I read my junk mail. I take my time with it. I consider the causes I am being asked to support. I spend less time — but still some time — on various promotional deals.
I have been fooled. I once sent away for a copper bust of Abraham Lincoln and received a penny. I have twice fallen for grapefruit that come from grapefruit trees that were spliced with orange trees and now produce a grapefruit that is so sweet it will change forever the way you think about grapefruit. I liked the idea that some people have a world-view about grapefruit. It’s good but not great, is probably the consensus.
But what if it were sweeter? What if you didn’t have to cut it, but could simply peel and eat it?
Both times I received a carton of pretty good grapefruit. Very good grapefruit, actually. But it was still, clearly, grapefruit.
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Perhaps you wonder why I fell for that promotion twice. Simple. I believed in the concept. I thought I was following the science.
Here is a bigger mystery. How did the grapefruit people find me? Trial and error, I’d guess. They probably sent out thousands and thousands of letters, almost all of which were ignored. Now and then, they’d find a science-believer who craved a better grapefruit.
Or maybe the people behind the copper busts sold my name. Or maybe the copper bust people moved into the grapefruit business.
It’s easy to be cynical.
In that regard, ºüÀêÊÓƵ County Prosecutor Wesley Bell has moved to overturn the conviction of Marcellus Williams, who was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder in 1998 of Lisha Gayle. She had been a reporter at the Post-Dispatch. She wore sensible shoes. She was liberal. She tutored children from the city who were mired in poverty. She was a mentor to at least one young woman.
When Lisha was found dead in her University City home, the victim of 43 stab wounds from a kitchen knife, I wondered if her tutoring was somehow connected to her murder. Even as that thought passed my mind, I realized how strongly Lisha would reject that line of thinking.
Williams was eventually arrested for her murder, and then convicted, and then sentenced to death.
It was a 20th-century case. DNA was then a thing, but not the thing. Jurors didn’t expect to hear about it. The evidence against Williams had nothing to do with forensics. His girlfriend came in on him. So did a cellmate.
I did not attend the trial. Bill Lhotka, who covered courts for years, did. He said he thought the former girlfriend was credible. The jailhouse snitch, too.
Nevertheless, it was thin gruel for a death sentence.
In 2017, Williams was given an execution date, but then-Gov. Eric Greitens cited exculpatory DNA evidence that had not been available at the time of the trial and stayed the execution. The new evidence showed that male DNA on the handle of the murder weapon did not belong to Williams. Greitens appointed a panel of five judges to look into the case.
The panel reportedly did make recommendations to Gov. Mike Parson, who dissolved the panel in 2022 without making the recommendations public. Parson lifted the stay on Williams’ execution.
Now Bell is moving to vacate the conviction.
Perhaps this is one of those remarkable times when Jupiter aligns with Mars and a politician can do the right thing and be rewarded for it. Certainly, it seems that way for Bell. After announcing a decision to run for the U.S. Senate, he switched gears and announced he would run for Congress. He will challenge Cori Bush, the incumbent in the First Congressional district.
Bush is too far left for old-school liberals like me, but is beloved by the younger progressives. They recently lost their equally beloved circuit attorney, Kim Gardner. Can they stomach losing their congresswoman?
It would be easier for Bell if he could show his progressive bonafides, and what better way than freeing an unjustly convicted Black man from prison?
That was, you remember, the high-water mark of the chaotic Gardner era. With prompting from the Innocence Project, she got Lamar Johnson out of prison. Now the well-regarded Innocence Project is behind the effort to free Marcellus Williams. Was he unjustly convicted? Should he be released?
I asked Lhotka, who had agreed with the earlier conviction. What does he think now? His opinion is that the unknown male DNA would have provided reasonable doubt.
I agree. I believe in science.
But freeing Williams leaves an obvious loose end. To whom does the DNA belong?
If it belongs to somebody in the DNA data bank, presto. Try Williams’ former girlfriend and the jailhouse snitch for perjury, and try the new guy for murder.
But let’s remember that the last days of the 20th century were sloppier times forensically. Nobody even talked about “touch†DNA. It is possible our unknown male was a University City police officer or a lab tech. It should not be that difficult to find and test these people, or their heirs.
Suppose the DNA does come back to somebody at the crime scene or somebody at the lab. What then?
All of this should have been considered seven years ago when Greitens formed his board of inquiry. Those five judges should be called to court. They ought to have to explain themselves. Under oath. What the heck happened?
Marcellus Williams deserves to know. So, too, do the family and friends of Lisha Gayle.
An earlier version of this story had an incorrect number of judges and an error about the panel's status.