Death row inmate Marcellus Williams was executed on September 24th, despite admissions from a prosecutor’s office claiming his innocence. The attorneys for Williams filed two last-minute requests with the US Supreme Court on Monday. Both of them were denied before he was put to death at 6.10 pm central time. In their Left & the Law segment, Jan Haaken and Mike Snedeker talk about this case and why an execution could be carried out even when DNA evidence points to the person's innocence. As an attorney whose cases involve death penalty appeals, Mike explains the perverse legal rationalizations behind such executions. They also discuss broader legal and political shifts in the US around capital punishment.
For ongoing information, they recommend The Innocence Project and The Death Penalty Information Center, and Mike calls attention to the scheduled October 17 execution of Robert Roberson, convicted of a crime that never occurred.
Images: Photo of scrabble tiles spelling "Death Penalty" beside a pen, gavel, book, and glasses. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Via Pix4free
- KBOO