Marcellus Williams Joins George Floyd in The Left’s Pantheon of Martyrs
But like most things they push, the Left always takes it too far and lets perfect be the enemy of the good. Criminals like Williams and Floyd must be canonized as saints condemned by evil.
While the Left constantly claims it is conservatives who want to turn back the clock, the case of Marcellus Williams shows they just can’t let 2020 go.
Williams was just executed by the state of Missouri and activists are already trying to turn him into the next George Floyd. The NAACP wasted no time engaging in highly racialized language, stating “Tonight, Missouri lynched another innocent black man” and “we were founded exactly because of people like [Missouri] Governor Parson who perpetuate violence against innocent black people.”
News media breathlessly reported the story of a tragic murder by a corrupt and racist Republican and activists both online and in person flooded the governor's office with petitions to stay the execution.
It’s a leftist’s dream! A black man wrongfully murdered by a white Republican governor? Grab the baseball bats and black masks, we’re going rioting! Except Wallace’s case is far less complicated than Floyd’s, and the idea he’s innocent is utter nonsense. The state’s case against Williams was iron tight and painted him in a less than flattering light.
From the court documents, Williams broke into the house of Felicia Gayle seemingly seeking to rob her. He broke into the house by shattering a window when no one answered the door, as Gayle was showering upstairs. Williams waited with a kitchen knife for Gayle to come downstairs. He then stabbed her to death, cleaned up, and stole multiple items from her home.
How do we know he did it? He graphically confessed his crimes to his girlfriend and then to his cellmate after he was arrested on unrelated charges. That cellmate later reported that Williams had confessed to the police with corroborating details that only the killer could have known.
Not enough for you? How about the fact that Williams sold Gayle’s laptop proving he had possession of it? And Gayle’s purse was in his car? And that he disposed of bloody clothes in the days following the murder?
Seems pretty cut and dry to me.
And frankly, it’s pretty obvious it was cut and dry to the defense too since they didn’t ever question the validity of the evidence, just that there were “ten points of trial court error relating to evidentiary rulings, voir dire, instructional error, and closing arguments.” In other words, procedural errors unrelated to the massively incriminating confessions and evidence.
Indeed, the latest canard activists have pulled out is that the victim’s family didn’t want him to receive the death penalty. But that’s not to say they don’t think he’s guilty. They certainly did and only entered into an agreement with the prosecutor’s office after decades of back and forth on Williams’ punishment.
Williams was a criminal who received justice. But it is incredibly telling that the Left has attempted to make him a martyr in the face of overwhelming evidence he was a bad person. It’s a repeated issue they encounter as they prop up criminals like Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, and of course, St. Floyd himself.
One can make the argument that the death penalty or unintended death is not an appropriate response to criminality. That’s an argument I’m amenable to. But like most things they push, the Left always takes it too far and lets perfect be the enemy of the good. It’s not enough to say “Hey, why don’t we discuss whether an imperfect actor like the state should be in the business of killing people,” instead these criminals must be lionized and any question of their character shouted down.
Indeed, while many were initially horrified at George Floyd’s death, that horror quickly shifted towards the violent race riots that exploded across the country and saw places like my hometown of Portland burn.
Why choose such scum of the earth to be your martyrs? I believe it’s the leftist desire to signal their virtue and demonstrate their unwavering loyalty to the cause. It plays out in shibboleths like the oft repeated “transwomen are women” or a fanatical assertion that black people are slaughtered like cattle daily in American streets. It’s utterly insane, and yet it shows the lengths one will go to signal affiliation with the leftist tribe.
In a 2014 blog post, author Scott Alexander wrote “in the more general case, people can use moral decisions to signal how moral they are. In this case, they choose a disastrous decision based on some moral principle. The more suffering and destruction they support, and the more obscure a principle it is, the more obviously it shows their commitment to following their moral principles absolutely.”
That principle applies plainly here. Williams’ guilt was clear. And yet, supporting a convicted murderer simply because he was an oppressed black man plays into a perverse savior complex that’s all too common on the left. Facts and evidence be damned, it’s all about how I feel.
Marcellus Williams will not be the last cause célèbre by activists looking for a cause. There will be others, stained by innumerable sins, who will be taken up as scions of America’s failures.
I hope people remember this moment, where leftists tried to paint a cold-blooded killer as some sort of victim. And remember that if it were them on the other side, the left would have no problem trampling on their grave in the name of social justice.