Dozens of people had slowly lined up in front of Missouri governor Mike Parson’s office last Tuesday, holding papers covered with thousands of signatures advocating for the halting of the execution of Khaliifah Ibn Rayford Daniel, also known as Marcellus Williams. The governor, who had previously dismantled a team dedicated to the investigation of the case, made a statement on the day Daniels was set to be executed stating, “Nothing from the real facts of this case have led me to believe in Mr. Williams’ innocence.”
There were only two items linking Daniel to the crime. The first was a laptop, which local news media stated was stolen from the scene of the crime, while local prosecutor Wesley Bell said there was evidence that Daniels had received the computer from his girlfriend. Another item was a knife, the fingerprints on which had been contaminated by members of the prosecutors’ office who handled it without gloves. Other forensic evidence found at the crime scene did not match, leaving the courts to heavily rely on testimonies from Henry Cole, Daniel’s cellmate, and Daniel’s current girlfriend, who both had felony convictions and were accused by prosecutors of seeking the $10,000 reward. There were also claims of racial bias on the jury, where Bell accused a prosecutor of improperly rejecting potential Black jurors, resulting in a jury with 11 white members and one Black member.
These claims and calls to halt the execution, even by the victim’s family, were ignored by the governor, and Khaliifah Ibn Rayford Daniel was executed by lethal injection Tuesday, Sept. 24. His last statement was, “All praise be to Allah in every situation!!!” highlighting his faith even in the face of wrongful death.
Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji’un. (To God we belong and to Him we return).
Unfortunately, Daniels was not the only victim put on death row with dubious evidence. An organization called the Innocence Project, which played a huge part in facilitating calls for Daniel, has exonerated over 250 people who received the death penalty since 1999. Claims of innocence are largely denied once a person is on death row, even though the government has a deep history of convicting innocent Black individuals with limited evidence — mostly testimonials — only to proclaim their innocence decades after their deaths. The National Registry of Exonerations conducted research on this issue and found that Black people are seven and a half times more likely to be wrongfully convicted of murder, with the risk even greater if the victim was white, and that the imprisonment lasted a longer period of time before they were exonerated.
One famous example was George Junius Stinney Jr., a 14-year-old African American child accused of murdering two young girls. Not only was he questioned without legal counsel, but his parents were not present when they received his confession. In addition to this, the racial inequality in the South prevented the possibility of a fair trial due to prevalent bias from both those overseeing the case and his own attorneys, as well as the fact that Black jurors were not allowed to be present in the courtroom. George Junius Stinney Jr. is still the youngest person to be executed by the electric chair. He was killed June 16, 1944.
Black people who were imprisoned and put on death row also have experienced more botched executions than their racial counterparts. Reprieve, a nonprofit organization that advocates against the death penalty, found that half of botched lethal injection executions were of Black people, though only a third of the prisoners executed were Black. This comparison is starkest in the South, in states such as Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Georgia, where three-quarters or more of botched lethal injection executions were of Black people even though they accounted only for a third or less of executions in those states.
On April 29, 2014, Clayton Lockett was supposed to be executed by lethal injection, but he died of a heart attack 40 minutes after the warden began the three-drug injection protocol. It was reported that the chemicals were not traveling through his body like they were supposed to, and an artery was hit in an attempt to inject him. Witnesses said he began to nod, mumble, and writhe on the gurney, and some described his movements as a seizure. Medical intervention was not given, and he died at 7:06 p.m. This was cruel and unusual punishment — downright unconstitutional.
Not all famous cases lead to African Americans being put on death row, but most involve heavy corruption from the criminal justice system and heavy racial bias. One example was the Central Park Five, where five boys aged 14–16 were threatened by detectives until exhaustion, wrongfully convicted, and forced to serve between six and 13 years in prison before their convictions were overturned in 2002. The longest sentence was given to the oldest, Korey Wise, who was tried as an adult. He has since founded the Korey Wise Innocence Project to fight for those wrongly convicted.
The criminal justice system needs total reform, starting from defunding police to preventing corruption in the courtroom. With what seems like yearly protests and growing movements, it is becoming increasingly clear that the institutions that are supposed to rehabilitate and protect the community not only feed off of the marginalization of people of color, but also profit off of it. At a certain point, it just starts to become a question of how many people need to be traumatized or killed for those in power to start listening to citizens calling for change.