Speaker 1: You're listening to a Mumma Mia podcast. Mamma Mea acknowledges
Speaker 1: the traditional owners of land and waders. This podcast was
Speaker 1: recorded on It's a Tuesday evening on the twenty fourth
Speaker 1: of September twenty twenty four in the American state of Missouri,
Speaker 1: and Marcellus Williams is preparing to die. He's been sentenced
Speaker 1: to death by lethal injection for the stubbing murder of
Speaker 1: Felicia Gale, a local reporter who was found dead in
Speaker 1: her home in nineteen ninety eight. Williams has been on
Speaker 1: death row since two thousand and one, but doubt has
Speaker 1: been cast over his guilt, a lot of doubt. The
Speaker 1: fifty five year old's lawyers, the victim's family, the prosecution,
Speaker 1: and the jurors who convicted him have all admitted he
Speaker 1: may not be guilty, but those in charge aren't listening.
Speaker 1: The governor has denied appeals, the Supreme Court hasn't intervened,
Speaker 1: and so here we are. Williams has consumed his final
Speaker 1: meal of choice, chicken wings and tater tots, and said
Speaker 1: his final words, all Praise be to Allah. In every situation.
Speaker 1: He is pronounced dead at exactly six ' ten PM.
Speaker 1: But what does the evidence show? Should Williams have been spared?
Speaker 1: Did Missouri just execute an innocent man? I'm Jemma Bath
Speaker 1: and this is True Crime Conversations, a mum of Mere
Speaker 1: podcast exploring the world's most notorious crimes by speaking to
Speaker 1: the people who know the most about them. Marcellus Williams
Speaker 1: was the one hundredth person executed in Missouri since nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty nine. Officials from the Missouri Department of Corrections addressed
Speaker 1: the media after his.
Speaker 2: Death, we hope this gives finality to a case has
Speaker 2: languished for decades, revictimizing miss Gale's family over and over again.
Speaker 2: No juror nor judge has ever found Williams innocent's claim
Speaker 2: to be credible. Thus the order of execution has been
Speaker 2: carried out.
Speaker 1: What this press conference fails to address is the mounting
Speaker 1: evidence that suggested that Williams case wasn't as water tight
Speaker 1: as this statement by Governor Mike Parson made it sound.
Speaker 1: Even if Williams was guilty, what those fighting to save
Speaker 1: his life insisted was there was reasonable doubt in this
Speaker 1: conviction that alone should have saved his life. Three months
Speaker 1: before his execution, host and creator of the true crime
Speaker 1: podcast One Minute Remaining, Jack Lawrence spoke to Williams on
Speaker 1: the phone from prison.
Speaker 3: There's obviously people in the community who would you listen
Speaker 3: to your story and people would turn around and say, oh, well,
Speaker 3: you know, this guy was a career criminal, he was
Speaker 3: out of prison. You know, why should we trust what
Speaker 3: he says?
Speaker 4: Well, marvais Mons would be you know, if you believe
Speaker 4: in democracy, and you believe in the justice system that's
Speaker 4: set up in this country, then you understand that the
Speaker 4: rule of law is supposed to governing in regardless of
Speaker 4: whatever I was going through. Those choices that I made
Speaker 4: in those other cases have absolutely nothing to do with
Speaker 4: this case.
Speaker 1: Here.
Speaker 4: Everything is supposed to be just in the light in
Speaker 4: which they come and being presented to people.
Speaker 1: After speaking to Williams and getting to know him, Jack
Speaker 1: also joins the fight to save his life. Jack joins us, Now, Jack,
Speaker 1: how did you find yourself chatting to Marcellus Williams from
Speaker 1: prison mere months before his execution?
Speaker 3: So I spotted I was on LinkedIn as you are
Speaker 3: sort of scrolling through. I follow the Innocence Project on LinkedIn.
Speaker 3: Obviously because of the sort of work I now do,
Speaker 3: and they put up a post about Marcellus Williams and
Speaker 3: the fact that you know, it's a bit of a
Speaker 3: call to action to try and help him, because, for
Speaker 3: those who don't know, the Innocence Project in the United
Speaker 3: States works with people that they believe who have been
Speaker 3: wrongfully convicted, and they work to try and help them
Speaker 3: become exonerated. And he was one of their clients, and
Speaker 3: they put a post up about him, and I sort
Speaker 3: of did a bit of looking into his story, and
Speaker 3: then I reached out to him, as I do with
Speaker 3: most of the men and women who I find who
Speaker 3: are incarcerated, sent him a message. I wasn't sure how
Speaker 3: it was going to go, because I've tried to talk
Speaker 3: to people on death row before, and they're under a
Speaker 3: far more stricter rules than sort of regularly people who
Speaker 3: are incarcerated. So I wasn't sure how I was going
Speaker 3: to go. But and I've never actually spoken to someone
Speaker 3: who'd been given their date like I've reached out to
Speaker 3: people who are on death row, because people spend many, many, many,
Speaker 3: many many many years on death row prior to actually
Speaker 3: be given their date.
Speaker 1: Well decades even yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean some people even die on death row of
Speaker 3: old age before they even get to the you know,
Speaker 3: the death sentence. So he was the first person that
Speaker 3: I had come across who actually been given this date.
Speaker 3: So I sent him a message and sort of introduced
Speaker 3: myself and told him what I do and I would
Speaker 3: love to talk to him, and he said, yeah, happy
Speaker 3: to sort of to you. I will give you a call.
Speaker 3: And again I wasn't sure how that worked because most
Speaker 3: of the people I speak to they use the sort
Speaker 3: of phones in the wreck room, you know, the phones
Speaker 3: in there, and they call me from there. So I
Speaker 3: knew he wouldn't be in that situation. I knew he
Speaker 3: would be in his cell, so I wasn't sure whether
Speaker 3: they'd take him out of his cell to use a phone.
Speaker 3: But anyway, long story short, he calls me. You know,
Speaker 3: I said, I'll say how we're speaking at the moment.
Speaker 3: He said it whenever someone gets given their date, as in,
Speaker 3: you know, this is your final date, this will be
Speaker 3: your execution, which was for him was for three months time.
Speaker 3: One of the so called privileges they get, I guess,
Speaker 3: is as a phone permanently in their room, which they're
Speaker 3: allowed to use to call loved ones. I suppose attorneys.
Speaker 3: So yeah, so he literally had a phone within his
Speaker 3: within his cell, and he was essentially confined to his
Speaker 3: cell and that was it. I said to him, like,
Speaker 3: you the only person on the row as they call it,
Speaker 3: at the moment. He goes, no, No, he's a guy
Speaker 3: next to me, mister house. He said, he's got his
Speaker 3: date actually for next Tuesday.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: And that was a real sobering like thing that his
Speaker 3: next door neighbor was up for his eight following Tuesday
Speaker 3: and this mister hows and gentleman was killed the following Tuesday.
Speaker 3: So yeah, so that's basically how it all came about.
Speaker 1: Well, it really would be a privilege then having that
Speaker 1: phone when you're so alone, and all of a sudden
Speaker 1: you've got this lifeline to the outside world that you
Speaker 1: can use, I'm assuming whenever you want.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I believe it was a case of using when
Speaker 3: you're over ever you're on. Because people are incarcerated, they
Speaker 3: do have access to phones, but there's obviously a time
Speaker 3: period where they have access to those phones. They're switched
Speaker 3: on and switched off. You know, they can't use them
Speaker 3: during what they call count times. Obviously they go around
Speaker 3: and make sure everybody is there and no one's decided
Speaker 3: to leave the prison a certain amount of time. Some
Speaker 3: facilities give them fifteen minutes to talk and then it
Speaker 3: just cuts them off. Some are thirty minutes, others are
Speaker 3: ten minutes and then they have to wait that alloted
Speaker 3: time again before they can use the phone again. To
Speaker 3: stop people obviously using the phones. There's other people I
Speaker 3: talked to incarcerated who can't use the phones because gangs
Speaker 3: control the phones. So the fact he had his own phone, yeah,
Speaker 3: was essentially it was a privilege, you know, But I
Speaker 3: mean that privilege came with the fact that he was
Speaker 3: going to die in three months, so you know, it's
Speaker 3: a odd privilege, shall we say?
Speaker 1: Yeah, of course, how many conversations did you have with him?
Speaker 1: And what kind of rapport did you build with this man?
Speaker 3: Actually far less of a rapport with him than most
Speaker 3: of the men and we might speak to purely because
Speaker 3: of you know, the situation he was in. We I
Speaker 3: only spoke on the phone once. I did try and
Speaker 3: get back on the phone with him again, but you know,
Speaker 3: he obviously had a bigger fish to fry than speaking
Speaker 3: to some podcast bloke in Australia. But We did have
Speaker 3: a lot of messages backward and forward ya sort of
Speaker 3: email that he had access to a tablet where he
Speaker 3: could send out email via the prison mailing system. So
Speaker 3: we had some messages backward and forward conversations. But it's
Speaker 3: I find my conversations speaker and castro are very difficult,
Speaker 3: knowing the right thing to say and what you know,
Speaker 3: you don't want to say the wrong thing. And it
Speaker 3: was even harder with a man who was in his position,
Speaker 3: because of what do you say? What do you say
Speaker 3: to a man's who's literally been told you're going to
Speaker 3: die on this date at this time. But we had,
Speaker 3: you know, we had some back and forth. I really
Speaker 3: enjoyed my conversation with him on the phone. You know.
Speaker 3: He was a very articulate man, you know, seemed like
Speaker 3: a very nice man. I mean, he was no choir boy.
Speaker 3: You know, he had an extensive record and he openly
Speaker 3: admits to that. You know, so I'm not trying to
Speaker 3: sit here go oh, you know, play the violin sort
Speaker 3: of thing. He did the wrong thing a lot of
Speaker 3: times in his past. I personally, I'm not sure about
Speaker 3: the one he was killed for. I certainly don't believe
Speaker 3: he should have been killed for it. But yeah, I
Speaker 3: enjoyed our conversation, and like I do with most of
Speaker 3: the people are I speak to are incarcerated who you know,
Speaker 3: I enjoy my conversations with these people because you know,
Speaker 3: they're deep thinkers a lot of the time, and he
Speaker 3: was a deep thinker.
Speaker 1: Well, as you've alluded to, you speak to so many
Speaker 1: men and women in prison, some of them on death row,
Speaker 1: and a lot of them telling you that they're innocent.
Speaker 1: Have you started to kind of be able to tell
Speaker 1: if they're telling the truth or if you believe that
Speaker 1: they're telling the truth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's funny should I say, because one of my
Speaker 3: recent episodes I covered this, Because you know, I do
Speaker 3: get a lot of people telling me, telling me that
Speaker 3: they're innocent, and so many people say to me, oh,
Speaker 3: you can't believe them all, And of course I don't
Speaker 3: believe all of them. I don't think I've got the
Speaker 3: answer to who is truly innocent and who is you know, guilty,
Speaker 3: Because obviously I talk to a lot of people who
Speaker 3: say they're innocent. I believe a number of them. I
Speaker 3: wholehelfly billion. I believe a number of them, But I
Speaker 3: sort of found this sort of tell with people who
Speaker 3: I think are more genuine should I say, as opposed
Speaker 3: to absolutely in this but more genuine, and that is
Speaker 3: that they their empathy because the way I see it,
Speaker 3: you know, a lot of the people I'm talking to
Speaker 3: have been committed for the crime of murder, and that
Speaker 3: to me is a very selfish act in itself. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, people who commit murder have done it as
Speaker 3: a selfish you know, it's just a selfish act. It is,
Speaker 3: whether monetary purposes, because of anger over whatever it was.
Speaker 3: It's a selfish act. And there's people who I talk
Speaker 3: to who have been convicted of that crime who say
Speaker 3: they're innocent, and it's all about them. It's them, them, them, them,
Speaker 3: I'm innocent. I will I'll prove my innocent's all, you know,
Speaker 3: I'll show them when I get out of here. Blah
Speaker 3: blah blah, you know what. And it's it's very intense.
Speaker 3: And that the people who say they're innocent, who I
Speaker 3: find more genuine they asked me about myself. You know,
Speaker 3: there's a guy called Tarek mcpool who have spoken to
Speaker 3: and this is actually in his episode I talked about
Speaker 3: this because you know, every message you would send me
Speaker 3: would ask me about my family, and you know, my
Speaker 3: father was very sick when we were talking, and he
Speaker 3: would ask me about how my father's going, and just
Speaker 3: a lot of empathy there. And when you spoke to
Speaker 3: them on the phone, very quietly spoken, very apathetic, very
Speaker 3: you know, there was empathy there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's one little tell I think I've got.
Speaker 1: Did you get any of those tells with Marcella's.
Speaker 3: Ah, he actually he did. He sent me one of
Speaker 3: his messages asking me about because again, my father was
Speaker 3: my father was sick for a long time. So I
Speaker 3: was saying, mother, I was sick. And you know, I
Speaker 3: do try and build a rapport with these men and
Speaker 3: women I speak to, and I'm very comfortable talking about
Speaker 3: my personal life with them because I'm asking them to
Speaker 3: share with me their life, so I'm you know, I
Speaker 3: share myself as well. And he did ask about my father,
Speaker 3: said my father would be in his prayers because he's
Speaker 3: a very religious man. You know, he'd he'd become a
Speaker 3: Muslim while in prison, So there was that, and he
Speaker 3: was a nice, softly spoken man. And you know, again
Speaker 3: that's not doesn't mean much, you know, because I'm sure
Speaker 3: there's serial killers out there that were softly spoken people.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I just I just got a sense of,
Speaker 3: you know, not an angry man, which you would expect
Speaker 3: someone to be, I suppose, you.
Speaker 1: Know, if they're preparing to die.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, and not in that. There's people I speak
Speaker 3: to who have been wrongful in charscer that I know,
Speaker 3: I truly believe a wrongfully incarcrot because if you look
Speaker 3: at their case and it's a no brainer and they're
Speaker 3: not as angry as they should be in my opinion,
Speaker 3: Like there's a gentleman, ever Esa Salis Junior, who actually
Speaker 3: we may have spoken about we did previously and he's
Speaker 3: been exonerated now, and he was the same, you know,
Speaker 3: just so empathetic, so calm, thoughtful, like he was looking
Speaker 3: at it, you know, in a very philosophical way and
Speaker 3: you're like, how are you doing this? Whereas there's other
Speaker 3: people are just angry and they're just like, I will
Speaker 3: prove my innocence, you know, just like wow, Okay, So yeah,
Speaker 3: I did feel that with Marcello's that sort of you know, gentle,
Speaker 3: sort of thought full, philosophical side of it.
Speaker 1: Let's go back to the start. What kind of upbringing
Speaker 1: did Marcellus have?
Speaker 3: So he grows up in Missouri, in Saint Louis. He's
Speaker 3: the third of four boys. He grew up in his
Speaker 3: grandparents home with his mother. No father figure that in
Speaker 3: his life, apart from his grandfather, who said, you know,
Speaker 3: was a hard worker and were working to take care
Speaker 3: of the family. But no real sort of solid like
Speaker 3: his father wasn't in his life. He sort of says,
Speaker 3: his childhood was happy. I mean they were poor, but
Speaker 3: he said that you know, they never went without food
Speaker 3: or anything like that. So from a young age there
Speaker 3: was you know, apart from having no father, said the
Speaker 3: family was close, tight knit family. You know, there was
Speaker 3: no from what he told me, there's no abuse or
Speaker 3: anything like that, just poverty. Really, he said it was
Speaker 3: when he got to his teens that he started going
Speaker 3: a little bit wayward, as a lot of people do.
Speaker 3: I suppose when you're a teenager and you want to
Speaker 3: se the boundaries and all that sort of stuff. And
Speaker 3: he said, you know, he started seeing people with things,
Speaker 3: you know, nice clothes and that sort of stuff and
Speaker 3: started wanting for those things, and he essentially started just
Speaker 3: going the wrong way. About obtaining those nice things, and
Speaker 3: you know that came in the form of burglaries and
Speaker 3: bits and pieces. And in fact, he found himself incarcerated
Speaker 3: for the first time in nineteen eighty eight at the
Speaker 3: age of eighteen.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, because he had about sixteen convictions prior to
Speaker 1: being arrested for the murder.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he was in and out, in and out. So
Speaker 3: he goes in in nineteen eighty eight. I believe he
Speaker 3: did about a year on that one and was out
Speaker 3: in the end of eighty nine. And that one was
Speaker 3: for So when they say, you know, sixteen charges, there's
Speaker 3: probably multiple charges because the first time he goes in
Speaker 3: there was a motor vehicle burglary charge and assault on
Speaker 3: a police officer.
Speaker 1: Which is probably wrapped up to one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah conviction. He had multiple charges in that. And
Speaker 3: then when he came out, he says, he gets he
Speaker 3: got a job, and he started actually going to a
Speaker 3: trade school. He had a partner, and then his first
Speaker 3: child came along at that stage, so he was trying
Speaker 3: to work to be better and to not go down
Speaker 3: that route. But he said, eventually the pool of the
Speaker 3: criminality just again easy money as opposed to know what
Speaker 3: he was trying to do to get ahead with his family,
Speaker 3: and he ends up basically back in prison. I think
Speaker 3: it was January of nineteen ninety So he wasn't out
Speaker 3: for very long and he was back in again, and
Speaker 3: that was for a seven year stretch. So again multitude
Speaker 3: of charge is involved in that one as well. And
Speaker 3: then he comes out of prison and then again he's
Speaker 3: not out for very long at all, and he was
Speaker 3: back into prison in nineteen ninety eight, and then they
Speaker 3: he was never released again.
Speaker 1: So the body of Felicia Gail was found stabbed in
Speaker 1: her apartment in the August of nineteen ninety eight. Firstly,
Speaker 1: what do we know about her?
Speaker 3: So newspaper reporter, was a newspaper reporter, but a social
Speaker 3: worker as well. She was married essentially, you know, a
Speaker 3: lovely person, did no wrong, you know, she was just
Speaker 3: an all round lovely person, you know, and that's I think,
Speaker 3: you know. And they lived in her and her husband
Speaker 3: lived in a reasonably affluent part of town, you know.
Speaker 3: And this is why again it caused so much uproar,
Speaker 3: because not only was this a murder, but it was
Speaker 3: quite a brutal murder. I mean, I think she was
Speaker 3: stabbed over forty times, maybe forty two times she was
Speaker 3: she was stabbed, so of course, I mean, you know,
Speaker 3: the community was just in uproar about that situation. How
Speaker 3: this lady can be just at home. You know, she
Speaker 3: was reportedly in the shower. I've got out of the
Speaker 3: shower and that's when she was brutally stabbed. I mean,
Speaker 3: forty two times is obviously horrific. Yeah, it's insanity.
Speaker 1: You're listening to true crime Conversations with me, Jemma Bass.
Speaker 1: I'm speaking with journalist Jack Lawrence about the execution of
Speaker 1: Marcellus Williams. Up next, we talk about the evidence that
Speaker 1: was left at the crime scene and how it was
Speaker 1: used to convict Williams of murder. Do we know anything
Speaker 1: about the crime scene, whether there was any evidence.
Speaker 3: Well, this is a thing, and this is why this
Speaker 3: case has been so I suppose it's caused so much
Speaker 3: attention because of the amount of evidence that was at
Speaker 3: that crime scene that didn't match Marcellus Williams. So we'll start.
Speaker 3: There was hair found, for instance, to start with, So
Speaker 3: there was hair found near Felicia at the time. I
Speaker 3: think some may have been on her and nearby her
Speaker 3: was found. I was tested did not match Marcellus Williams,
Speaker 3: nor did it match her. So the question mark became
Speaker 3: whose hair is that? There was like, apparently a plethora
Speaker 3: of fingerprints, bloody fingerprints, But apparently I've heard different stories
Speaker 3: as opposed to what was the issue with these fingerprints,
Speaker 3: But there was some that stated that basically the prints
Speaker 3: weren't of a good enough quality, any of them to
Speaker 3: actually come up with a match for anyone, let alone
Speaker 3: Marcellus Williams. And then I heard somewhere along the line
Speaker 3: that they may have even just disap here. They've been
Speaker 3: thrown out the evidence that was gathered there. Then you've
Speaker 3: got a bloody footprint that it was pointing in the
Speaker 3: direction of leaving the scene of the crime, which was
Speaker 3: again tested against Marcellus for the size. Obviously they could
Speaker 3: get a good idea of the size of the footprint,
Speaker 3: and it was too small to be Marcellus's foot. So
Speaker 3: again the question is, well, who's made that bloody footprint?
Speaker 3: You know? But the biggest one, of course is the knife.
Speaker 3: The knife that killed Felicia was left still in her view.
Speaker 3: She had the knife still in it when they found her,
Speaker 3: and that was obviously the biggest piece of evidence. But
Speaker 3: the weird thing was that was never tested for DNA
Speaker 3: or anything at the time. For some reason, that was
Speaker 3: just never tested and it wasn't until later down the
Speaker 3: track that that knife would actually be tested. And that
Speaker 3: was the biggest conjecture about this whole case, because initially
Speaker 3: it comes back that Marcellus has been excluded from that knife,
Speaker 3: like his DNA is just not on there. But then
Speaker 3: there was DNA on that and the biggest thing that
Speaker 3: came out was it belonged to one of the prosecutors
Speaker 3: in the case. And then he eventually actually had had
Speaker 3: an evidentiary hearing that was had not that long ago.
Speaker 3: He admitted to mishandling the murder weapon, handling it without
Speaker 3: gloves basically, and he wasn't the only one. Multiple people
Speaker 3: had done it. So in fact, they destroyed any chance
Speaker 3: of ever working out whether Marcellus's DNA was on that
Speaker 3: knife or not. And the prosecutor's office, you know, openly
Speaker 3: put their hands up and said, you know what, this
Speaker 3: is completely we've messed up here. This is you know,
Speaker 3: blah blah blah, and they actually spoke, They actually made
Speaker 3: a deal with Marcellus's defense team to commute his sentence
Speaker 3: from death to life in prison. Marcellus wasn't going to
Speaker 3: admit to have committed this crime, but they said, look,
Speaker 3: we will agree to commute this down to a life
Speaker 3: sentence and take away the death penalty. He agreed to
Speaker 3: that because obviously you can't fight your case if you're dead,
Speaker 3: So he agreed to that, hoping that they could continue
Speaker 3: the fight and eventually something will come out that will
Speaker 3: fully exonerating It. Was like the best of a bad situation, really,
Speaker 3: but unfortunately the Attorney General of Missouri got involved and
Speaker 3: fought that, and the High Court came back and reinstated
Speaker 3: the death penalty.
Speaker 1: I want to get to that series of events in
Speaker 1: more detail soon, but firstly, if we go back to
Speaker 1: the start, were there any other suspects that we know
Speaker 1: of apart from Marcella's.
Speaker 3: No, It's one of those situations that they didn't have
Speaker 3: any lead. There was actually a similar burglary that it
Speaker 3: had happened not that long prior to that, but they
Speaker 3: had no one for that either, you know, very similar mo,
Speaker 3: but they had no leads on anyone, and it was
Speaker 3: only until the old classics prison snitch comes along that
Speaker 3: they finally had a suspect. And this is the issue
Speaker 3: that I find in so many cases that I deal with,
Speaker 3: is that police having no leads, especially in their cases
Speaker 3: where you hear this a lot or they were under
Speaker 3: a lot of pressure to get us at this one,
Speaker 3: so they're under a lot of pressure. And when the
Speaker 3: cops are under a lot of pressure, what do they
Speaker 3: want to do? Quickly solve this case so they've got
Speaker 3: no more pressure. So if someone comes along to him
Speaker 3: and says, yeah, this is the guy who did it, okay,
Speaker 3: tell us more. They had so little to go on
Speaker 3: with this casel, so we had no one that the
Speaker 3: partner of Felicia, her husband at the time, offered up
Speaker 3: a reward ten thousand dollars for information that would lead
Speaker 3: to an arrest. And it wasn't until that reward was
Speaker 3: announced that hey, amazingly, all of a sudden, this guy
Speaker 3: has had a full confession from Marcellus Williams as to
Speaker 3: him committing this crime. And apparently it was an in
Speaker 3: prison confession. Marcellus was in prison with this guy, whom
Speaker 3: Marcellus told me was actually a distant relative of his,
Speaker 3: and he didn't realize and they ended up being incarcerated together,
Speaker 3: and literally as this guy's released, he goes straight to
Speaker 3: the place that says, oh, yeah, I know who did this.
Speaker 3: He told me about it. He admitted to it. And
Speaker 3: not only that, one of Marcellos's former partners she also
Speaker 3: basically joined forces with this guy who was in prison
Speaker 3: and said, yeah, Marcellus definitely did this. You know, she said,
Speaker 3: I saw him with this purse. Then we've got this
Speaker 3: laptop issue that we can talk about because there were
Speaker 3: items belonging to Felicia Gow that were found in Marcellus's grandfather's.
Speaker 1: Car, which is a strange link to get to. So
Speaker 1: has Marcellus admitted to anything in this case? Did he
Speaker 1: steal from Felicia?
Speaker 3: No? So, because this is the thing people come back to,
Speaker 3: is like the biggest argument is like, well, if he
Speaker 3: had nothing to do with it, how on earth has
Speaker 3: he got her stuff? And I was the same, I'm like,
Speaker 3: well yeah, I mean as soon as I heard that,
Speaker 3: I'm like, oh, okay, this isn't good because you've got stuff.
Speaker 3: In fact, he even sells the laptop that belonged to
Speaker 3: Felicia's husband to a guy for drugs or something. I think,
Speaker 3: I don't know. If it was. I think it was
Speaker 3: drugs that he was sort of swapping it for. So
Speaker 3: I'm like, well, okay, well this doesn't look good. But
Speaker 3: once you dig into that further more question marks come up.
Speaker 3: So you find out that his former partner was working
Speaker 3: as a sex worker and she was sleeping in his
Speaker 3: grandfather's vehicle using it, and she was also using that
Speaker 3: vehicle to conduct her business. And Marcellus admitted, you know
Speaker 3: that he did take this laptop to this guy. And
Speaker 3: they had actually the guy who took the laptop from
Speaker 3: Marcellus on the stand to testify, yes, Marcellus Williams did
Speaker 3: sell me this laptop. He was going to also say
Speaker 3: that what Marcellus brought the laptop and said that he
Speaker 3: got it from his girlfriend. She'd given it to him
Speaker 3: and said, here, take this and go and swap it
Speaker 3: for sell it for drugs or whatever. But the guy
Speaker 3: who got the laptop was not allowed to testify to
Speaker 3: that part of it. He was only allowed to testify
Speaker 3: to the fact that Marcellus had sold him the laptop
Speaker 3: or swapped it with him for drugs.
Speaker 1: Which sounds bizarre because isn't that an important detail that.
Speaker 3: They call is hearsay. They say it's a hearsay. So
Speaker 3: hearsay is you know him saying, well, marcell has told
Speaker 3: me that he got it from his girlfriend. That's heresay.
Speaker 3: He didn't see Marcellus get it from his girlfriend. He's
Speaker 3: got no way of knowing of Marcell's actually did get
Speaker 3: it from his girlfriend. That's just what Marcello's telling him.
Speaker 3: So the judge said, it's heresay, it's not allowed in.
Speaker 3: But for me, I agree, it's a very important factor
Speaker 3: of that case because there is a theory and I
Speaker 3: put that in. It's just a theory, but there is
Speaker 3: a theory that, you know, if it wasn't Marcellus who
Speaker 3: committed his crime, the theory is that it could have,
Speaker 3: in fact been a quote unquote client of his former
Speaker 3: partner who committed the robbery and had exchanged what he
Speaker 3: got from the robbery with her for her services. She's
Speaker 3: then gone to Marcellus and said, hey, look I've got
Speaker 3: this laptop, take that, sell it whatever. That's how he
Speaker 3: has possession of the items. Now people say, oh, that's
Speaker 3: a bit of a stretch. It's like, okay, but it's
Speaker 3: not impossible.
Speaker 1: And if we look at what Marcellus was charged over.
Speaker 1: It was those links, right, So he's actually charged with
Speaker 1: murder based on these items that were found in this car.
Speaker 3: And the testimony of the girlfriend and the or the
Speaker 3: former girlfriend and this guy from prison who stood to
Speaker 3: get ten thousand dollars for their testimony, And there was
Speaker 3: also evidence to show that his former girlfriend and the
Speaker 3: guy who in prison had multiple calls phone calls back
Speaker 3: and forth while he was in prison before he left.
Speaker 3: Why are they talking and what are they talking about?
Speaker 3: Is the question. And not only that, on top of that,
Speaker 3: you have other people from both those people's lives who've
Speaker 3: made statements. So you've got the son of the guy
Speaker 3: who said that Marcella's admitted to him. He's come forward
Speaker 3: and made a statement saying that his dad had mentioned
Speaker 3: that he was going to be coming into some money
Speaker 3: because of a caper that he was running. And then
Speaker 3: the girlfriend or the former girlfriend, some of her friends
Speaker 3: had come forward and said that she'd openly even admitted
Speaker 3: to the fact she was setting him up to get
Speaker 3: the cash. So there's a big thing that all these
Speaker 3: people are like, oh, you know, it's so funny because
Speaker 3: I've seen obviously some people who have staunched the fact
Speaker 3: that Marcella's one hundredercent guilty, you know, deserve what he got.
Speaker 3: And you know, they they come up and say, well,
Speaker 3: how has he got his stuff? And you know, how
Speaker 3: did this guy you know know details about what had happened,
Speaker 3: and said, well, there's always you know, things that I
Speaker 3: can give you to say, well this is how it
Speaker 3: could have happened, and they go, oh whatever, yeah, sure,
Speaker 3: like I mean, you know, oh yeah, that could have happened.
Speaker 3: It's like, but it could have. It really could have.
Speaker 3: So what I'm saying is what I've always said the
Speaker 3: whole way through, is like, I'm not saying that he's
Speaker 3: one hundred percent innocent. What I'm saying is there's far
Speaker 3: too many question marks around this case to make it
Speaker 3: that final where we're going to say we're going to
Speaker 3: kill someone.
Speaker 1: Especially when you know, we were just talking about hearsay.
Speaker 1: But here we are believing the testimony of two people,
Speaker 1: but we're not allowed to believe the testimony of anyone
Speaker 1: else in those people's lives.
Speaker 3: And what's amazing with that? You find as well in
Speaker 3: these cases, especially with these whole snitch cases, where there's
Speaker 3: people from prison who come up and give the cops
Speaker 3: essentially what they need for a conviction. And I've seen
Speaker 3: it happen in the past. Happened in the Everyessalist junior case.
Speaker 3: A snitch in that case was the reason that he
Speaker 3: got arrested. And eventually that snitch recandied. And then what
Speaker 3: they say is once someone recanns, they go, well, we
Speaker 3: can't trust that person. He's a criminal. It's like, well,
Speaker 3: hold on a second, and that's literally what they said.
Speaker 3: Ever reesa Salis junior case, they said, well, we can't
Speaker 3: trust him, he's a criminal. It's like the whold of
Speaker 3: a second. We were trusting him before when.
Speaker 1: You used that evidence.
Speaker 3: Yes, that was your evidence to get him convicted in
Speaker 3: the first place, but now it's not, you know what
Speaker 3: you want to hear, Oh, we can't trust that person.
Speaker 3: So you know, and this snitch thing is just it's
Speaker 3: so rife, and it still is in the US. So
Speaker 3: they stood to gain from Marcellus being found guilty again
Speaker 3: ten thousand dollars, you know. And it was funny because
Speaker 3: that guy even got more help because Marcella's when he
Speaker 3: was finally charged with this, he wanted a speedy trial
Speaker 3: and you know, you have the right in America, two
Speaker 3: way speedy trial. So he said, I want a speedy trial.
Speaker 3: And his lawyer, he said, was actually trying to talk
Speaker 3: him out of pushing for a speedy trial, and he's like,
Speaker 3: I don't understand why he was doing that, and he said,
Speaker 3: I regret. He ended up going with the atturney saying okay,
Speaker 3: all right, well we won't push for that because I
Speaker 3: think the attorney was like, you know, we need time
Speaker 3: to build a better defense. Whereas he later found out
Speaker 3: that the prosecution that had lost their key witness, the
Speaker 3: guy he just disappeared on them like they've given him
Speaker 3: some money and he'd gone off somewhere to blow the
Speaker 3: money and you know whatever he was doing with it.
Speaker 3: So they needed time to get him back because otherwise
Speaker 3: he wouldn't even back in time to give the evidence.
Speaker 1: How did the trial go, because that was in two
Speaker 1: thousand and one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so, I mean the biggest thing about the trial
Speaker 3: was I believe it was very quick. But the other
Speaker 3: issue was surrounding the jury. So you know, jury of
Speaker 3: your peers, it was not There was eleven white people
Speaker 3: and one black person. And this was another issue that
Speaker 3: was brought forward in fact by the prosecutor's office, because
Speaker 3: it was in fact the prosecutor's office that was pushing
Speaker 3: to have Marcellus's sentence downgraded, not the old prosecution, this
Speaker 3: new So there's a Wesley Bell who's the new prosecutor
Speaker 3: of Saint Louis, and he's the one that said there's
Speaker 3: issues with this case. There's a lot of issues with
Speaker 3: this case. And one of those issues they had was
Speaker 3: with this jury selection and how four African Americans were
Speaker 3: removed from that jury, and essentially they believed wrongly removed
Speaker 3: from the jury, and they believed it was a race removal.
Speaker 3: I mean, there's not much you can much else you
Speaker 3: can say that it is if you're just taking four
Speaker 3: people of the jury and they're all African Americans.
Speaker 1: And it's a case involving a person that is.
Speaker 3: Black African American exactly, and it's just like, you know,
Speaker 3: eleven to one, eleven you know, white people and one
Speaker 3: black person. When it comes time for deliberation, I mean,
Speaker 3: it's not going to take much for all those people
Speaker 3: to gang up on one person so he's guilty and
Speaker 3: then they cave unless they're the most solid human being
Speaker 3: on earth. So trial wise, that was essentially one of
Speaker 3: the the biggest issues from trial was this this jury
Speaker 3: selection and how that was handled, and one of those
Speaker 3: things that was brought up, but that was later dismissed.
Speaker 3: In an evidentiary hearing. You know, I think the procecut
Speaker 3: came forward and said, I it wasn't a race thing,
Speaker 3: and this is the reason I did it, And the
Speaker 3: judge was fine with that and said, okay, yeah, that's reasonable.
Speaker 1: So, as we know, Marcellus was given the death penalty
Speaker 1: as a result of that trial. Of his conviction. He
Speaker 1: was first scheduled for execution in twenty fifteen and then
Speaker 1: again in twenty seventeen. Why didn't they go ahead? What happened?
Speaker 3: He was lucky enough to get a stay of executed
Speaker 3: one of the times. I think the second time, he
Speaker 3: was literally I think an hour away from the chair,
Speaker 3: can you imagine, and the governor, I believe at the
Speaker 3: time stepped in. The governor of the state has the
Speaker 3: power to step in and say no. The latest governor
Speaker 3: did not step in, obviously, but this previous governor did
Speaker 3: looked at it and said, you know, I think we
Speaker 3: need to look at this more. So it's just about
Speaker 3: who's in power. At the time. Really, you know, that's
Speaker 3: all it comes down to. And what amazes me the
Speaker 3: most is that the only reason really that this ever
Speaker 3: made it back into some sort of evidentary hearing was
Speaker 3: because of the office that put him there in the
Speaker 3: first place. You know, you've got the prosecutor's office going, guys,
Speaker 3: this isn't doesn't look right. And in recent times they've
Speaker 3: in fact exonerated like three people, one of which I've
Speaker 3: spoken to while he was still in prison. Christopher had
Speaker 3: done and it's all off the back of this prosecutor
Speaker 3: who's brilliant, Wesley Bell. You know, he's doing what a
Speaker 3: lot of prosecutors don't do and actually looking at these
Speaker 3: cases properly and saying, no, there is an issue here,
Speaker 3: and he's going in fighting for these people. And the
Speaker 3: thing is he's coming forward and saying, you know, this
Speaker 3: is wrong. I think this needs to be overturned. And
Speaker 3: half the time he's the only option that they've got
Speaker 3: because if they've exhausted all their appeals, they've got nothing left,
Speaker 3: and the prosecutor has the power to say no, this
Speaker 3: needs to go back in front of a judge to
Speaker 3: be looked at. And then he did it again. He
Speaker 3: did it. This time he said this needs to go
Speaker 3: back to court to be looked at. I mean he
Speaker 3: initially recommended that the Marcellus speaks on or it completely.
Speaker 3: And then when the DNA came back, and then they
Speaker 3: couldn't actually fully exclude Marcellus because it just you know,
Speaker 3: they've mishandled it and there was just no way of
Speaker 3: even telling if his DNA was on there at all.
Speaker 3: That's when he said, well, look, this is what we
Speaker 3: agree to. Even Felicia's family agreed to that. They signed
Speaker 3: off on that. They said, yeah, they not want the
Speaker 3: death penalty. They even said to because it was it's
Speaker 3: only the Attorney General wanted this death penalty to go ahead.
Speaker 3: He fights tooth and nail for anyone. That's I mean
Speaker 3: Christopher Dunn who got exonerated. You know here they judge
Speaker 3: literally brought the hammer down and said release that man immediately.
Speaker 3: And then then the Attorney General rings the prison and says,
Speaker 3: do not let him out.
Speaker 1: Why why is he so steadfast on putting people to death?
Speaker 3: I mean, honestly, you know, I've looked at this. He's
Speaker 3: done it time and time and time and time and
Speaker 3: time again. Every single person who the prosecutor's office have
Speaker 3: come forward and said that, you know, this is a
Speaker 3: wrongful conviction. He is there to fight it. He's in
Speaker 3: fact in court. His team is fighting the prosecutor's office.
Speaker 1: Which is wild because, like we should point out again,
Speaker 1: the prosecution are the people that put you in prison.
Speaker 1: And it's the prosecution coming out and saying, uh, oh,
Speaker 1: we made a mistake like that's wild.
Speaker 3: Isn't it. It's crazy. That's what blows. And I say
Speaker 3: this all the time, like I do not understand it
Speaker 3: when when your office, who is in charge of putting
Speaker 3: people behind bars, is coming out and saying this is wrong,
Speaker 3: you're still fighting it and you're going no, and they're
Speaker 3: in court. Literally, you've got the Attorney General's office in
Speaker 3: court saying that person is guilty. You've got the prosecutor
Speaker 3: standing there going that man is innocent.
Speaker 1: On the opposite side.
Speaker 3: Yes, it's not even the defenses team. You know they're
Speaker 3: in there as well fighting. But it just blows my mind.
Speaker 3: You know, if anyone wants to see it, Like Christopher
Speaker 3: Unne is a perfect case to look at. There's another
Speaker 3: case was Missouri and you just look at the prosecutors
Speaker 3: up there fighting back and forth with the attorney generals.
Speaker 3: They're supposed to be on the same side. They are
Speaker 3: on the same side. They put bad people in prison.
Speaker 1: So in Marcellus's case, we've got the prosecution saying he
Speaker 1: shouldn't be put to death. We've got the victim's family
Speaker 1: saying that as well. And I believe the jewelry.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, everybody except the Attorney general.
Speaker 1: For many years too, no one wanted the penalty because
Speaker 1: it looks like, as far as I can see, this
Speaker 1: kind of wheels in motion with the Board of Inquiry,
Speaker 1: and everything kind of happened after the second stay of execution,
Speaker 1: so after twenty seventeen, So this has been a fight.
Speaker 1: They've been fighting for many years.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But the other thing is that one of the governors
Speaker 3: put together's board of inquiry, but no results were ever
Speaker 3: released for it.
Speaker 1: Why was that?
Speaker 3: No one knows, No one knows, no results. They put
Speaker 3: together this whole team that's supposed to look into this case,
Speaker 3: and all of a sudden they just went, nah, I
Speaker 3: just closed the case, and just like, no results were
Speaker 3: ever released. Nothing, just nothing.
Speaker 1: But they did have an evidentiary hearing quite recently and
Speaker 1: a lot of that damning kind of evidence that you
Speaker 1: mentioned about the knife and the mishandling and the jury,
Speaker 1: about the black African American jurors being discarded from the jury,
Speaker 1: all of that kind of stuff was revisited, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, but again, the judge didn't see an
Speaker 3: issue with the jury situation. You know, someone got up
Speaker 3: and explained reasoning behind I can't remember that. There was
Speaker 3: some bizarre reason behind post offices or something. It was
Speaker 3: very odd. I didn't really understand it. But essentially the
Speaker 3: judge was fine with that, and that was struck off.
Speaker 1: What about the knife?
Speaker 3: The knife again, But that's the thing. It's like, hold on,
Speaker 3: you guys have messed up. Okay, So whether his DNA
Speaker 3: is on that knife or not, we won't. We will
Speaker 3: never know because you messed up. That's on you, okay.
Speaker 3: So and the other thing is like, no one's saying
Speaker 3: let this man leave and skip off into the sunset.
Speaker 3: We're just saying, hey, let's just not kill him, just
Speaker 3: in case, because if five, ten, fifteen, twenty years down
Speaker 3: the track, it comes some more evidence comes out to
Speaker 3: show oh, actually no, he's innocent. If he's dead, well,
Speaker 3: I guarantee if some official will come out and go, yeah,
Speaker 3: we really regret that, and we do apologize, and that
Speaker 3: would be it and we'll move on with our lives,
Speaker 3: you know. But if he was still alive, we can write.
Speaker 3: You know, he's been in president obviously for that many years,
Speaker 3: so that's terrible, but at least he can finally get out.
Speaker 3: But obviously we're in this situation now where that's not possible.
Speaker 3: And this is my biggest frustration. I don't understand. The
Speaker 3: law in America is very confusing.
Speaker 1: And in this instance, we're talking about an attorney general
Speaker 1: that basically was like, no death penalty stands. But what
Speaker 1: about the Supreme Court? What about the people higher up?
Speaker 1: Couldn't they intervene?
Speaker 3: Well they can, but they didn't. It's it's like the
Speaker 3: governor again, he could have intervened, he could have stopped
Speaker 3: the whole thing, but he chose not to. There was
Speaker 3: over a million signatures for people not wanting this to happen.
Speaker 3: I mean, Marcellus Williams had more support than I've seen
Speaker 3: since I've been doing this. I mean, I've been doing
Speaker 3: this that long, but I mean, he had an amazing,
Speaker 3: insane amount of support from around the world and millions
Speaker 3: of signatures. There was even news footage of people lined
Speaker 3: up outside the office of you know, the governor with signatures,
Speaker 3: like piles and piles of signatures, bringing them in, bringing
Speaker 3: them in, bringing them in. But you know, the biggest
Speaker 3: issue I think with this situation is that these people
Speaker 3: in power, like you return General Andrew Bailey, who loves
Speaker 3: a death penalty and putting people in prison, like the judges,
Speaker 3: like you know, your governor's prosecutors, we'll not prosecuting in
Speaker 3: this case. He's brilliant. But most prosecutors, they are elected positions,
Speaker 3: so they're elected by the people, which is bizarre. It
Speaker 3: is bizarre because they're politicians. They're not. And at the
Speaker 3: end of the day, as I always say, you know,
Speaker 3: their biggest catch cry is tough on crime, because we
Speaker 3: all want our streets to be safe. You know, we
Speaker 3: all want to be able to walk down the street
Speaker 3: at night and not have to worry about, you know,
Speaker 3: being murdered. So when someone comes out and says, you know, oh,
Speaker 3: we've put away x amount of bad people, look how
Speaker 3: good we are, the public go, oh yeah, fantastic. And
Speaker 3: there's been research done around election time and the rates
Speaker 3: of incarceration go up, you know, incarceration rates and lengths
Speaker 3: of sentences go up. Judges are far harsher on their
Speaker 3: sentencing because again they're elected officials and come election time,
Speaker 3: they want to yell, look at me, look at my numbers.
Speaker 3: Look how many bad people I'm putting way in prison.
Speaker 3: I think it went really wrong for Marcellus when it
Speaker 3: came to wanting, you know, someone like the governor to
Speaker 3: get involved. Was I think there was too much support
Speaker 3: for him, and that sounds weird, But what I mean
Speaker 3: by that is that it got to a point where
Speaker 3: I think the governor, one it didn't want to be,
Speaker 3: did want to show that he might bend to public
Speaker 3: pressure and that he was staunch and that he's like, no,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna you know this. I believe this man is
Speaker 3: guilty and we will continue on. But I go back
Speaker 3: to the fact the family did not want this. So
Speaker 3: this is supposed to be.
Speaker 1: For the victims, justice for the victims.
Speaker 3: Justice for victims. But if the victims don't want this,
Speaker 3: then what are we doing it for. They actually, I
Speaker 3: think they wrote a letter to police saying, please do
Speaker 3: not kill this man in our name. We don't want
Speaker 3: that but they did it anyway, and in the statement,
Speaker 3: the governor said, I hope this, you know, can can
Speaker 3: put the line under the sand and now the victims
Speaker 3: family can move on.
Speaker 1: So I don't usually get this riled up on an
Speaker 1: episode of trick Time Conversations.
Speaker 3: But mate, this is my life. It's so frustrating.
Speaker 1: Like you say, we're not saying free the guy. But
Speaker 1: it's so hard to look at this case when you're like,
Speaker 1: there's supposed to be no reasonable doubt, and it is
Speaker 1: very obvious to me and to you in this case
Speaker 1: there is reasonable doubt.
Speaker 3: There just is, absolutely there is. And that's the thing
Speaker 3: I like, you know, I found myself stupidly and I
Speaker 3: shouldn't but arguing with people online because I'm just like
Speaker 3: going because everyone's like, ah, you know, it's like he
Speaker 3: made his beddy lie. You know, it's like, but hold
Speaker 3: on a second. Again, we're not saying let him skip
Speaker 3: off into the sunset and have a wonderful life. We're saying, hey,
Speaker 3: let's just not kill him. This is why I don't
Speaker 3: understand why. You know, as we said, there is reasonable doubt,
Speaker 3: whether you believe you know, whether you say, oh that
Speaker 3: would never happen. But it could have, and that is
Speaker 3: what we call reasonable doubt. It could have happened. You know,
Speaker 3: it's not so far fetched that that laptop could have
Speaker 3: been given to Marcellus's former partner as a form of
Speaker 3: payment for the work she was doing, because we know
Speaker 3: for a fact she was living in car. We know
Speaker 3: for a fact she was working out of his car.
Speaker 3: We know for a fact because the guy who took
Speaker 3: the laptop from Marcellus said, you know, and you could say, well,
Speaker 3: he could be wrong, or you know, Marcellus could have
Speaker 3: been lying yes, but he may not have been as well.
Speaker 3: She gave him that laptop and said, exchange it for drugs.
Speaker 3: I don't know. It just blows my mind that they're
Speaker 3: so willing to just draw a line under the sand
Speaker 3: and make it that final when there is still reasonable doubt.
Speaker 1: Something else that isn't in Marcellus's corner. I've read kind
Speaker 1: of two sides of the coin when it comes to
Speaker 1: the kind of prisoner he was over his many years
Speaker 1: in prison. On the one hand, you hear all of
Speaker 1: this information about him, you know, leading prayer and converting
Speaker 1: to Islam and being this softly spoken man. But on
Speaker 1: the other hand, he's also been disciplined over a hundred
Speaker 1: times while in prison, verbal and physical ultra ration with
Speaker 1: inmates and guards, and so I can see how the
Speaker 1: public would get an idea in their head. But once again,
Speaker 1: that doesn't make him a murderer.
Speaker 3: No, necessarily, absolutely not. So there's a lot of people
Speaker 3: I speak to who you know, prison is a dangerous
Speaker 3: place to be, you know. Again, going back to Everiso
Speaker 3: Salis Junior, I mean he joined a prison gang. He
Speaker 3: joined a Hispanic prison gang when he went to prison.
Speaker 3: He definitely didn't kill anyone. He's been exonerated, but he
Speaker 3: did what he had to do to survive in those places.
Speaker 3: You know, they are not nice places to live. You know,
Speaker 3: as I said that at the very start of this,
Speaker 3: some of the people I speak to can very rarely
Speaker 3: get a phone because it's controlled by gangs. And if
Speaker 3: you don't fight, you become a victim because they are
Speaker 3: just ruthless places to be. So the fact that Marcellus
Speaker 3: had this, I mean against officers, that's not of course,
Speaker 3: that's not. But then again, the officers in this places
Speaker 3: sometimes aren't very nice human beings z either, you know,
Speaker 3: So you know, when you hear this person had infractions
Speaker 3: in prison for fighting and that sort of stuff. To me,
Speaker 3: it's like, you do what you've got to do in
Speaker 3: those places, you know. I've spoken so many people who
Speaker 3: were just normal people when they went into prison, and
Speaker 3: then they went into prison, and they completely changed because
Speaker 3: the environment that they're placed into, and you can very
Speaker 3: quickly become a target for extortion, you know, sexual abuse,
Speaker 3: all those sorts of things. You know. I speaking to
Speaker 3: a guy at the moment who has been in prison
Speaker 3: since nineteen eighty five, and we've spoken about, you know that,
Speaker 3: how do you stay out of trouble? He said, We've
Speaker 3: got to stand up for yourself. You've got to show
Speaker 3: that you will not be pushed around otherwise it ain't
Speaker 3: a nice time for you.
Speaker 1: How does the process of execution go in that state.
Speaker 1: We've talked about the fact that he had a freedom
Speaker 1: of a phone. What else was he given in the
Speaker 1: months and days and what do those final days and
Speaker 1: hours look like.
Speaker 3: I've actually recently had a man explain this to me.
Speaker 3: It was quite sobering. Again, he's been in prison since
Speaker 3: ninety eighty five. He was originally on death row. In fact,
Speaker 3: he was on the death row with Ted Bundy. Oh wow,
Speaker 3: and saw Ted Bundy being taken to the chair. It
Speaker 3: was an electric chair back in those days, but now
Speaker 3: it's slightly more humane. But once you've given you a date,
Speaker 3: you are moved from In Missouri, actually if you're on
Speaker 3: death row, you're not on what they call the row.
Speaker 3: You're actually in general population, which is unusual generally for
Speaker 3: people who are put on death row. They are placed
Speaker 3: on what they called the row, and they have less
Speaker 3: time outside of their cells, and any movement they make
Speaker 3: is completely shackled, you know, two guards, arms, feet, everything
Speaker 3: shackled wherever you go and all the rest of it.
Speaker 3: So in the once you've given your date, you are
Speaker 3: then moved to this other section of the prison where
Speaker 3: everything you need is in your cell. You have a shower, toilet,
Speaker 3: you know, you've got TV, bed, everything basically is done
Speaker 3: within the cell because essentially they want to keep an
Speaker 3: eye on you. And this gentleman Tommy, actually in the
Speaker 3: sort of last week I think is the last full
Speaker 3: week before you're executed, you in fact have someone a
Speaker 3: guard sit outside yourself, so you have literally no privacy whatsoever.
Speaker 3: You're in a cell that's fully just bars, snow doors
Speaker 3: or anything like that. And the reason for the guard
Speaker 3: sitting there is to make sure that you don't kill yourself.
Speaker 3: How ridiculous is that. They don't want you to kill yourself.
Speaker 1: They want to do it.
Speaker 3: They want to make sure they're doing it, So they
Speaker 3: sit and watch you for a week, and then what
Speaker 3: they call a white hat comes to get you, or
Speaker 3: what this gentleman to I mean this he's talking about Florida,
Speaker 3: but you know, so Missouri might be slightly different. But
Speaker 3: he taught me through the process of Florida. He said,
Speaker 3: a white hat comes to get you, which is a captain.
Speaker 3: He said that they attach you to what they affectually
Speaker 3: call a dog pole. It's apparently a long pole, and
Speaker 3: they've got a couple of them, because obviously they're walking
Speaker 3: you to your death. So you may decide that, well,
Speaker 3: I've got nothing left to lose, I may as well see,
Speaker 3: you know how many officers I can take out on
Speaker 3: the way. And he said, with these poles, they've they're
Speaker 3: set up so that if you do try and resist,
Speaker 3: they basically twist them and it sort of cuts through
Speaker 3: your wrists and stuff. So it's very brutal and you're
Speaker 3: led to the chamber, and in Missouri, I've seen a
Speaker 3: photo of the room that they're in. It's very clinical,
Speaker 3: very stale sort of looking room with a bed with
Speaker 3: straps on it, and you're placed obviously onto the bed
Speaker 3: you're strapped in. There's a phone on the wall, and
Speaker 3: that phone is for the I think it's for It's
Speaker 3: either for the attorney general or for the governor, but
Speaker 3: essentially that's the phone call that either says yep, all
Speaker 3: good or no, where we're taking back sort of thing.
Speaker 3: Phone rings yep, go ahead with it, and you're asked
Speaker 3: any final words, and in the state of Missouri has
Speaker 3: said that it's an injection, two injections. I believe Marcellus
Speaker 3: would have had a white sheet pulled over him up
Speaker 3: to his neck so and his face is showing and yeah,
Speaker 3: that's it, basically says his last words. And you have
Speaker 3: the gallery obviously watching on his son, watching on his
Speaker 3: son said he was always going to be there with him.
Speaker 1: You kind of joined the fight to try and get
Speaker 1: him off death row. Towards the end there you were
Speaker 1: kind of calling out to your listeners as well. How
Speaker 1: did you feel when that death date did actually come.
Speaker 3: It was very weird. Like, as I said, I haven't
Speaker 3: I didn't build the sort of relationship with him that
Speaker 3: I have with a number of other people I've spoken to.
Speaker 3: You know, some people I've speaking with for nearly three years.
Speaker 3: We speak quite regularly, so I've got quite a strong
Speaker 3: relationship with a number of people are incarcerated. But for him,
Speaker 3: it was a much shorter period of time, and I
Speaker 3: did feel strongly about not wanting him to be killed.
Speaker 3: So I was rallying people to try and sign the
Speaker 3: petitions and stuff like that, and then I was sitting
Speaker 3: watching there as a visual happening outside the present where
Speaker 3: it was being taken place, and I was watching that,
Speaker 3: and everyone's sort of obviously hoping for that last stay.
Speaker 3: You sit there waiting and waiting and waiting, and then
Speaker 3: eventually someone says, you know, oh, the witnesses are now
Speaker 3: coming out, which means it's happened. And then the statement
Speaker 3: gets put out that it's you know, it happened. It's
Speaker 3: very weird, very weird. Especially I put together a little
Speaker 3: little thing, a little package from him and I his interview,
Speaker 3: and that was weird listening to the conversation knowing that
Speaker 3: he was no longer around, and he passed just literally
Speaker 3: an hour prior. And you know, this is a little
Speaker 3: bit at the end of our chat, is you know,
Speaker 3: he said, I said, then, I thanks so much. Indeed,
Speaker 3: was really lovely to chat with you, and we'll speak soon.
Speaker 3: And he just said, God willing, lovely to talk to
Speaker 3: you too. Nice meeting you, meeting you, of meeting you too, sir,
Speaker 3: and I will talk to you very soon.
Speaker 4: All right, we'll take her bye bye.
Speaker 3: And yeah, it was just weird, you know. I mean,
Speaker 3: I'm not going to sit here and say I was
Speaker 3: balling my eyes out because I didn't know the man,
Speaker 3: you know, but I did feel I felt a little
Speaker 3: bit guilty. I suppose in a way, you know, I
Speaker 3: feel guilty about talking to it, you know, with a
Speaker 3: lot of the stories I talk about, because I feel
Speaker 3: like I don't want to you know, I'm talking to
Speaker 3: these people and I always say to them, look, I
Speaker 3: don't want to give you any false hope that being
Speaker 3: on here is going to do anything to help the situation,
Speaker 3: you know. So I suppose there was a little bit
Speaker 3: of guilt that nothing I did really helped him at all. So, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's a weird one very weird Did he.
Speaker 1: Tell you how he felt about death?
Speaker 3: Well, his religion basically was because I said to him,
Speaker 3: I said, you know, obviously we've talked about his stays
Speaker 3: and how he had multiple stays, and I said, that's
Speaker 3: got to really mess with him mentally. You know, you've
Speaker 3: had multiple stays of execution, and now you've got this
Speaker 3: other one coming up. And you know, we all know
Speaker 3: that we're going to die, but the other thing is
Speaker 3: we don't know when whereas this is. You know, you've
Speaker 3: got this date, this is when you're going to die,
Speaker 3: at the time you're going to die. So that must
Speaker 3: really strung you. Must you know mentally, it must be hard.
Speaker 3: And he's like, well, yeah, like as I'm you know,
Speaker 3: I'm normal like everybody else. I have anxieties and things
Speaker 3: like that, but I've put my faith in in my faith,
Speaker 3: and you know, if this is what's to happen, then
Speaker 3: this is what's to happen. So you know, and you'll
Speaker 3: find there's a lot you know, there's there's a big
Speaker 3: sort of running joke about people who become religious in prison.
Speaker 3: You know, everyone sort of laughs or so says, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: we go another one who's converted. But when you're at
Speaker 3: your darkest moment, you know you need something, You need
Speaker 3: some especially for people who have been wrongfully convicted. You
Speaker 3: need there needs to be really you need to feel
Speaker 3: like there's a reason why.
Speaker 1: There's obviously been a lot of outrage. This has been
Speaker 1: getting a lot of media headlines, probably not as many
Speaker 1: as you would expect down under.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I mean you've got one article in news
Speaker 3: dot com. I think once once he'd been killed, but
Speaker 3: even in the own country. But that's how fickle our
Speaker 3: news cycle is, though, isn't it. Because I mean it
Speaker 3: was huge for a couple of days, and then we
Speaker 3: move on something else, is you know, Donald Trump said
Speaker 3: something stupid or you know, and we move on. Someone
Speaker 3: actually asked me that day I did it, was doing
Speaker 3: a Q and A on my show, and they said,
Speaker 3: do you know if anyone's going after the state or
Speaker 3: anyone for going ahead with the execution? And I said,
Speaker 3: I thought about this myself. I wonder if people are
Speaker 3: still going to try and prove his innocence. You know,
Speaker 3: obviously he's got family and I'm sure they would love
Speaker 3: to keep doing that, but you can't do that without
Speaker 3: legal help. And you just wonder whether or not the
Speaker 3: Innocence Project They've got so many, so much work on,
Speaker 3: they probably like can't do.
Speaker 1: Much now, still trying to save people.
Speaker 3: And you wonder if anyone ever will try and fully
Speaker 3: clear his name.
Speaker 1: Why why are these cases not getting more attention or
Speaker 1: more prolonged attention.
Speaker 3: People don't care. But if I think about it, before
Speaker 3: I got into what I do now, I didn't give
Speaker 3: people in prison a second thought. You know, I didn't
Speaker 3: think about people in prison. I was of the opinion,
Speaker 3: if you're in prison, you did something wrong, you deserve
Speaker 3: to be there. It's only now that I'm engrossed in
Speaker 3: it all the time and I'm seeing these things. You know,
Speaker 3: one hundred and thirty five people already this year have
Speaker 3: been exonerated, you know, of twenty years, thirty years, you know,
Speaker 3: Christopher Dunn, thirty five, I think, thirty three, thirty four years,
Speaker 3: something like that. You know, there's been it's just but
Speaker 3: it just gets no attention, or it might be in
Speaker 3: the news that night, and then they move on. And
Speaker 3: these people aren't even eligible for compensation most of the
Speaker 3: time either, And that blows my mind. You know, they
Speaker 3: have to fight for that.
Speaker 1: But then there's stories like the Menendez brothers, and they've
Speaker 1: been in the headlines for months now.
Speaker 3: Netflix effect in it M true. Yeah, if you get
Speaker 3: a documentary made, you're probably going to get more attention.
Speaker 1: So do you think this will have any effect on
Speaker 1: Missouri that they'll change, They'll want to change, they will
Speaker 1: be affected by all the bad press.
Speaker 3: No, I mean the governor. If you look at the
Speaker 3: governor's Instagram or Facebook page after this happened. I mean,
Speaker 3: I don't know why he didn't turn comments off because
Speaker 3: it was just insane. So I don't know whether or
Speaker 3: not he might get re elected or who knows, he
Speaker 3: may not get relected the next time round. You know that.
Speaker 3: Andrew Bailey, the Attorney General, I mean, he's still going
Speaker 3: about his business, you know, speaking of Christopher Dune. I
Speaker 3: spoke to Christopher yesterday, who's now out of prison. But
Speaker 3: I said to him, and how things going goes? Oh, well,
Speaker 3: the attorney general's appealing to get me put back in
Speaker 3: prison and he's been exonerated. It's like, dude, you know,
Speaker 3: move on. So No, I don't think it will change
Speaker 3: anything at all, you know, you know, I always say
Speaker 3: to my American audience, that I've never I don't mean
Speaker 3: to attack your country because no one's got it right,
Speaker 3: you know, everyone's got it. You know. I think we've
Speaker 3: all got terrible legal systems. But I think when it's
Speaker 3: so ingrained in a society, like their gun situation, that's
Speaker 3: never going to change. No, they're too far gone, you know.
Speaker 3: And America has the highest incarceration rate in the world,
Speaker 3: in the world, like two million people in cart Rut.
Speaker 1: But the Australian justice system, we should give it props
Speaker 1: in comparison here because one, we don't have the death penalty,
Speaker 1: which I mean I don't believe in. I can see
Speaker 1: that you don't believe in the death penalty. But two,
Speaker 1: we don't elect our attorney generals. They get there on merit.
Speaker 1: So I mean there's two positives in our corner. We
Speaker 1: hopefully don't see as many cases of people wrongfully convicted.
Speaker 3: I would hope Norway. In those countries they've got phenomenal
Speaker 3: you know. You know, they're closing prisons. You know, you
Speaker 3: want to look a country that's doing it right. They're
Speaker 3: closing prisons because their recidivism rate is dropping dramatically. But
Speaker 3: then again, we don't have it I think we're of
Speaker 3: the other way. I think we're too soft in some respects,
Speaker 3: you know, because people always say to me, all you say,
Speaker 3: what do you want? There's no prisons and lardy dark no, no, no.
Speaker 3: I think there's a lot of people that should be
Speaker 3: in prison. In fact, a lot of them live around
Speaker 3: my area. But you know, I don't think anyway has
Speaker 3: got it right. I just think, you know, America is
Speaker 3: just insane. They hand out years like it's days. As
Speaker 3: one of my prisoners I spoke to once said to me,
Speaker 3: as they hand out years like it's days, you know,
Speaker 3: the guy is going to be talking to you very soon.
Speaker 3: It's got twelve hundred years sentenced.
Speaker 1: Twelve hundred years.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's crazy. You know, I've got another guy who's
Speaker 3: got life plus one hundred and three just in case,
Speaker 3: you know, reincarnation and all that sort of stuff.
Speaker 1: I guess it just really makes you question the justice system.
Speaker 1: And I know that we're in Australia, so you know,
Speaker 1: if we were to be convicted of a crime, it
Speaker 1: would be in Australia. But it really does make you question,
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty four, how things like this can still happen.
Speaker 3: And That's what I say all the time, like, how
Speaker 3: is this still happening in twenty twenty four. But again,
Speaker 3: going back to the sheer volume of people who are
Speaker 3: incarcerated in America just means that the courts are just
Speaker 3: so overwhelmed that half the time they're not even reading
Speaker 3: the cases. They're just rubber stamping, you know, people putting
Speaker 3: through appeals, so they're just getting rubber stamped. I've got
Speaker 3: an attorney who joins me on the show every time
Speaker 3: we cover a case to give his opinion, so I'm
Speaker 3: not being completely biased. And you know, he comes with
Speaker 3: a clear head and says, well, hold on a second,
Speaker 3: let's look at this. But even he says, you know,
Speaker 3: in some cases he just shakes his head and he
Speaker 3: just goes And I say, I don't understand, Michael. How
Speaker 3: is someone not higher up in power looking at this
Speaker 3: and going, oh, actually, there's some issues here. Because you're
Speaker 3: telling me there's issues here. You're telling me there's great
Speaker 3: arguments for this person to be released, he said, because
Speaker 3: they're just not reading it. They get a top page,
Speaker 3: which is generally from the prosecutor why this person was convicted,
Speaker 3: and they go, oh, yeah, sounds plausible boom stamp denied,
Speaker 3: and away we go.
Speaker 1: Thanks to Jack for helping us to tell this story.
Speaker 1: Our Crime Conversations is a Muma MEA podcast hosted and
Speaker 1: produced by me Jemma Bath and Tarlie Blackman, with audio
Speaker 1: design by Tom Lyon. Thanks so much for listening. I'll
Speaker 1: be back next week with another true crime Conversation