Missouri Supreme Court blocks plea agreement for man scheduled to be executed next month

The Missouri Supreme Court has blocked an agreement that would have resentenced death row inmate Marcellus Williams to life without parole after new testing of DNA evidence complicated his innocence claim, reported CNN.

A St. Louis County Circuit Court judge has now set the agreement aside and scheduled an evidentiary hearing for August 28, court records show. The lower court may seek an administrative stay of Williams’ September 24 execution date while the proceedings unfold, the chief justice wrote.

The Missouri Supreme Court’s decision caps a whirlwind 24 hours in the case that has pitted Wesley Bell, a local prosecutor running for Congress as a Democrat, against state Attorney General Andrew Bailey, a Republican seeking reelection.

Williams, 55, has long maintained he did not murder Felicia Gayle, a one-time reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch found stabbed to death in her University City home in 1998. He was convicted in 2001 of first-degree murder, burglary and robbery, among other charges, and sentenced to death.

Twenty-three years after his conviction, Williams’ innocence claim is championed by attorneys for the Innocence Project and the Midwest Innocence Project.

In January, the St. Louis Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, led by Bell, filed a motion to vacate Williams’ conviction, saying DNA evidence that could purportedly exclude Williams as the killer had never been reviewed by a court. Prosecutors were expected to present DNA evidence in court Wednesday that they say would exclude Williams as the person who wielded the knife used in the murder. The motion cited the analysis by three DNA experts.

However, the results of new DNA testing showed the evidence had been mishandled, complicating Williams’ innocence claim, the Associated Press reported.

The key hearing Wednesday did not get underway as scheduled, and after several hours, Bell’s office announced a consent judgment, an agreement between Williams and the prosecutor’s office. The deal dictated Williams receive a life sentence after entering a so-called Alford plea of guilty to first-degree murder. An Alford plea generally allows a defendant to maintain their innocence while acknowledging it is not in their interest to go to trial given the evidence against them.

A copy of the judgment said it was reached after a conference Wednesday in which a representative of Gayle’s family “expressed to the Court the family’s desire that the death penalty not be carried out in this case, as well as the family’s desire for finality.” Gayle’s widower declined to comment on Thursday.

The Missouri attorney general had fought Bell’s motion and opposed Wednesday’s agreement, saying in a statement new DNA test results indicated the evidence would not exonerate Williams.

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GateHouse: The government’s approval of locking up the innocent

Matthew T. Mangino

GateHouse Media

August 25, 2019

William R. Kelly, director of the Center for Criminology and Criminal Justice Research at the University of Texas at Austin told The Crime Report last fall, “There are situations - we don’t know how many - where individuals find themselves in a particular situation where the government claims they have certain evidence, and pleading to a crime they didn’t commit may be people’s best option.”

It seems astonishing that people plead guilty to crimes they didn’t commit. Here are some things to consider. In the United States of America, a police officer can lie to an accused about incriminating evidence during an interrogation and elicit a confession, and the U.S. Supreme Court has said there is nothing wrong with such conduct.

Then there is the “trial penalty.” A widely lamented tool of prosecutors used to punish people who go to trial with greater sentences than similarly situated defendants who plea bargain. Plea negotiations are often clouded by the threat that conviction at trial will result in a much lengthier sentence than a plea. There are reams of data to support the existence of the trial penalty.

Most defendants who pass through the criminal justice system waive the right to a trial, and all the constitutional protections that come with being charged, in exchange for a plea bargain. Emily Yoffe wrote in The Atlantic that the vast majority of felony convictions are now the result of plea bargains - about 94% at the state level and 97% at the federal level.

To further complicate matters, funding for indigent defense has declined. According to the Pew Charitable Trusts, only 27% of county-based and 21% of state-based public defender’s offices have enough lawyers to appropriately handle their caseloads.

The backroom lies, threats and underfunding pale in comparison to what nearly every state in the country permits in open court, and the U.S. Supreme Court sanctions - an innocent person pleading guilty to a crime.

The road to state-sanctioned imprisonment of potentially innocent individuals began in 1963 with Henry C. Alford. Alford was indicted for first-degree murder, a capital offense in North Carolina. Although he proclaimed his innocence, he pleaded guilty to killing a man with a shotgun. He said in court, “I’m not guilty, but I plead guilty.”

The U.S. Supreme Court confirmed his conviction in 1970 and forever more Henry C. Alford’s name was attached to the controversial practice of pleading guilty - an Alford plea - while claiming innocence.

The Supreme Court ruled in Alford’s case, “An individual accused of crime may voluntarily, knowingly, and understandingly consent to the imposition of a prison sentence even if he is unwilling or unable to admit his participation in the acts constituting the crime.”

Forty-seven states and the District of Columbia allow for Alford pleas, only New Jersey, Indiana and Michigan forbid the practice.

Alford pleas permit a defendant to concede that the prosecution can prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt while maintaining innocence. The prosecution then provides the factual basis for the guilty plea by providing the court with detailed documentation that the accused is guilty. The judge must decide whether there is sufficient evidence to support a conviction.

An accused proclaiming innocence should have his day in court. What does the system gain by permitting an innocent person to go to prison through the means of a lenient negotiated plea as opposed to going to trial?

Whether by Alford plea or conviction at trial the accused is wrongly imprisoned. A conviction at trial of an innocent person is a mistake. An Alford plea is tacit governmental approval of locking away a potentially innocent person.
Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book The Executioner’s Toll, 2010 was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino.

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The system fails when the innocent are sent to jail: As I See It

Matthew T. Mangino
The Harrisburg Patriot-News
May 15, 2013

Why should you be concerned about men and women pleading guilty to crimes they claim they did not commit?

The National Registry of Exonerations, a joint project of the University of Michigan Law School and the Center on Wrongful Convictions at the Northwestern University School of Law, released its first report analyzing 873 exonerations between January 1989 and February 2012.

In the 873 cases that were studied, the registry found the most common reasons for wrongful conviction were perjury or false accusation (51 percent), mistaken witness identification (43 percent) and official misconduct (42 percent).

Since January 1, there have been a number of high-profile examples of exonerations after long prison stays for convictions that, in part, were based on faulty eyewitness identification.

David Ranta was freed from prison in March after serving 23 years of a 37.5 year sentence for the murder of a Brooklyn rabbi in 1990. Ranta’s lawyers had successfully argued that the police had coached an eyewitness to pick Ranta out of a line-up.

John Edward Smith spent 19 years behind bars. A former gang member, Smith adamantly maintained his innocence of murder. A wrongful convictions group, Innocence Matters, took his case and identified problems with the testimony of the lone witness that identified him as the killer. The witness recanted and a Los Angeles County Court vacated his conviction.

Randolph Arledge was sentenced to 99 years in prison in 1984 for a killing in Texas. He spent 28 years in prison until prosecutors recently agreed that he was not guilty after new DNA tests tied someone else to the crime.

More than 75,000 prosecutions every year are based entirely on the recollections of others. The overwhelming majority of eyewitness errors are not conscious or intentional. The misidentifications are the inevitable side effects of the process of remembering.

In recent years, neuroscientists have documented how these mistakes happen. According Johan Lehrer of the Wall Street Journal, “[O]ur recollections are always being altered, the details of the past warped by our present feelings and knowledge. The more you remember an event, the less reliable that memory becomes.”
Innocent people get convicted. That is an inevitable shortcoming in the system. Innocent people plead guilty—because they perceive a plea as the lesser of two evils—that is unconscionable.

State sanctioned imprisonment of the potentially innocent began in 1963 with Henry C. Alford. Alford, while pleading guilty to killing a man, said in court, “I’m not guilty but I plead guilty.” The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed his conviction in North Carolina v. Alford.

Alford pleas, as they became known, permit a defendant to concede that the prosecution can prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt while maintaining innocence. The prosecution then provides the factual basis for the guilty plea by providing the court with detailed documentation that the accused is guilty. The judge must decide whether there is sufficient evidence to support a conviction.

How prevalent are Alford pleas? In 2009, Allison D. Redlich and Asil Ali Ozdogru wrote in Alford Pleas in the Age of Innocence, six percent of state prisoners and three percent of federal prisoners entered Alford pleas. Forty-seven states and the District of Columbia allow for the Alford pleas, only New Jersey, Indiana and Michigan forbid the procedure.

There is no justification for permitting an individual to plead guilty, while claiming innocence, simply to allow that person to negotiate a less severe criminal sentence than may be imposed if the accused maintained her innocence, went to trial and was convicted.

A conviction at trial of an innocent person is a mistake. An Alford plea is tacit governmental approval of locking away a potentially innocent person.

There is no place in the criminal justice system for permitting individuals who claim innocence to plead guilty and go to prison.

Matthew T. Mangino is an attorney with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George in New Castle, Pa. He is the former district attorney for Lawrence County and a former member of the state Board of Probation and Parole.  

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GateHouse: The dissonant plea, guilty but innocent

Matthew T. Mangino
GateHouse News Service
May 10, 2013

As exonerations become more commonplace and innocence organizations, whose sole purpose is to collaterally attack wrongful convictions, proliferate there continues to be a mechanism in the law of most states that permits an individual who claims innocence to nevertheless plead guilty and go to prison.

The criminal justice system’s long standing staples — eyewitness identification, fingerprints, fiber samples, tool markings — are fallible. With wrongful convictions splashed across the front page of newspapers across the country, why — in the interest of efficiency — does the system permit potentially innocent men and women to be locked away?

The road to state-sanctioned imprisonment of potentially innocent individuals began in 1963 with Henry C. Alford. Alford was indicted for first-degree murder, a capital offense in North Carolina. Although he proclaimed his innocence, he pleaded guilty to killing a man with a shotgun. He said in court, “I’m not guilty, but I plead guilty.”

The U.S. Supreme Court confirmed his conviction in 1970 and forever more Henry C. Alford’s name was attached to the controversial practice of pleading guilty — an Alford plea — while claiming innocence.

The Supreme Court ruled in Alford’s case, “An individual accused of crime may voluntarily, knowingly, and understandingly consent to the imposition of a prison sentence even if he is unwilling or unable to admit his participation in the acts constituting the crime.”

Forty-seven states and the District of Columbia allow for Alford pleas, only New Jersey, Indiana and Michigan forbid the practice.

Alford pleas permit a defendant to concede that the prosecution can prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt while maintaining innocence. The prosecution then provides the factual basis for the guilty plea by providing the court with detailed documentation that the accused is guilty. The judge must decide whether there is sufficient evidence to support a conviction.

An accused proclaiming innocence should have his day in court. What does the system gain by permitting an innocent person to go to prison through the means of a lenient negotiated plea as opposed to going to trial?

Whether by Alford plea or conviction at trial the accused is wrongly imprisoned. A conviction at trial of an innocent person is a mistake. An Alford plea is tacit governmental approval of locking away a potentially innocent person.

Professor Stephanos Bibas of the University of Pennsylvania Law School wrote more than 10 years ago, “Alford and nolo contender pleas, I contend, are unwise and should be abolished. These procedures may be constitutional and efficient, but they undermine key values served by admissions of guilt in open court.”

Bibas used Indiana as a compelling example of the argument against Alford pleas. The Indiana Supreme Court ruled “[T]hat judges may not accept guilty pleas accompanied by protestations of innocence. The court suggested that Alford pleas risk being unintelligent, involuntary, and inaccurate.”

Since Jan. 1, there have been a number of high profile exonerations after long prison stays. Though not Alford pleas, the exonerations point to the exhaustive efforts to free the innocent.

David Ranta was freed from prison in March after serving 23 years of a 37.5-year sentence for the murder of a Brooklyn rabbi. John Edward Smith spent 19 years behind bars in California for a murder he did not commit. Randolph Arledge spent 28 years in a Texas prison for a crime tied to another suspect through DNA.

The Eighteen Century English jurist Sir William Blackstone famously wrote, “It is better that 10 guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.”

It is unconscionable for an innocent person to go to prison even if that person knowingly agrees to imprisonment. There is no place in a system that has taken extraordinary measures to undo wrongful convictions to permit individuals to plead guilty to offenses for which they claim innocence.

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly and George and the former district attorney for Lawrence County, Pa. You can read his blog at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter at @MatthewTMangino.

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System Shouldn't Tolerate Guilty Pleas From Those Claiming Innocence

The Pennsylvania Law Weekly
May 6, 2013

As exonerations become more commonplace and organizations whose sole purpose is to collaterally attack wrongful convictions proliferate, there continues to be a mechanism in the law in most states that permits an individual who claims innocence to nevertheless plead guilty and go to prison.

The criminal justice system's longstanding staples — eyewitness identification, fingerprints, fiber samples, tool markings — are fallible. With wrongful convictions splashed across the front page of newspapers across the country, why — in the interest of efficiency — does the system add to the potential number of innocent men and women locked away?

The road to state-sanctioned imprisonment of potentially innocent individuals began in 1963 with Henry C. Alford. Alford was indicted for first-degree murder, a capital offense in North Carolina. Although he proclaimed his innocence, he pled guilty to killing a man with a shotgun. He said, on the record, "I'm not guilty but I plead guilty."

The U.S. Supreme Court confirmed his conviction in 1970 in a decision known as North Carolina v. Alford. The Alford plea was born and forever attached Alford's name to the controversial practice of pleading guilty while claiming innocence.

The Supreme Court found, "An individual accused of crime may voluntarily, knowingly and understandingly consent to the imposition of a prison sentence even if he is unwilling or unable to admit his participation in the acts constituting the crime."

Forty-seven states and the District of Columbia allow for the Alford pleas; only New Jersey, Indiana and Michigan forbid the procedure.

Alford pleas permit a defendant to concede that the prosecution can prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt while maintaining innocence. The prosecution then provides the factual basis for the guilty plea by providing the court with detailed documentation that the accused is guilty. The judge must decide whether there is sufficient evidence to support a conviction.

An accused proclaiming innocence should have his or her day in court. What does the system gain by permitting an innocent person to go to prison through the means of a lenient negotiated plea as opposed to going to trial?

Whether by Alford plea or conviction at trial, the accused is wrongly imprisoned. A conviction at trial of an innocent person is a mistake.

An Alford plea is tacit governmental approval of locking away a potentially innocent person.

Professor Stephanos Bibas of the University of Pennsylvania Law School wrote more than 10 years ago, "Alford and nolo contendere pleas, I contend, are unwise and should be abolished. These procedures may be constitutional and efficient, but they undermine key values served by admissions of guilt in open court."

Bibas used Indiana as a compelling example of the argument against Alford pleas. He said the state's Supreme Court "has held that judges may not accept guilty pleas accompanied by protestations of innocence. The court suggested that Alford pleas risk being unintelligent, involuntary and inaccurate."

Since January 1, there have been a number of high-profile exonerations after long prison stays. David Ranta was freed from prison in March after serving 23 years of a 37-and-a-half-year sentence for the murder of a Brooklyn rabbi in 1990. John Edward Smith spent 19 years behind bars in California for a murder he did not commit. Randolph Arledge spent 28 years in a Texas prison for a crime tied to another suspect through DNA.

Why would we add to that number? It is unconscionable for an innocent person to go to prison even if that person knowingly agrees to imprisonment. There is no place in a system that has taken extraordinary measures to undo wrongful convictions to permit individuals to plead guilty to offenses for which they claim innocence. •

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