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PaperclipPerfector  29d ago (text post)   28065 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 23, 2024

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You are wrong that there was a financial motive. The girlfriend never requested reward for information about Ms. Gayle’s murder. (Don’t make top level posts explaining the “main points” if your main points are wrong, this isn’t Reddit).

"The Innocence Project" makes this claim.

https://innocenceproject.org/innocence-project-statement-on-the-execution-of-marcellus-williams/

His conviction was based on the testimony of two eyewitnesses who were paid for their testimony.

They don't appear to be arguing in good faith and they are paltering but I don't think anyone expects them to outright lie.

https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/24/24-5612/326599/20240923222511639_Petitioners%20Appendix.pdf

On page number 37, the court informs us that the girlfriend mentioned to the police she had information about the murder under no provocation. It was during a prostitution sting, but it defies any motive, because she later declined to cooperate despite the offers of 5k reward and charges being dropped:

On September 1, 1998, after being arrested for prostitution, Asaro told officers that she had information related to "the murder of the woman in U. City." (T. 1901; Ex. 8-Supplementary Investigative and/or Disposition Report dated 11/16/99 at 1). But when Detectives arrived to question her, she would not talk to them, stating she was "just trying to get out of the arrest." (Ex. 8, at 1). Police questioned her for two hours to no avail. Id. Although Asaro was known to police, after their interview with Cole on June 4, 1999, police enlisted Cole as an informant for the next four months to try to make contact with Asaro. (T. 1818). Detectives provided him with a pager so she could contact him, but Cole's efforts to get Asaro to incriminate Mr. Williams were unsuccessful. (T. 2439-44).

This isn’t surprising. Ghetto people don’t rat. Although she originally mentioned the murder to the officers, she refused to cooperate despite enormous reward offers. It was only after officers told her she could be charged for withholding information that she decided to cooperate. According to the lead prosecutor, she was a perfect witness:

she was amazing, she said -- first of all, she was with the defendant when he sold the computer to Glenn Roberts. She was there in the car. He walked up to Glenn Roberts' house and he sold him the computer. She took the police to the house where the computer was. She said, The guy that lives in that house has the computer. And the police knock on the door. Glenn Roberts comes to the door and says, what can I do for you? officers say, Do you have a computer? He says, Yes, I do. The police said, Bring it to me. He brought it to them, and it was the computer. They said, who gave it to you. And he said, Roberts said Marcellus williams. Marcellus was staying about three houses down living out of his car. Inside his car was Mrs. Gayle's calculator and Post Dispatch ruler in his car 15 months later. The computer, these are the things taken at the crime. The computer was found at Glenn Roberts' house about three doors down from his grandfather's house where he was staying in a car, a Buick, on the front yard or the side yard.

The prosecutor also tells us about the jailhouse informer:

Henry Cole said that the defendant told him that he jammed the knife in her neck and he twisted it and left it in her neck. And that's exactly how they found the body. And the knife was bent. And no one knew that. That was not on the news. That was not in the newspapers. The only people that knew that were the police. And cole had written it on a piece of paper while he was in the jail.

The lead prosecutor also informs us that the officers on the scene believed with certainty that the perpetrator wore gloves, due to spots left on the broken window. Which, of course, renders the entire dna subplot void, even if the lead prosecutor didn’t additionally inform us that he only learned about “touch DNA” in 2015!

On balance, I think he likely did it. But Cole's specificity raises some skepticism of his testimony for me. Would a murderer actually mention those details?

Not impossible, and I don't have a strong mental model of jailhouse confessions and what motivates them. But I can equally see the police thinking "this guy obviously did it, so we should intentionally leak these details to Cole to make sure we get him."

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