(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Missouri AG Bailey Working Hard to Kill An Innocent Man [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2024-08-15 The TL;DR on this is — however much you fear, loathe or hate Republicans, you don’t fear, loathe or hate them nearly enough. Their entire ouvre is racist hate and sociopathic, sadistic damage to the powerless. Every single one of them owes a sincere apology to every plant that has wasted its efforts generating oxygen for them to breathe. The story begins with an awful tragedy. Felicia Gayle, a former reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch was found stabbed to death in her home 26 years ago. There was a ton of evidence left behind, including fingerprints, a bloody shoe print, trace DNA on the murder weapon (a knife from Ms. Gayle’s kitchen), and hair. Despite this copious evidence, the police made no progress. Whether that was due to indifference, incompetence, laziness, sub-basement intelligence or just because they were useless bastards, I will not offer an opinion. (Though, if I did, it would probably be “all of the above”.) Enter, as in so many cases, a jailhouse snitch. He claimed that Mr. Williams confessed to him, and directed the illustrious and hard working gendarmes to a woman that Mr. Williams had briefly dated. To quote the Innocence Project, “Their statements were inconsistent with their own prior statements, with each other’s accounts, and with the crime scene evidence, and none of the information they provided could be independently verified.” Mr. Williams maintained his innocence through the entire ordeal. In 2015, the Missouri Supreme Court stayed his execution and appointed a special master to review DNA testing of the evidence that might establish that he was innocent. Lo and behold (and to the surprise of absolutely no one paying attention to the Charlie Foxtrot Sierra Sierra that is the US Industrial Injustice Complex), the testing showed that the DNA on the murder weapon did not belong to Mr. Williams. However, the Missouri Supreme Court, apparently suffering a change of, well, not heart, there’s no evidence any of those useless wastes of protein possess such a thing, but ‘priorities’, maybe?, dissolved the special master’s office and declined to consider the evidence. Enter the one surprising Republican who doesn’t come off as a rabid weasel in this present story, and it is a kind of surprising one: then Governor Eric Greitens, recognizing that the new evidence raised significant doubts about Mr. William’s guilt, stayed his execution just hours before it was scheduled, and after Mr. Williams had been served his last meal. That was 7 years ago next week. He convened a Board of Inquiry to investigate just what the hell was going on. They had not yet come to a conclusion when Governor Mike Parson dissolved the Board last summer. And then comes into our story Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, possibly the least justifiable use of carbon and oxygen imaginable. This useless chucklefuck promptly sought a new execution date. It’s currently set for just September 24, 2024. Looks like J.V. Vance’s idiot cousin who has an even higher rank in the KKK. It gets worse. St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell reviewed the findings of three independent DNA experts who all concluded that Mr. Williams was not the source of male DNA on the weapon. Recognizing that “new evidence suggests that Mr. Williams is actually innocent”, in January 2024 the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney filed a motion to vacate Mr. Williams’s conviction. The motion explains: “DNA evidence supporting a conclusion that Mr. Williams was not the individual who stabbed Ms. Gayle has never been considered by any court. This never-before-considered evidence, when paired with the relative paucity of other, credible evidence supporting guilt . . . casts inexorable doubt on Mr. Williams’s conviction and sentence.” The evidentiary hearing was scheduled for August 21. Re-enter the cartoon villain and poster shitweasel for the Republican party, Attorney General Andrew Bailey. who, on July 18th filed a writ of prohibition asking the state supreme court to block the evidentiary hearing. To set the expectation for just what an evil piece of shit Andy is, his office has, with a straight face, argued in court that someone convicted of murder should be executed even if there is incontrovertible evidence that they are innocent. (NB — one of the great disappointments of being an atheist is not having confidence that people like him will burn in hell where they belong.) Fortunately, on July 26th the Missouri Supreme Court, motivated by Baphomet only knows what, made only their 2nd justifiable decision in this case over the last quarter of a century, and turned away the murderous demands of Andy the Psychopathic Shitweasel, so Mr. William’s evidentiary hearing will go forward. But just imagine being imprisoned for more than a quarter of a century for a crime you did not commit and coming up for the second time on an execution date despite knowing you are innocent and having convincing evidence of it. And then never, ever, under any circumstances give Republicans the benefit of the doubt for acting in good faith. Not ever again. 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