Marcellus Williams, a Black client of the Innocence Project, is scheduled for execution Tuesday, September 24, 2024. Critical Resistance is joining the Innocence Project is calling upon all anti-prison advocates and prison industrial complex (PIC) abolitionists to take urgent action and call Missouri Governor Mike Parsons and demand the Governor stop Marcellus’s execution immediately.
For decades, study after study has found the same thing: the death penalty, like prisons in general, doesn’t make our communities safer.
- Race, place and poverty determine who dies and who lives. The most significant factor in who gets the death penalty is race. You are most likely to receive the death penalty if you are Black and the person killed is white.
- Missouri’s death penalty ranks fourth in the US, executing 99 people since 1976.
- Killing one person doesn’t make us safe. Maintaining the death penalty in 27 states, which the US is doing right now, doesn’t make us safe. Converting death sentences into life without parole sentences also doesn’t make us safe. The fact is, the whole prison system doesn’t make us safe. We need to say we don’t want this whole system, not just we don’t want this one moment in the system to play out this way.
Innocent or not, we must stop all executions.
TAKE ACTION NOW!
Call Governor Parsons: 417-373-3400
- Sample Script:
“Hello, my name is _______ and I am calling regarding the impending execution of Marcellus Williams, a client of the Innocence Project. Please do not let Missouri execute Marcellus. Killing this man will not make anyone safer. Missouri must stop this execution & invest in real safety for our communities: housing, jobs, education, healthcare, and freedom. Thank you.”
Visit the Innocence Project for more info & sign the petition: savemarcellus.org