I once got so deep in blood,
That if I wanted to stand still while wading,
Returning would be as difficult as going through.
Macbeth, Act III, Scene 4
* * *
On Tuesday evening, the state of Missouri murdered Marcellus “Khaliifah” Williams with an injection of lethal poison in its closed-door death chamber.
The pleas for clemency from more than a million signatories, the outrage of millions of people around the world and the clear evidence that he was wrongfully convicted could not stop the cold capitalist justice system.
Six black-clad fascists on the Supreme Court approved this crime and rejected two last-minute appeals. Through its silence, the Biden-Harris administration condoned Williams’ murder. Vice President Kamala Harris defended the death penalty in court when she was California’s attorney general. When Harris was nominated for president last month, the Democratic Party also removed any nominal opposition to the death penalty from its platform.
There is no doubt that Williams was innocent of the 1998 murder of St. Louis reporter Felicia Gayle. None of the physical evidence – bloody fingerprints, footprints and hair – linked him to the crime scene. Instead, he was framed by a former cellmate and an ex-girlfriend. They wanted to collect a $10,000 reward for information that would lead to a conviction. The jury at his trial never heard evidence that Gayle’s laptop, found in the trunk of his car, was likely placed there by the former girlfriend.
Williams maintained his innocence until his death. His execution was opposed by Gayle’s family, the jury that originally sentenced him to death, and the prosecutor who convicted him and tried to overturn the conviction.
The United States is one of the few countries that still routinely carries out executions, joining the shameful company of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran and China. So far this year, 16 men have been executed in eight states. Nine more executions are scheduled for this year, including three next week.
Since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, 1,598 people have been executed. As of July 1, 2024, there were 2,213 people on death row, including those in federal and military prisons. Those sentenced to death often languish for decades, waiting in the hands of the executioners for their final moments or for a last-minute pardon.
It is certain that Williams is not the only innocent person executed. Since 1973, 200 death row inmates have been exonerated, which is an average of 4 people per year who were wrongfully convicted. One of the most brazen cases of innocent people wrongfully sentenced to death is Gary Tyler, who was finally released in 2016 after nearly 41 years behind bars.
Nearly 5 million Americans are in some form of correctional system, two million of whom languish in a barbaric network of prisons and detention centers. Prisoners are subjected to inhumane conditions and abuse, resulting in more than 6,000 inmate deaths in 2020. Children are regularly tried like adults and sentenced to life in prison without parole. Outside the prison walls, the police roam the streets like an occupying force, killing more than 1,000 people every year and abusing thousands more with little consequence.
After every mass shooting at a school, house of worship or grocery store, President Biden and others routinely declare that there is “no place for violence in America.” What this means, however, is that the American state and the ruling class intend to maintain the monopoly of violence in order to suppress resistance among the working class – be it resistance to their genocide in Gaza or to the death chambers.
Joseph Kishore, presidential candidate of the Socialist Equality Party, presented with regard to the execution of Marcellus Williams:
The barbarity of the death penalty reveals the true nature of the American political system. It is a system based on violence, oppression and the denial of basic democratic rights. The state’s power to execute its own citizens, often without conclusive evidence or a fair trial, reflects the broader violence of American imperialism, which has killed millions of people in its quest for global dominance.
The continued existence of the death penalty in the United States is further evidence of the criminality and violence of the capitalist political and economic system, with filth oozing from every pore.
Trump and the Republicans are building a fascist movement centered around vicious attacks on immigrants and refugees. Unable and unwilling to address the interests of the masses, Democrats are soaked in the blood of an escalating global war.
The violence with which American imperialism pursues its interests abroad through war and genocide inevitably finds expression in the character of class relations within the country.
When the Polish-German revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg called for the abolition of the death penalty more than a century ago, she stated:
The existing penal system, which breathes the brutal class spirit and barbarism of capitalism through and through, must be eradicated root and branch. A fundamental reform of the penal system must be tackled immediately. Of course, a completely new one that corresponds to the spirit of socialism can only be built on the foundation of a new economic and social order. Crime and punishment are always ultimately rooted in the economic conditions of society.
The fight to abolish the death penalty, to end police killings and to end genocide and war requires a fight against the capitalist system in which this violence is rooted.
