Crime
Missouri death row inmate agrees to new guilty plea in plea deal that calls for life in prison without possibility of parole
CLAYTON, Mo. (AP) — A Missouri death row inmate withdrew his claim of innocence Wednesday and filed a new plea of not guilty as part of a plea agreement in search of a change to his sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
However, the Missouri Attorney General’s Office opposes the new sentence and intends to appeal in order to allow Marcellus Williams’s execution scheduled for September 24 to go ahead.
The complicated turn of events got here on the day that St. Louis County District Judge Bruce Hinton was to oversee a hearing requested by prosecutor Wesley Bell to overturn Williams’ first-degree murder conviction in the 1998 slaying of Lisha Gayle. Bell cited DNA testing, unavailable on the time of the crime, that found one other person’s DNA — not Williams’ — on the murder weapon.
After a protracted delay with lawyers meeting behind closed doors, Matthew Jacober, a special prosecutor with the St. Louis County District Attorney’s Office, announced that even newer DNA tests released Monday showed contamination from the handling of the gun by a former deputy prosecutor and investigator. The contaminated evidence made it inconceivable to prove that the killer was another person.
“The murder weapon was used without proper procedures,” Jacober said. The misuse occurred several years before Bell took office.
Williams agreed to an Alford plea, which isn’t an admission of guilt but acknowledges there’s enough evidence to convict him. Under an agreement with St. Louis County prosecutors, Williams entered the plea Wednesday. He shall be sentenced Thursday — the agreement calls for life in prison without the possibility of parole. Williams also agreed not to appeal.
“Marcellus Williams is an innocent man, and nothing in today’s plea agreement changes that fact,” Williams’ attorney, Tricia Bushnell, said in an announcement. She noted that Gayle’s family supports overturning the death penalty and that the guilty plea “brings some finality to the family.”
But an appeal isn’t any guarantee Williams won’t be executed. Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey is appealing to the Missouri Supreme Court as he seeks to proceed with the execution, arguing that the district court lacks the authority to overturn the state Supreme Court’s decision to set an execution date.
“Throughout the legal games, the defense created a false narrative of innocence to protect a convicted murderer from the death penalty and advance their political goals,” Bailey said in an announcement. “Because of the defense’s failure to exercise due diligence in reviewing evidence that supposedly supported their case, the victims have been forced to relive their terrible loss for the past six years.”
Williams, 55, was hours away from execution in August 2017 when then-Gov. Eric Greitens, a Republican, granted a stay after DNA tests, unavailable on the time of the killing, showed that DNA on the knife matched another person, not Williams.
This evidence prompted Bell to reconsider the case.
“This previously unheard evidence, coupled with the relative paucity of other credible evidence to support guilt, and the additional considerations of ineffective counsel and racial discrimination in jury selection, cast an inexorable doubt upon Mr. Williams’ conviction and sentence,” Bell’s motion stated.
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Williams, who’s black, was convicted and sentenced to death by a jury of 11 white people and one black person.
A 2021 Missouri law allows prosecutors to file a motion to overturn a conviction they imagine was unfair. The law led to the exoneration of three men who spent many years in prison, including Christopher Dunn last month.
The Missouri Supreme Court set an execution date of June 4, hours after ruling that Gov. Mike Parsons, a Republican, had the correct to disband a commission of inquiry convened by Greitens after he halted his execution in 2017.
The inquiry, made up of five retired judges, never issued a ruling or reached a conclusion on whether the new DNA evidence exonerated Williams. Parson disbanded the commission in June 2023, saying it was time to “move on.”
In addition to Dunn, who spent 34 years behind bars for the death of a 15-year-old St. Louis boy, a Missouri law allowing prosecutors to challenge convictions led to the discharge of two other men — Kevin Strickland and Lamar Johnson. Bailey was not attorney general when Strickland’s case went to trial, but his office opposed overturning the convictions of Dunn and Johnson.
Bailey also opposed efforts to overturn the conviction of Sandra Hemme, who spent 43 years in prison for murder, although that case was selected appeal fairly than by a prosecutor. A judge ruled in June that Hemme needs to be freed. Bailey has filed multiple appeals to try to keep her behind bars, but Hemme was released in July.
Strickland was freed in 2021 after serving greater than 40 years for three slayings in Kansas City after a judge ruled he was wrongly convicted in 1979. In 2023, a St. Louis judge overturned Johnson’s conviction. He had served nearly 28 years for a killing he all the time maintained he didn’t commit.
Williams was the primary death row inmate to have his claim of innocence heard by a judge for the reason that 2021 law was passed. Several other individuals who have been exonerated showed up in the courtroom to support him, including one other former death row inmate, Joseph Amrine, who spent 17 years on death row before being freed in 2003 after the Missouri Supreme Court ruled there was no credible evidence linking him to the killing of one other inmate.
Prosecutors in Williams’ trial said he broke into Gayle’s suburban St. Louis home on Aug. 11, 1998, heard water running in the shower and located a big butcher knife. When Gayle went downstairs, she was stabbed 43 times. Her purse and her husband’s laptop were stolen. Gayle, who was white, was a social employee who had previously worked as a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Authorities say Williams stole the jacket to hide blood on his shirt. Williams’ girlfriend asked him why he was wearing the jacket on a hot day. The girlfriend said she later saw the laptop in the automotive and that Williams sold it a day or two later.
Prosecutors also cited testimony from Henry Cole, who shared a St. Louis cell with Williams in 1999 while Williams was imprisoned on unrelated charges. Cole told prosecutors that Williams had confessed to the killing and provided details about it.
Williams’ attorneys responded that each the girl and Cole are convicted felons with a $10,000 reward for their killing.
Crime
Sean “Diddy” Combs faces five new sexual assault trials
Several more plaintiffs got here forward this week accusing rap mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs of sexual abuse. On November 19, three men and two women filed separate complaints against the Bad Boy Records founder through Tony Buzbee, a lawyer who previously said he would represent greater than 100 clients accusing Combs of misconduct.
“For years, Combs and his companies have engaged in a persistent and pervasive pattern of violence against women, men and minors,” the entire complaints read: in keeping with People magazine. “This abuse was at times verbal, emotional, physical and sexual. As part of his pattern of molestation, Combs manipulated both men and women into participating in highly orchestrated performances of sexual activity, with both prostitutes and unsuspecting partygoers.”
The new plaintiffs include an unidentified man who claims the rapper sexually assaulted him when he was 39 years old. At a house party in New York in 2022, the plaintiff alleged that he was given a drink that left him feeling disoriented and uncontrolled. his body, which ultimately caused him to lose consciousness.
When he regained consciousness, he recalls being in a “dark bedroom with black walls, on a bed with black sheets”, where he realized that Combs was “sodomizing him”. The plaintiff claims he fought with the rapper before leaving the party.
Other male plaintiffs, including an unnamed former actor, remember feeling disoriented, passing out and waking up as Combs sexually assaulted them. With allegations dating back to 2001, all five complaints said Combs’ alleged abuse was “shockingly typical” since the star believed he was “above the law.”
“That said, Mr. Combs vehemently and categorically denies as false and defamatory any claim that he sexually abused anyone, including minors,” attorney Erica Wolff added in a press release. “He looks forward to proving his innocence and defending himself in court where the truth will be determined by evidence, not speculation.”
Combs is currently in federal custody awaiting trial on criminal charges including sex trafficking and racketeering. The star’s trial is scheduled to happen in May 2025.
Crime
Founder of an AI Tech startup accused of fraud and combining numbers with investors
Joanna Smith-Griffin, 33, CEO of startup AllHere Education, Inc. dealing with AI education accused of defrauding investors.
The Southern District of New York prosecuted Smith-Griffin securities fraud, wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. The grand jury indictment alleged that Smith-Griffin lied concerning the education platform’s funds and posed as a financial consultant to supply false information to investors. While acting as a financial consultant for AllHere Education, Smith-Griffin is accused of falsifying the corporate’s financial records mislead potential investors and inflate the worth of her company and its revenues.
AllHere Education is an AI-powered learning platform utilized in primary and secondary schools. Smith-Griffin has had little success integrating the K-12 platform into individual school districts in California and Georgia. However, the principal didn’t secure long-term contracts with school districts. She used these short-term partnerships to misrepresent to investors the reach and financial success of AllHere Education.
Smith-Griffin told potential AllHere investors that AllHere generated about $3.7 million in revenue in 2020, about $2.5 million in money and has major school district customers similar to New York City Department of Education (“NYC DOE”) and Atlanta Public Schools. In fact, AllHere generated roughly $11,000 in revenue in 2020, had roughly $494,000 in money, and had no contracts with many of the clients it represented, including the NYC DOE and Atlanta Public Schools.
Smith-Griffin continued to boost capital to support the startup, raising one other $10 million in funding. When the corporate collapsed financially, Smith-Griffin allegedly used the money injection to pay for an extravagant three-day wedding in Florida and a residence in North Carolina.
FBI Deputy Director James E. Dennehy commented on Smith-Griffin’s decision to prioritize her personal aspirations over the needs of an educational platform.
“Her alleged actions impacted the potential to improve the learning environment in core school districts by selfishly prioritizing personal expenses,” he said.
Smith-Griffin faces a compulsory two years in prison for the identity theft charge and a maximum of 20 years for every fraud charge. AllHere Education is currently in Chapter 7 bankruptcy.
Crime
Prosecutors say Sean “Diddy” Combs is trying to obstruct justice by heading to prison
NEW YORK (AP) — Sean “Diddy” Combs was trying to reach potential witnesses and influence public opinion while in prison in a bid to influence potential jurors in an upcoming sex trafficking trial, prosecutors said in a court filing during which they urged a judge to deny his latest bail request.
The government charges were filed Friday evening in federal court in Manhattan, which opposed the music mogul’s latest offer of $50 million bail. A bail hearing is scheduled for next week.
Prosecutors wrote that a review of recorded phone calls Combs made while in prison shows that he asked relations to contact potential victims and witnesses and urged them to create a “narrative” to influence the jury pool. They say he also encouraged the use of promoting strategies to influence public opinion.
“The defendant has demonstrated time and time again – even while in custody – that he’ll flagrantly and repeatedly disregard the foundations so as to improperly influence the consequence of his case. In other words, the defendant has demonstrated that he can’t be trusted to abide by the terms and conditions,” prosecutors wrote in a press release containing redactions.
Prosecutors wrote that from his behavior it might be inferred that Combs wanted to blackmail victims and witnesses into remaining silent or providing testimony helpful to his defense.
Combs’ lawyers didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Prosecutors said Combs, 55, began breaking the foundations almost immediately after being taken into custody Metropolitan Prison Center in Brooklyn after his September arrest.
He pleaded not guilty to the costs brought against him he abused and molested women for years with the assistance of a network of collaborators and employees, while silencing victims through blackmail and violence, including kidnapping, arson and physical beatings.
Two judges found he was a danger to the community and a flight risk.
His lawyers recently filed a 3rd bail application after rejecting two previous attempts, including a $50 million bail offer.
In their motion, they cited modified circumstances, including latest evidence, that they believed justified Combs’ release so he could higher prepare for his May 5 trial.
However, prosecutors said defense lawyers created the most recent bail proposal based on evidence provided to them by prosecutors, and the brand new material was already known to defense lawyers after they submitted previous bail applications.
In their presentation to the judge, prosecutors said Combs’ behavior in prison shows he must remain locked up.
For example, they said, Combs asked relations to plan and execute a social media campaign around his birthday “with the intent of influencing a potential jury in this criminal proceeding.”
He encouraged his children to post a video on their social media accounts of them gathering to have a good time his birthday, he added.
He then monitored statistics on the jail, including audience engagement, and “explicitly discussed with the family how to ensure the film would have the desired impact on potential jury members in this case,” they said.
The government also alleged that Combs made clear in other conversations that he intended to anonymously publish information that he believed would help him defend against the costs.
“Defendant’s efforts to impede the fairness of these proceedings also include his persistent efforts to contact potential witnesses, including victims of violence, who could provide strong testimony against him,” prosecutors wrote.
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