Alaskans Against the Death Penalty

Merck Chief Executive Officer Kenneth C. Frazier (pictured) resigned from the president’s American Manufacturing Council on August 14, saying “[a]s CEO of Merck and as a matter of personal conscience, I feel a responsibility to take a stand against intolerance and extremism.” In a statement posted on Merck’s Twitter account, Frazier said: "Our country's strength stems from its diversity and the contributions made by men and women of different faiths, races, sexual orientations and political beliefs. America's leaders must honor our fundamental values by clearly rejecting expressions of hatred, bigotry and group supremacy, which run counter to the American ideal that all people are created equal." It was not the first time that Frazier, the only African-American CEO of a major pharmaceutical company, has spoken out on matters of social justice. Following his successful pro bono representation of James Willie "Bo" Cochran, a black, Alabama death-row prisoner wrongly convicted of the murder of a white grocery store manager, Frazier wrote that the case showed him that "there can be no fair and consistent application of the death penalty under the current system." Frazier undertook Cochran's representation while a partner at the Philadelphia law firm, Drinker, Biddle & Reath, and remained on the case after joining Merck. Cochran won a new trial after Frazier and his team showed that, in two prior trials, the prosecutor had systematically removed 31 of the 35 potential black jurors because he believed they were less "reliable" and more likely to acquit black defendants. Frazier initially doubted Cochran's proclamation of innocence: witnesses inside the store described the suspect as a black man and, as police converged on the scene, heard a gunshot coming from a nearby trailer park, less than one mile from where Cochran was found with a gun and cash. But Frazier discovered during the post-conviction proceedings that there was no physical evidence against his client, the only bullet recovered near the scene did not match Cochran's gun, and the fatal bullet could not be tested because police had cut it out of the victim's body and removed it before delivering the body to the medical examiner. "He was convicted," explains Frazier, "despite evidence suggesting an accidental police shooting and cover-up." Even though the state only had circumstantial evidence against him, Cochran was tried three separate times for the killing (the first time, there was a mistrial, and the second time his conviction was reversed on appeal). "Although some maintain the criminal justice system is color-blind," Frazier wrote, "the reality is that race plays a substantial role in the judicial process." In Cochran's retrial, a jury that Frazier says "was not selected primarily on the basis of race" acquitted him in less than an hour. 

(M. Terrill, “Amid corporate career, Merck CEO exonerated man on death row,” CNBC, Aug. 14, 2017; M. Harper, “What You Should Know About Ken Frazier, The CEO Who Just Quit A Trump Advisory Council,” Forbes, Aug. 14, 2017; K. Frazier, "Dying for Representation: Promoting Justice Through Pro Bono Participation," Univ. of Toledo Law Rev., Spring 2004.) See New Voices, Innocence, and Race.

After having previously granted Marcellus Williams (pictured) a stay of execution in 2015 to permit DNA testing in his case, the Missouri Supreme Court on August 15 summarily denied him a new execution stay, despite recently obtained results of that testing that support his innocence claim. Williams—who was convicted and sentenced to death in 2001 by a nearly all-white St. Louis County jury in the highly publicized stabbing death of a former St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter—presented scientific evidence that excluded him as a contributor to DNA on the knife used to kill Felicia Gayle. Williams had filed a motion in the state court to stay his scheduled August 22 execution, along with a petition seeking the appointment of a Special Master to hold hearings on his innocence claim. His petition was supported by reports from two DNA experts who had determined that DNA evidence on the knife did not match Williams or Gayle, but came from an unknown third person. One expert concluded that Williams "could not have contributed to the detected [DNA] profile" and the other found "a clear exclusion of Marcellus Williams from the knife handle." The petition alleged that the "physical evidence collected from the crime scene”—which included fingernail scrapings from the victim, who had been stabbed more than 40 times—“did not match and could not be linked to" Williams. Williams was convicted and sentenced to death based on the testimony of a jailhouse informant and a prostitute who was an admitted crack addict. He has never been provided an evidentiary hearing on the DNA results. The Missouri Supreme Court denied his petition without any written opinion within one day of its filing, and before Williams had an opportunity to respond to the State's opposition. Kent Gipson, one of Williams's lawyers, said the defense plans to seek review in the U.S. Supreme Court. "It certainly would give most reasonable people pause to say, 'Should you be executing somebody when you've got reasonable evidence suggesting another man did it?,'" Gibson said. Williams also has a case pending in federal court arguing that he should be permitted to re-open his habeas proceedings because he can show he is innocent; he was denied relief in the federal district court and is currently appealing that denial to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. In earlier federal habeas corpus proceedings, the district court had overturned Williams’s death sentence, finding that his trial lawyer had failed to investigate and present significant mitigating evidence relating to Williams’s history of mental deficiencies and chronic abuse throughout his childhood. That decision, however, was reversed by the Eighth Circuit in a split 2-1 decision. Williams had also previously raised a claim alleging that St. Louis County prosecutors had a pattern and practice of striking black prospective jurors, including 6 of the 7 African Americans it had the opportunity to empanel in his case.

A Missouri Supreme Court justice noted in another St. Louis County capital case "a fairly repetitive pattern" in which St. Louis County "has a substantial African-American community" yet there are "still all white juries and that's not mathematically probable." This issue was presented to the U.S. Supreme Court in Herbert Smulls’s death-penalty case in 2014, but the Court declined to review the issue and Smulls was executed. 

(J. Salter, "Missouri Supreme Court Rejects Request to Stop Execution," Associated Press, Aug. 15, 2017; E. Hunzinger, "Missouri Supreme Court denies request for stay of execution," KBIA, Aug. 15, 2017; A. Cohen, "Missouri Executed This Man While His Appeal Was Pending in Court," The Atlantic, Feb. 1, 2014.) Read Williams's Petition to the Missouri Supreme Court. See Innocence and Race.