already personally unbiased. What was the case about, generally? It was a type of a, I believe it was a version of a car theft. Did you say I steal cars in my spare time, so you cannot pick me? They started. They're like, leave. Get the fuck out. I don't think you'd make it very far in the jury selection process. I don't think so either. I was because I feel like someone's going to be like, that one looks liberal. Get rid of that. Absolutely. The fuck not. This girl's from Russia. We can't have her. That's what's dangerous. We got through. There were like four or five rows of chairs. We got through one and a half of them personally talking to them all.
Then all the defendant prosecutor, they just stood up and left the room. No words, no nothing. They just picked up all their shit and just left. We were there in silence for about 15 minutes. We were all just kind of, what do we do? The people running the show just left the room and said nothing to us. And another 10 minutes later, then someone else came in and was like, oh, by the way, they're doing a plea deal. They just left to make a plea bargain. They looked at each other and said, we good? Yep, okay, leave. And then come back and make everybody else leave. I have one more comment before we let Matt get back on track. Has anyone seen the show on Amazon called Jury Duty?
No, but I read a lot about it and I thought it was the most fascinating. It was so funny. The premise is that they have one guy who believes he's coming in to sit on this jury and everyone else, the other jurors, the judge, the defendants, everyone else is in on this. They're actors and actresses. They just send this man. The things that happen are absolutely absurd. It's a pretty good lighthearted. Does he get paid at the end? No, he finds out at the end that it was all set up and he's like... I think he did get paid though for being on the other side. Oh, I don't know. I don't know. It was funny. It was entertaining.
While we're on the subject, let's talk about who was on the jury for Mr. Marcellus Williams. Oh, God. Make me angry. Round me up, Matt. Come on now. All right, let's do it. Mr. Williams, a black man, was wrongfully convicted of murdering a white woman. Let's just outright say it, okay? I think he was, at least. We were going to get to the point. This is the prosecutor.
whose institutional practice of racially discriminatory jury selection has been widely documented, successfully removed six of seven qualified black prospective jurors with preemptory challenges. Marcellus Williams' jury was comprised of 11 white people and one black person. Yeah, let's talk about it. A recent study of 400 death-eligible cases in St. Louis County over a 27-year period also revealed racial disparity in the use of the death penalty based upon the race of the victim.
People who were convicted were 3.5 times more likely to receive the death penalty than was white, in this case. But also then, obviously, this is only believed, unless I'm mistaken, that seems like an inordinately high number of... folks be on that jury. Marcellus Williams is also Muslim. I will say that's something we should put. Now he converted in prison, I believe, and spent a good deal of time writing poetry. Just some convention there. We'll talk a little bit too about Marcellus. His background, I did not get into, but we will talk a little bit about that. I just want to talk a little bit about his case before we talk about him, because just so you guys understand why all this led to this. Let's talk a little bit about the attorney general and the governor and the same institutional issues that we are just touching right here. After the
DNA evidence being misconstrued or not connected to Marsalis Williams and the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney's Office having reached an agreement to assure that Mr. Williams was not rightfully executed. Marsalis Williams agreed to answer an upward plea, which is basically admitting that the state had sufficient evidence to support his conviction in exchange for a sentence of life. Rather than being executed, he was willing to admit, okay, I'm not saying I'm guilty. I didn't do it. But based on the evidence that they have and based on the fact that I'm already in jail, I'd rather not die. I'm going to submit an upward plea.
That's stressful. This makes us even more stressful. Right. Okay. Oh, let's talk about this though. The victim's family supported the resolution and they opposed his execution. They have said, they had said outright many times that they did not want him to be executed. Did they believe in his innocence? I think they did. Yeah. I think they did. Here, I'm going to go back to my notes. But yeah, I believe they did. Hang on one second. Do you think the family of the victims or victims should have more of a say? I guess that's tough because if you had more than one victim.
you might have some opposing views. I guess if you don't, it should be a cleaner case. That's the thing. Even all the evidence that was purported to convicted him was circumstantial. And it's two people who, one's an ex-girlfriend and one's a guy who's in jail. I'll tell you whatever y'all can give me, man. Sure. Yeah, he did it. He told me he did it. Ask his girlfriend. I know she's mad as hell at him. If you ask her if he did it, I'll tell her she'll tell you he did it. That's basically what the evidence was. I believe her family probably looked at it and was like 43 times just to steal a laptop and fucking her purse.
That's like, not only is that a crime of passion, it's very obvious that she obviously had to have known the person, right? That's not somebody who broke in and was like, yeah, I'm gonna just commit a very extremely violent murder. Let me, I don't, hang on, let me pull up. Now, okay, here we go. Part of this is to say that Marcellus Williams was a convicted felon.
He had 16 criminal convictions prior to his murder trial. Second degree burglary in 1988. Second degree assault in 1988. Second degree burglary in 1988. Two cal teacher burglary in stealing in 1991. First degree armed robbery. Armed criminal action. There is an escalation. Okay.
It did. Exactly. Unfortunately, the puzzle pieces did fall in a shitty way. Yes. It does look at him and say, okay, yeah, he stole, but never had any evidence that he killed anybody, right? Or attempted to kill anybody, let alone 43 stab wounds to someone's face and chest. Let's talk about this.
He was convicted, basically, based on all of this evidence. He was in jail for 15 years. Then, DNA evidence comes to light that... In 2000, DNA testing conducted on the knife used in the murder was found to be a male's DNA. They ran tests with new evidence, or I'm sorry, with new technology, looking for the evidence to try and see if it was Marcellus Williams. Turns out it was a male's DNA, but it was not Marcellus Williams. Again, there were multiple times here that you're like, wait, what? That doesn't match up. His execution is not at the time. It's pending in 2000, but it's not confirmed yet. He's just hours before on August 22nd, 2017.
Literally, I'm talking hours before. He's had his last meal. Governor of the state of Missouri at the time, Eric Greitens, issues a stay of execution, okay? He required and created a board of inquiry to review new evidence. Based on this resolution that, and the Alfred plea and her family not in support of his execution, despite the closure that this resolution would have brought to the case, these people were in, here real quickly, I'll read, I'll read real quickly. To quote for context, Governor Eric Greitens said,
To carry out the death penalty, the people of Missouri must have confidence in the judgment of guilt. New information has come to light. We need to look at all of the evidence. Okay. I agree with him. Despite the closure that this resolution would have brought and everybody would have gotten something out of it, we would have at least known a bit more about it. Newly elected attorney general of Missouri, Andrew Bailey, sought a writ of prohibition from the Missouri Supreme Court, which that court then granted, ordering the circuit court to hold the previously scheduled evidentiary. All of this having been done.
There's new evidence. There's been a board of inquiry created. There's been a writ of prohibition filed with the Supreme Court of the state that allows them to reinvestigate to give this case another look before we kill this man. The circuit court held an evidentiary hearing August 28th of 2027. I'm sorry, 2017, I believe. Yeah, 2017. And ruled that it lacked sufficient evidence on which to find that Mr. Williams was innocent. And that his claims of racially biased jury selection and ineffective assistance of counsel had previously been raised and rejected prior appeals.
Accordingly, that court then denied prosecuting attorney, the attorney general, Andrew Bailey, rejected his motion to vacate Mr. Williams' conviction. What all that means in legal mumbo-jumbo is they said there's not substantiating evidence and subsequently ruled that he couldn't have a new trial, that he was guilty, and that they should move forward with the execution. Not when they had a stay of execution. That was like, I didn't realize it was like, let's re-review and put him back on death row. I thought it was like, if they granted that, you're not on death row anymore. You're in life. Get this, right? The Missouri Supreme Court stayed his execution in 2016. And they appointed that Board of Inquiry.
to review the DNA testing and any other potentially exculpatory evidence. The DNA testing is all new. They're trying to run this back or right. However, in 2017, after the testing was complete, but without having conducted the hearing yet or having any of any hearings or making any findings based on the outcome of the testing available, the appointed special master of this investigative board sent Mr. Williams' case back to the Missouri Supreme Court, right? That court did not consider the DNA testing results. And they then again scheduled his execution. No.
Because they didn't even review that board of inquiry. That's when Governor Gretens had to step in and basically said, there's doubt here. We have to convene this board. His execution was stopped. Twice, right? Twice. Now, here's where we got the final rule. Okay, jump forward six years after this board has been created. After this has all been done, after they've investigated, the findings were never made public. No conclusion or final decision was announced from this board. In June of 2023, while the Board of Inquiries review remained ongoing, new governor Mike Parson, without any warning or any justification, dissolved the board without a report or recommendation for immediately afterwards.
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey sought to schedule a new execution date. I'm thinking the exact same. I cannot fathom how this is legal. Basically, those two guys had a phone call and said, we talked about it, right? There's people, there's political influence involved. There's people behind this. I think these guys looked at it and said, we need to kill this son of a bitch. This woman died. We're not going to let her murder go unsolved, unjustified. We're going to kill this son of a bitch. That's exactly what they did. They teamed up and basically said, we're going to move forward legally and say we're going to disband this board.
You, as the governor of the state, have every right to do that. It was convened by the prior administration. It's wasting funds. We haven't found anything yet conclusive. We should move forward. The only thing pending that, Marcellus Williams filed a civil suit against Governor Parson because the dissolution of the board without a report or any recommendation violated Missouri law and his constitutional rights. That was what his statement to it was. Agreed. Makes sense. Agreed, right, you would think. However, after arguments were presented to a Cole County judge, he denied the governor's motion to dismiss the lawsuit, and the governor persuaded the Missouri Supreme Court to intervene.
The Missouri Supreme Court, which is a far more conservative body, by the way, on June 4th of 2024, the Missouri Supreme Court dismissed Marcellus Williams' civil lawsuit against Governor Mike Parson and scheduled his execution immediately for September 24th of 2020. They can drag their feet on everything, but as soon as they can schedule an execution, they're like, we got space. Come here. We're ready to roll. Put them in. Yep, exactly. That, of course, at the time, led to massive outcry from civil rights groups, the NAA, everybody from the ACLU all the way up to legal experts that opposed the death penalty of the Innocent Project, all pushed for reconsideration, all made legal writs in statements of evidentiary support of Marcellus Williams. At the end of it all...
Even Amnesty International, others labeling it as a miscarriage of justice, all of these big names could not stay. I don't understand, though, if a million people are saying, we're not asking to let this man out free walking the world, so maybe that would be the next steps. But just don't kill him. Why was that such a controversial take? He's still in jail. He's still paying the price if you think he committed these crimes. Why was everyone so hellbent on this man dying?
I also find it so interesting that there's only the only time that the jury, i.e. a group of what should be the American peers, we only care about their opinion when we're sitting in that specific courtroom when we really already have picked and chosen what information gets to be shared with the people. From there, if they hear a public outcry, none of it matters. Those aren't the people that we know. Those aren't the people we choose to listen to. Those are just people. Fuck their opinion. No, we need people that we like in order to listen to them. This is where none of this continues to make sense. And I know this is not the only case of this type of injustice. It's one of countless ones. More recently, this is one of the more jarring ones, though, because you're like, what the fuck? There's enough evidence to at least try and at least just don't kill him. Let's just give it a little bit more time. Maybe something does come to light here. Maybe there is another jailhouse confession. The guy's in jail. He's not hurting anybody. And if there's that much...
evidence to say that to sow some doubt why is nobody listening to the doubt because ultimately well yeah listen these are the cases these are the statements that make headlines. Governors, senators, local congresspeople, judges, district attorneys, they all make money and they all grow their profile. Things like this. These are capital big cases. Robbery, felony, murder is, that's a big one. You need to get that right. Don't fuck this type thing. Yeah, but it looks like they all fucked this up. It sounds like they all fucked it up, right? I guess for people trying to show that they have power, especially a newly appointed governor, this is a great flux of power. Great. The first time I showed, as soon as I got the office, I got rid of a dangerous felon.
We took him no longer using our tax money in the jail cell. He is now gone because he should have been gone a long time ago, which this all feels like this is something that would have happened back in the 90s, early thousands. I think this case reminds us that our system still operates the same way that it has 100 years ago. It is every form of infallible that it used to be. It could happen here still. Before we get into the question, I do want to just quote the innocent.
Marcellus Williams was executed in Missouri on September 24th, despite evidence of his innocence. Missouri executed an innocent man. Our hearts are with the family and friends of Marcellus Williams and Felicia Gale, who have suffered an imaginable loss. I do appreciate them saying that to her family. Let's talk a little bit about it. This is one of those cases, man. Like Noah said, it recalls a begotten time, but yet you're also like, nah, man, this is two fucking years ago. This isn't a time to kill 1990s, you know, Mississippi. It's like this case was playing out over that time period. We have evidence of racial. We have evidence of eyewitness testimony having been fabricated. One question I had for you guys was if DNA evidence excludes a convicted person from the murder weapon, can we still consider them a primary suspect? If we can't.
Can we truly call that justice to find the person guilty? No, it's just Matt, you'll have to help me because I know I'm going to butcher it. But one of the things we are we have is right is to a speedy trial. Right. It feels like this that that is put in place to to help us in theory. But it feels like in this case that was that was put in place to hurt because.
when an opposing viewpoint came into place, it was like, it doesn't matter. We're already going and we're down this path and we can't veer from it. Versus, okay, hold, pump the brakes, everybody. Let's take the time, especially given the fact that the victim's family was not pushing for the death penalty. To me, I just, it feels very callous. It feels very rushed. It feels very intentional. It's just sad. I agree there's a point that a speedy trial really does inhibit their willingness to even pay attention to the details of said trial. What's interesting too, though, is that this crime was committed in what, 1998?
It's like, like, what? And the total opposite is happening, which is why the Speedy Trial Clause exists, because then at this point he's been in jail for so long that they can dangle any amount of getting out of jail sooner as a means of... admission of guilt or even agreeing to go along with whatever conviction as long as it gets him out. Because even one of my friends, which you alluded to earlier, he took a plea deal just in order because he didn't feel 100% that he was going to be able to beat the case against him and was just willing to deal with a felony charge even though he didn't actually commit a felony. Also, what my thought process is too is I feel as if sometimes people rush to convict or kill or execute somebody because they don't want to walk back and say they were wrong.
Right. The pride in that. And then the money that they would probably owe Marcellus Williams and his family because they probably sue the ever loving fuck out of this whole town for years and years. He served for something that they're eventually letting him out for. You know, that's money. That's blood money, honestly.
I think you guys all make great points, and that's why this all played out the way it did. I'm going to make kind of a joke, not really because it's true, but it's like, shh, it's okay. He's dead. He's dead. Don't worry about it. Don't do anything anymore. Been dealing with this case for 22 years. We don't want to talk about it. Just leave it alone. We don't want to talk about it. It might be, but we don't know, so we can't get into that. We can't waste more time. We can't spend more money. We only have so many investigators, so we kind of, we got to just move on from this. I wonder how many times the term we have active cases going on right now.
We're not investigating because we're wasting resources on this. Or something along those lines was bandied between law enforcement. Because, and again, very difficult job. Very hard to find a needle in a haystack. Don't have any other DNA evidence. You don't know what else to do other than we have a guy. We have somebody. Let's call it. That's how it feels. And unfortunately, that inevitability of, yeah, eventually, we should probably say at some point, this doesn't feel right. Something's wrong. He might be innocent. It's like tough.
He's dead now. But that would have America being as dramatic as we are. We need to have a culprit, even if it's wrong. That's what it is. Somebody to blame. We're not going to have another cold case because we couldn't find who did it. Yeah. Therefore, let's just kill an innocent man because we could say that we found somebody for it. Yeah, exactly. I wanted the next question based on what we're all going on right now. I kind of want to take a straw poll because I know we've talked about it before, but how do you guys feel about the death penalty in general? Yay, nay, or somewhere in the middle, case by case type thing? Percent I am on nay.
There's very, very odd cases that I'm begrudgingly somewhat okay with. I don't really like the death penalty in any type of right, but there are some bad, creepy seeds out there that just, there's just feels like there's no good place for anybody. But even sending them off to death doesn't feel right, but keeping them here in a jail cell also feels dangerous. For the most part, I'm like, if you really did commit something nasty, then you can just say, you can stay by far, in my opinion. Stop it.
Sorry, Brogy's trying to fuck up. Peanut's ears. I think the room for error is incredible with the death penalty, right? In situations like this, right? I think if there's an idea that we're sending someone innocent to death, who are we to play God? Who are we to do that? Noah said there are some cases where it brings out a rage in me where I'm like, just like Matt always says, take him out back, dig out the bullet, do it again. It's that kind of thing. I think if the options were death penalty or no death penalty, I would choose no death penalty. However, I would make...
punishments for certain types of violence and murder and torture and abuse. I would make the jails for those specific crimes worse. And or directly reflecting what they did. I wouldn't want them to have a PSP in jail, three hot meals a day. I think there should be some element of punishment that would be adequate. What are your thoughts? Jules?
You're going to have to give me a moment to catch up with the conversation. I started to text you guys that I was about to pee my pants, and I didn't send it. And then I passed from now. All right. I missed that. I have a screen up. The question is, how do you feel? Are you yay, nay, or somewhere between case by case? Lisa and Noah, 95% nay, as Noah said. And Lisa says, yes, I agree with that. I would say no, if there was a yes or no situation. They both agree that there are some cases where it could be.
I'm hoping everyone's following the play-by-play of the yes and noes. Yays and nays. I would say I probably fall in a similar fashion. Overall, my gut is anti. There's some people that are just evil. I would say you have to evaluate. There has to be checks and balances. It's not just willy-nilly giving people death. I think I walked back into the room and Lisa was saying, we can't be playing for that. That's not our job, our role. We're not qualified for that. I would say I'm also a 95 nay.
Now that's going to come in 100%. Yes. All right, Matt. Yes. I'm very proud to believe it's something that we don't enforce. There are people who are living in jail right now that are orchestrating murders, that run a criminal organization, sell or move or manipulate billions of dollars worth of currency people. The gang culture in prison is happened with just, they live their own way. They have their own life.
anything conducive to this civilized society. I think there are people who, ultimately, for what they've done, deserve to die. I believe that. I'm a firm believer that if you do enough wrong, you don't get to be here anymore. You don't get to stick around. You still have influence and become some of acolytes, people who look up to you. The fact that Charles Manson spent all that time in prison, being interviewed, becoming famous, giving people fucking life advice, to me is insane. And then part of me also goes, should we be studying these people? Should we be giving some greetings to...
philosophy to learning, to giving a little bit more insight on, like, how the criminal mind works. Edmund Kemper. Edmund Kemper. Part of me thinks that, yes, but that can all be done during the time. Now, that's not to say, oh, yeah, this fucker's guilty. Boom, shoot him in the courtroom. Go through the real, hey. Imagine if that's the way it works, Matt. In the courtroom. Yeah, wait a minute. Not guilty of the big thing. Yeah, like, damn it, man. It's actually, it's the judge himself just pulls out the shotgun. Yeah, exactly. Fuck him. No, I really don't. I don't think that. I'll give you an example. You guys know that currently held in.
One prison in Manhattan. are like El Chapo, Diddy, Sam Bankman freed. That's where Epstein was held and was killed. There's four other big high-profile people that are all being held in the same place. What do you think they talk about over lunch if they get to sit together? What do you think they're doing? You think they're talking about if the Giants are going to draft somebody for somebody to be able to throw the ball from Sam Dart or Jackson Dart? Or at least there's a fucking squirrel note. I saw that. Or a bear. I don't know what that is. They're talking about crime, dude. They're talking about how best to get around their crimes. Who's your attorney? Type shit. I'm looking at this going, why are we allowing these people any opportunity to be better at...
being criminals. That's what the fuck they do. That's what they're choosing to do. Why are we giving them the opportunity to grow from that? The Mexican Mafia is a massively, massively influential Mexican gang that is a prison gang. They are believed to direct people across multiple nationalities, across multiple countries, multiple gangs, and give them orders, basically, and be there. This is who we pay to. This is who we look up to. These are the big head poncho guys.
They're just living in prison. They're allowed to because they're allowed to visit their attorneys. Their attorneys can talk to them. Their attorneys can convey messages out to the streets to whoever they want. Even though they are held in a supermax facility in ADX Florence, Colorado, with literally no access to daylight other than for one hour a day, but they get to talk to their attorneys and those attorneys can then turn around and give people information based on what they call them. Why is that motherfucker alive? Why are we letting them dictate whatever they want from there? We know they're guilty of multiple felonies, multiple murders. They're guilty of committing murders right now that are probably happening on the streets. We don't need that person alive. This is what I believe in.
Now, I'm totally open to the idea that I'm not trying to play God. I don't believe that I have the right to take life because I think that. I think that after you're convicted and after multiple appeals, multiple having gone through all of the hoops and bounds that we do in our legal system, if you're still found to be guilty of multiple grade A high-level felonies, take that fucker out, backfire, bullet into his brain, dig the bullet out, clean it off, and let it in the gun for the next motherfucker that needs a bullet to the head. That is all. Tell us how you really feel, Matt. I won't. I was trying to be...
Politically delicate. Politically delicate is a wild way to phrase that. I have to go. I have to run down the hill to a bank to a closing. I'm going to answer it first because I do have to go. I have to get ready to go, Lisa. Last question. Aye for an eye. Marcellus Williams. Thank you, Lisa. Did Marcellus Williams get a fair trial? Did he deserve to die? Was eye for an eye man? No. The wrong eyes were stabbed with a sigh. Wow. No. No. Across the board, too. No.
No. Do you think, Matt, before you jump in, do you think there was a different sentence that would have been appropriate? Do you think he should have been in? Do you think there was enough to say he was innocent? Or do you think it was across the board like, yeah, maybe keep him in jail while we figure some minor details out? I'd say based on the evidence that I've read and I'm reading a lot of it from the innocent. I'd like to see everything that the jury saw to really know. I would have said he wasn't guilty. I'm looking at this based on these motherfuckers. That's what we got. These two fucking people that are in jail currently. Not really upstanding citizens themselves. That's all the best. These guys.
I'm going to say not guilty. I'm going to look at them and be like, them look like it looks like he's lying, right? He looks like he'd lie about whether the sun was out today. It feels like we're just looking at Rudy Giuliani and like another Trump goonie to be like, oh, is there extortion here? Oh, that could have be us. What are you talking about? Oh, obviously he looks like a killer. Yeah, go get him. Look around. There's no extortion in the room. Can you see any? Point it up. I don't see anything. I don't see a liar. That's, I'm just not looking at a mirror. My mirror is smudged. Jules, what are your thoughts? What was, on what? Eye for an eye?
Oh, I said no, I do not think it was Matt. I don't think there was really enough to hold him. I think he was being held this whole time, correct? Correct, yeah. So sure, maybe keep him in that scenario until we've exhausted all other options and searched. This is where I get, this is where I feel like we need to bring in the don't fuck with cats people. Let them, you know, go on their theories and fact-track them.
If you don't have time to do this, let somebody else, you know, who has lots of time. There's plenty of them out there. It's also, I think it's worth noting for them. It was like this man spent like, even at the beginning part of it, he spent a decade in jail, let alone everything got pushed off. And then he ended up going over two decades in jail. If we're talking about, okay, if you don't fully believe he's innocent, but we have no evidence to land him on it. Guess what? This man has already served some time. He's already had time served. Yeah. Like that completely would count as time served for a crime that if they feel like he did, he'd still paid time to it. But then the.
If there's no evidence, then we can't hold them. That's truly, like, why we all initially believed what this country was founded, but every principle seems to be constantly disproven. Yeah. No. So no. Also, I feel like if someone is true to the core, will commit crimes and atrocities, and you let them out, there will be another. Just be patient. More crime will be committed. You will find your way. If they don't, congratulations. You made a righteous man. It would have and could have been a good thing had they found out, hey, we actually found some good news.
We found good news. We actually found that we didn't have to kill someone. Isn't this great? This was a positive thing for the United States government and our judicial system. We don't have to kill a guy, guys. Great. Awesome. I'm more than in favor of it. If we don't have enough evidence, we shouldn't be killing people. That's not to say that we don't need the death penalty, but if there's any possibility of any evidence not being substantiated, this guy definitely did it. We shouldn't even be talking about the death penalty.
I agree. Good case, everyone. This is a really sad one, if we're being honest. I know we tried to break some levity to it, but it shows just the flaws in this justice system that we uphold so dearly in this country. That we die for in the streets. Everybody, you know what the drill. Rate, review, subscribe, hit the Patreon page, hit the merch. We have a lot of content. We probably should release it. We're working on it. We're working on it. I do think maybe every March we could start releasing. What about February 1st? That's a little too close. That is next week. How about Super Bowl Sunday?
When's that? Oh, two weeks. Two weeks? That's not much harder. That's not. Why don't we pick a day in February and we start pumping out some, guess what? We're coming back. We're doing it this day. Yes. You can cut all this from the recording, but y'all know we love y'all. We have a lot of content. We're going to be releasing. Yeah, brother, y'all. He was going to get it. Big Wookie. One sex or Zoom on sex, whatever the fuck Lisa said. I think we're going to rock out and sign up on that. You did not deserve the bullshit that you got, sir. Bullshit. God is from above our kingdom. God is from above. Amen. See ya. Later, y'all. Everybody be safe out there. Winter vortex is killin'.
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