Marcellus Williams’s execution was a tragedy — hopefully the last of its kind 

On Tuesday night, the state of Missouri executed Marcellus Williams. It was a legally sanctioned murder. 

As the Washington Post put it, he was “convicted of a 1998 murder that he said he did not commit.” The evidence suggested that Williams should not have met his end this way. Even the St. Louis County Prosecutor’s Office, which originally secured the death sentence, did not want that sentence carried out.  

Williams’s fate was tangled up in a mess of mistakes and legalisms that obscured what should have been obvious.