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.
Featured Stories
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
The first day of Cassie as a witness sheets more light on “freak-offs”
All eyes were on Casandra “Cassie” Ventura, when she took the position of witness on Tuesday, May 13, in a federal loud case of sexual trade against her ex -boyfriend, Sean “Diddy” Combs.
The 38-year-old singer R&B came to court Daniel Patrick Moynihan of the United States in Lower Manhattan in New York, with a wonderful tumor for teenagers, and testified with regard to the controversial relationship through which she was involved with Didda for about a decade, which began when she was 19 and newly signed his bad files for 10-lib, which was his bad concluded for a 10-album offer, 10-colbum offer, every 10-colbum, 10-lb contract, CNNIN NBCAND CBS Reported.
During her testimony, the singer described the years of alleged physical, emotional and sexual use at Diddy’s hands. She accused the disgraced rap rap of controlling each aspect of her life, from her funds to her musical occupation to the place where she lived, to what she would wear, and ultimately her sexual exploits.
She shed even more light on notorious drugs powered by drugs called “Freak-Offs”, through which alleged Diddy would force Ventura and others to perform sexual activities with men’s sexual employees. In vivid detail she described some acts to which she and others were forced, including he and other sexual employees urine throughout the mouth. The topic of infant oil appeared when she claimed that they’d be forced to devour oil for command and use Diddy, on average to 10 bottles for “freak-off”. According to her, recovering from the parties would take several days, which could last days.

“(Freak-Offs) became a job in which there was no place to do anything other than to recover and attempt to feel normal again,” she said: NPR.
Pasitals reported that she broke up in tears when she asked what she likes to participate in “Freak-offs” and didn’t answer practically anything.
“I felt quite terrible. I felt disgusting. I felt humiliated,” she said, consistent with CNN. “I had no words to show how terrible I felt. I couldn’t talk about it.”
Ventura claims that, allowing for one of the precise ways wherein wherein during which during which young she was, when she first entered the rapper’s orbit, she was completely inexperienced in navigating his demanding, brutal nature. She also admitted that at first she really fell in love with rapper and desperately wants his approval.
“I was so young and I didn’t have a vocabulary for some things we talked about. I just tried to understand it, just completely inexperienced,” she said, at NBC.
He also claims that Diddy directly thwarted her musical occupation during her relationship with the music director. Of the ten albums to which it was initially signed, despite the recording of a whole lot of songs, only one ever reached.
Although she settled a civil lawsuit outside the court inside a few hours after she had filed it almost two years ago, her testimony might need been provided by a broader context of claims that Diddy was racketing or conducted a criminal company to take care of up his sexual abuse. Ventura claims that she was intensively handled with members of Diddy’s staff, who handled many things, including funds, destroyed hotel rooms, and even monitored their injuries after many cases of physical abuse.

(Tagstransate) news
Crime
Diddy allegedly tried to kill a former boyfriend Cassie, prosecutors say in the sexual trade process
The sexual trade process for Sean “Diddy” Combs, 55, founding father of Bad Boy Records and the music mogel began on Monday morning in New York with statements opening each the defense team and the defense of COMPS. The trial has already began with unimaginable claims.
According to New York Daily News, In his comments opening US prosecutor Emily Johnson, he shared with the jury that the anger with the former Girl Cassie and the lack of control over her caused him to consider murder. Apparently, trying out that Cassie was dating one other person, Johnson claimed that Diddy called one in all his bodyguards and went to seek for a boy Cassie (at the moment), with a weapon, intending to kill a man.
“He took the weapon and took his bodyguard – one of his most loyal lieutenants – to wake up one of the employees of the accused in the middle of the night. The accused shouted that he was going to kill a man with whom she was Cassie,” said Johnson. Unable to find a man, Diddy set his view on a brutally assault on Cassa.

“He did what he did countless times earlier. He beat her brutally. Kicking her in the back and throwing her like Ragdoll. All this violence was not enough, but the accused had to make sure that he would have control over Cassie again. So he threatened her,” the accused told Cassie that he would supply you with the option to publicly release sex with sex when he kept her. Nights of her life. ”
Johnson’s opening remarks developed her plan to share twenty years of violence and abuse of each Cassie (Ventura) and other women who allegedly forced sex against their will, and ruthlessly defeated after they didn’t follow, amongst many other crimes. She also claimed that he had a tight ring of fogeys that were aware and complicity in Diddy’s crimes committee.
Diddy’s lawyer, Teny Geragos, said that Combs had committed domestic violence, but he was not at the trial for it, and the movies and data they receive would show consensual, intimate private relations, but no orders of any crimes.
“We accept the full responsibility that in this case there has been domestic violence. Domestic violence is not sexual trade. I want to say it again: domestic violence is not sexual trade. If he was accused of domestic violence, if he was accused of assaulting, he will not be here now,” said Geragos.
She added: “sexual trade, prostitution, tribute, these are federal crimes. Fees for various elements. He is simply not guilty of these crimes.”
Diddy didn’t plead all allegations against him, including sexual trade allegation, racketeers, transport of victims and sexual employees in terms of prostitution and all other related numbers. If he’s convicted, he’ll face prison with a very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very long time.

(Tagstranslat) sean Diddy combs
Crime
Sean “Diddy” Combs says he is “a bit nervous” when the sexual trade process begins
The federal sexual process of Sean “Diddy” Combs, whose extremely successful occupation was dotted by allegations of violence, began on Monday in New York with the alternative of a jury, which was briefly detained when the hip-hop entrepreneur said he was “a bit nervous” and needed a break in the bathroom.
Three dozen potential jury was questioned by judge Aruna Subramaanian about their response to the questionnaire, which is also to help determine whether or not they is perhaps honest and impartial at the trial through which violent and sexual movies will appear. Opening declarations and the starting of the testimony are scheduled for the next week.
The judge gave a possible sworn to a transient lived description of sexual trade and a conspiracy from tribute to Combs, telling them that he didn’t plead guilty and it was thought that this was not innocent.
At the end of the day, the jury pool was half its size, because some were excluded for personal reasons, resembling the inability to economically endure the process anticipated for two months or because their opinions or previous experience would threaten their objectivity.
The next thirty potential jurors were to be questioned on Tuesday. The jury was not going before Wednesday.
Throughout Monday, Combs, 55 years, sat along together together along together together together along together along together along along together together together together together together along together together along along together along together together together together along along together along along along together along together along along along along together together along together along together together together together together together together along together together together along along together together together together together along together along along together along together along together together together together together along together together together along together along together together together along along along together along along along together along along together along together together together along along along together together along together together together along along along along together together together together together along together along together along together along together along along along along together together together together together together together along along along together together together along together along along along together along together along along together along along together together along together together along together together along along along together together together together along along along together along together together together together along together along along together together along along along together together together together together together along along along along together along together together along along together together along along along together together together along together together together together together along along along along together together together together along together along along together together along together along along along together together together along together together along along together together together along together together along together together along together together along together together together along along together along along together together along along together along along together together together together together together together together together together together along along along along along together together with his lawyers in a sweater above a white shirt with a collar and gray pants that the judge allowed as a alternative of prison clothes. Since his arrest, it took place in a dismal federal blockade in Brooklyn. His hair and goat were almost fully gray because the dye is not allowed in prison.
Unlike the other latest loud celebrity processes, the Combs case won’t be broadcast live, because the federal courtroom doesn’t allow electronic recordings in the middle-what signifies that the artists of the sketch of the courtroom are the eyes of the public in the courtroom.
If he is convicted of all the allegations, he could face the maximum life in prison.

Several potential jury indicated that they saw press reports containing key evidence on this matter: a video with a hip-hop tycoon striking and kicking one amongst his prosecutors in the corridor in the hotel in Los Angeles in 2016. One potential juror described a stationary picture that she saw from the film as “condemning evidence.” This woman was rejected from the consideration.
After releasing one other juror, Combs asked for a break in the bathroom, telling the judge: “I’m sorry your honor, I’m a bit nervous today.”
One potential juror said that she published a “similar” film in social media by a comedian who joked about large amounts of oil for infants found by law enforcement agencies in one amongst the houses of Combs. Has not been released.
The 17-page indictment against Combs-which appears like an accusation document against the mafia leader or the head of the drug gang-he is confirmed that Combs have been involved in twenty years of racketeers of behavior towards women and others, with the help of people in his funeral and employees from his network of corporations.
Combs and his lawyers say he is innocent and every group sex was compatible. They say that there was no effort to force people to do it, and nothing that happened was a criminal rocket.
Prosecutors say that girls were manipulated in sexual ends in sexual results with sexual men, which the Combs called “freaks”. To keep women in a queue, prosecutors say that Combs used a mix of influence and violence: he suggested that he would increase their entertainment occupation in the event that they did what he asked – or breathe or not.

And when he didn’t get what he wanted, the indictment says that Combs and his colleagues resorted to violent deeds, including beating, kidnapping and arson. Once, in accordance with the indictment, he even hung someone from the balcony.
One of the 4 alleged victims of the testimony against Combs may not finally take the position of a witness, on Monday he revealed the assistant to the US prosecutor Maurene Comey. She told Subramanian that a lady’s lawyer had personal problems and it was difficult to get and it was clear if the woman would also appear.
“There is no special number that requires her testimony so that we can bear our burden,” said Comey.
Combs recognized one episode of violence, which is considered a key element of the prosecutor’s case. In 2016, the security camera recorded him that he defeated his ex -girlfriend, R&B Cassie singer, in the corridor of the hotel in Los Angeles. Cassie filed a lawsuit at the end of 2023, saying that Combs gave her years abuse, including beating and rape.
Associated Press normally doesn’t call individuals who claim that they were sexually abused, unless they report in public as Cassie, whose legal name is Casandra Ventura.

(Tagstotransate) Diddy
-
Press Release1 year ago
U.S.-Africa Chamber of Commerce Appoints Robert Alexander of 360WiseMedia as Board Director
-
Press Release1 year ago
CEO of 360WiSE Launches Mentorship Program in Overtown Miami FL
-
Business and Finance11 months ago
The Importance of Owning Your Distribution Media Platform
-
Business and Finance1 year ago
360Wise Media and McDonald’s NY Tri-State Owner Operators Celebrate Success of “Faces of Black History” Campaign with Over 2 Million Event Visits
-
Ben Crump1 year ago
Another lawsuit accuses Google of bias against Black minority employees
-
Theater1 year ago
Telling the story of the Apollo Theater
-
Ben Crump1 year ago
Henrietta Lacks’ family members reach an agreement after her cells undergo advanced medical tests
-
Ben Crump1 year ago
The families of George Floyd and Daunte Wright hold an emotional press conference in Minneapolis
-
Theater1 year ago
Applications open for the 2020-2021 Soul Producing National Black Theater residency – Black Theater Matters
-
Theater11 months ago
Cultural icon Apollo Theater sets new goals on the occasion of its 85th anniversary