On September 24, 2024, 55-year-old Marcellus “Kaliifah” Williams was executed by the State of Missouri for the 1998 murder of Felicia Gayle. He maintained his innocence from the beginning and for 23 years until his execution.

Though there was strong evidence of innocence in his case, including a crime scene covered with forensic evidence that contained no link to Mr. Williams; unreliable testimony provided by incentivized witnesses; racial bias in his jury selection, opposition to his execution from the victim’s family and the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney; and Mr. Williams’ willingness to accept an Alford plea for a sentence of life without parole so he could continue to fight for his freedom, he was executed because Missouri’s governor, attorney general, and state and federal courts did nothing to stop it.

Since January, St. Louis prosecuting attorney Wesley Bell had sought to stop this execution, stating that new evidence suggested Williams was “actually innocent.”

In a statement following the execution, General Bell said, “Marcellus Williams should be alive today. There were multiple points in the timeline that decisions could have been made that would have spared him the death penalty. If there is even the shadow of a doubt of innocence the death penalty should never be an option. This outcome did not serve the interests of justice.”

The NAACP said Mr. Williams’ death harkened back to the days of racist terrorism.

“Tonight, Missouri lynched another innocent Black man,” the group stated in a post on X.  “Governor Parson had the responsibility to save this innocent life, and he didn’t. The NAACP was founded in 1909 in response to the barbaric lynching of Black people in America — we were founded exactly because of people like Governor Parson who perpetuate violence against innocent Black people. We will hold Governor Parson accountable. When DNA evidence proves innocence, capital punishment is not justice — it is murder.”

On October 17, Texas plans to execute Robert Roberson, a man with autism who has spent over 20 years on Texas’s death row for a crime that never happened. New evidence shows that Mr. Roberson’s daughter, Nikki, died of natural and accidental causes and that no crime occurred.

There is still time to stop this execution so that another man isn’t executed for something he didn’t do.

Sign the petition to urge Governor Abbott to stop Mr. Robertson’s execution. You can call the governor’s office at 361-264-9653.

Watch and share this video as Rev. Brian Wharton meets with Mr. Roberson for the first time since 2003, when Mr. Roberson was wrongfully convicted. Rev. Wharton played a crucial role in the prosecution of Mr. Roberson and now carries a burden for guilt for the part that he played in this miscarriage of justice.

The execution of one innocent person is one too many for the death penalty system to continue to exist.

We simply can’t trust this failed system to determine who lives and who dies. Enough.

Even in this time of divisive rhetoric and politics, we can agree that all of us want to feel and to be safe.

But what is safety? If you ask people what safety means to them, you will get a wide range of answers.

Safety is not just the absence of violence, as our colleagues at Equal Justice USA (EJUSA) remind us. Instead, a community is safe when it is thriving and the well-being of its people is on the rise. That means ensuring that people have good jobs, quality housing, access to every facet of health care, excellent education, and more.

When people don’t have what they need to thrive, then crime and violence will follow. A recent report by Prison Policy Initiative shows that Tennessee has the 9th highest per capita incarceration rate in the world, with little impact on violence. The only nation that incarcerates more per capita is El Salvador. According to the report, Tennessee incarcerates 817 individuals in state prisons, local jails, federal prisons, and other systems of confinement per 100,000 people.

Still, some of Tennessee’s lawmakers tell us that we are not locking up enough people. They jump on the fear and outrage we experience in the wake of violent incidents to double down on expanding a decadeslong, failed mass incarceration experiment instead of listening to the needs of those most impacted by violence and following the data to find the most effective way forward.

Since District Attorney General Steve Mulroy was elected in Shelby County a few years ago, some Tennessee lawmakers have been laser-focused on finding a way to subvert the will of Memphis voters and to oust him from serving as DA, simply because they don’t like his politics. There has been a concerted effort to provide misinformation to the public, laying the blame for violent crime in Memphis at the feet of General Mulroy and using this narrative to strengthen the power of the Tennessee Attorney General while taking power from elected prosecutors.

MLK50, a nonprofit Memphis newsroom focused on poverty, power and public policy, recently published this story by Katherine Burgess, “State Sen. Taylor is seeking to oust DA Mulroy. The move is rooted in misinformation.”

According to the article:

“In a news conference held June 17, Taylor would not give specific examples of instances when Mulroy has refused to prosecute broad swaths of crimes, instead referring reporters to his X (formerly known as Twitter) and Facebook pages…MLK50 could not find an example cited by Taylor in which Mulroy has, of his own volition, decided not to prosecute entire types of crimes. Here, we go through some of Taylor’s most frequent criticisms of Mulroy and why they are misinformation.”

Particularly if you live in Memphis, I hope you will read this article to better understand the degree to which misinformation and lack of context are distorting the realities on the ground and distracting from the real work that all of us, regardless of politics, need to do to truly tackle the issue of violence in our state. Until we can have honest conversations based on facts and center the voices of those who are most impacted, our communities will not experience the safety that we all deserve.

Read the MLK50 article here.

Photo by Laramie Renae

(Reverend Timothy Holton is a surviving family member of four murder victims and is the cousin of Daryl Holton, a man executed in Tennessee. These are excerpts from a recent presentation prepared by Reverend Holton.)

Throughout the process of collecting my thoughts to share, I have been pursued by the words of one of my favorite hymns: Here I am, Lord, is it I, Lord? I have heard you calling in the night, and I will go Lord, if you lead me…well, here’s the deal: when you say those words and take that “YES” step toward God, it turns out what you agree to might not look like what you expected.

For me, this all began on November 30, 1997. I was a 17-year-old senior at Moore County High School in Lynchburg, cramming for midterms and living my best teenage life. That rainy Sunday afternoon, in the neighboring town of Shelbyville (where I now live), my cousin Daryl Holton used a military style rifle and took the lives of his four children: Stephen was 12, Brent was 10, Eric was 6, and Kayla was 4.  A few days later, I served as pallbearer and carried each of their small, white caskets to their final resting place in the little cemetery in rural Bedford County.  A little more than a year and a half later, Daryl’s trial concluded with four murder convictions, and a death sentence.  Almost 10 years later, at 1:00 am on September 12, 2007, Daryl was seated in Tennessee’s electric chair.  Twenty-five minutes later, he was pronounced dead. My life’s path changed dramatically, fracturing me in two parts: mourning the murder of my cousins, and grieving their murderer; all family whom I loved. I yearned deeply for an internal reconciliation that I believed, and finally decided, would never come.

(Reverend Stacy Harwell-Dye of West End United Methodist Church in Nashville invited Reverend Holton to attend the TADP vigil on the evening of Billy Ray Irick’s execution in 2018. Reverend Holton then became actively involved with TADP and joined the Board of Directors. He also joined the Visitation on Death Row program to become a visitor on death row. In the following excerpt, he shares an experience that happened during his orientation to the program when he was taken on a tour of Unit 2.)

Overwhelmed, overstimulated, and trying to manage an unruly bouquet of emotions, I noticed someone moving toward the corner of the room where I stood…not just moving toward my corner of the room, but one of the inmates moving directly, toward, me.  What could he want?  When he was within arm’s length, he stuck out his hand, and with a warm smile and comforting voice he said “Hi, I’m Terry King, you must be Tim Holton, Daryl’s cousin. Daryl was my neighbor while he was here, most all of us knew him actually. Would you like to see his cell, where he lived?” I can’t recall if I even responded, but suddenly I was standing at cell C-206, where my cousin spent the last 10 years of his life; where he ate, slept, where he lived.

In that moment, it felt like time stood still, and I experienced a peace beyond anything I had ever experienced before wash over me.  All of the trauma, all of the guilt, all of the wounds I had carried for all of those years about Daryl, and Stephen, and Brent, and Eric, and Kayla, they all bubbled up from the depths of my mind and body, and as they rose they changed, and the healing I thought impossible, instantly became more than just possible, it became reality, and it happened in cell C-206, on death row. 

Now as a volunteer chaplain at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, every week I make my way down the walkways lined with razor wire and through the large heavy doors that still occasionally startle me when they slam shut, to be with my friends in Unit 2.  We talk, we pray, we laugh, we support and nurture one another, and we meet to wrestle with theology and grow in God. 

The Spirit’s reaching into one of the darkest and most painful experiences in my life and unbinding the grace within it; the Spirit’s reaching across our connection to straighten the twisted and tangled pathway to this ministry, the Spirit’s reaching through Terry King’s handshake transforming painful trauma into healed peace and softened empathy; the Spirit’s reaching through my spouse Jim who doesn’t always understand or share my fearless nature in this work but loves me unconditionally and continually picks me up and lends me his strength when this hard work becomes more than one person can bear; and the Spirit’s continual defiance of the isolating bounds of razor wire walkways and locked solid metal doors to meet a group of condemned men who are my friends, my family, my people, and to dwell with them in a community overflowing with boundless love, for that, for all of that, I say, thanks be to God.

According to Amnesty International’s Global Report 2023, these nations carried out the most executions last year.

China is estimated to execute thousands of people annually but classifies the number as a state secret. We can safely assume then that China is the world’s leading executioner.

Excluding China, of the known number of executions in 2023, Iran came in first with at least 853 executions, accounting for 74% of the global total. Saudi Arabia placed second with 172 executions accounting for 15%. Somalia followed with at least 38 executions. The United States came in fourth at 24 executions, and Iraq carried out at least 16. 

The number of executions carried out by these nations and a handful of others, 1153, is the highest number of executions since 2015, but the spike can mostly be attributed to 48% rise in executions in Iran.

If the fact that the U.S. keeps company with nations that our government regularly condemns for human right violations and oppressive policies makes you uncomfortable, then good. It should. The U.S. position on the death penalty impugns our nation’s credibility, particularly as our government chastises others nations for their human rights records while continuing a policy that no other western, industrialized nation employs.

Now for some good news: Only 16 countries carried out executions in 2023. This represents the lowest number of countries executing on record. Even if the U.S. is among this number, it is encouraging that more nations are moving away from the death penalty. In fact, the parliaments of Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, and Zimbabwe all considered abolition bills last year.

Our nation can and must do better. It’s time to keep better company.

Read more of Amnesty’s report.

The legislative session in Tennessee has ended, and because of your support, more victims of violent crime in Tennessee will have access to the help that they need to heal.

The legislature overwhelmingly passed HB 1021/ SB 1416 sponsored by Chairman Clay Doggett (R) and Senator Paul Rose (R), expanding access to the Tennessee Criminal Injuries Compensation Fund for more victims of violence in Tennessee. This legislation will allow more Tennesseans who have experienced harm to access the support that they need to recover and to heal in the wake of a violent crime. This fund of last resort can assist with lost wages, funeral expenses, and counseling services.

Background and Impact

Over the last two years with the leadership of TADP Community Outreach Coordinator Rafiah Muhammad-McCormick, TADP has worked closely with victim advocates, including Mothers Over Murder, Tennessee Voices for Victims, You Have the Power, and Raphah Institute to address some of the challenges that keep survivors and surviving family members of murder victims from receiving assistance to aid in their recovery from violent crime. TADP is deeply grateful to all of these groups for their hard work and support.

When victims get the help they need, they are more likely to cooperate with law enforcement and less likely to be trapped in cycles of violence. This support is critical if we want to make Tennessee safer for everyone and end our reliance on a failed death penalty.

TADP is currently planning a statewide campaign with Mothers Over Murder to educate victims of violence about this fund, how to access it, and to learn what other obstacles need to be addressed to allow even more people to benefit. This campaign will empower the voices of those directly impacted by violence to educate the public and lawmakers alike that more punishment is not what victims need but instead they need more support to heal and more community-based investments to prevent violence in the first place, which is the real alternative to the death penalty.  

Other Legislation

Legislation to remove secrecy from the lethal injection protocol, sponsored by Senator Mark Pody (R) and Chairman Justin Lafferty (R) did not move this session, though Americans for Prosperity and the Tennessee Coalition for Open Government championed the bill, along with TADP and Tennesseans for Capital Punishment Reform (TCPR). We will continue to push for transparency around lethal injection, particularly in light of a new report that demonstrates a “disproportionate number of botched executions involve Black individuals, underscoring the deep-seated biases that pervade the system and that state secrecy and cover-ups further compound the issue, with authorities concealing vital information about the execution process and the drugs used. Secrecy laws prevent transparency and allowing states to perpetuate the myth of humane executions while hiding the harsh realities from public scrutiny.”

Despite our best efforts to contain it, a bill to expand the death penalty for the non-lethal crime of child rape passed the legislature and is on its way to Governor Lee. TADP will now mount a campaign to ask Governor Lee to veto this misguided legislation.

Though we can all agree that this is a reprehensible crime, this legislation will only serve to make Tennessee’s kids less safe. The real motivation behind this bill is an attempt to overturn U.S. Supreme Court precedent that determined the death penalty should only be available as a punishment for murder.

If protecting kids was the priority, Tennessee lawmakers would have listened to the child service providers who continue to publicly share their concerns that this legislation will only chill the reporting of this crime since 90% of offenders are family or friends of the child. It will also trap children in decades of capital litigation that will only serve to re-traumatize them, particularly if they have to testify over and over again. At the same time, the state will spend millions of taxpayer dollars to litigate a test case with no certainty of a specific outcome. Tennessee lawmakers should instead be directing these resources to try to protect our children from the abuse in the first place and ensure survivors have access to mental health treatment and the proper support.

With your support, TADP will keep up this fight, working to end the death penalty, to prevent violence, and to support all those who are harmed–which will make us ALL safer.

Photo: TADP and TCPR staff at 2024 Justice Day on the Hill.