A Dive Into An Unjust System: How Marcellus Williams is Just The Tip of The Iceberg

"And remember kids, the next time somebody tells you, "The government wouldn't do that," Oh yes, they would."

Marcellus Williams was murdered by lethal injection on September 24, 2024, a Tuesday. Even after there was evidence that completely exonerated him of the 1998 murder of social worker Felicia Gayle. Even after there were numerous pleas to Missouri Governor Mark Parsons, The Missouri State Supreme Court, and even the Supreme Court of the United States to halt the execution, Williams's fate was written.

In a typical American fashion, an innocent Black man who spent his entire life on death row faced a demise that was not meant for him. This further proves that the American prison system is not a system of rehabilitation but a system of economic profit.

Death penalties have been around since the very beginning of time. They can be traced all the way back to the Roman Empire. It was brought into the United States due to colonialism, as it was a British consequence.

The first recorded execution was conducted on Captain George Kendall in the Jamestown colony of Virginia in 1608. In 1612 Governor Thomas Dale enacted the Divine, Moral, and Martial Laws, allowing the death penalty for minor offenses. Some of these offenses included trading with Native Americans or stealing grapes.

It wasn't until the 1960s when it was raised, that under the Eighth Amendment, the death penalty was viewed as cruel and unusual punishment. On June 29, 1972, after the Furman v. Georgia case, it was ruled that there needed to be a suspension of the death penalty. This ruling led to 629 death row sentences being commuted, and 40 states voiding the death penalty.

However, states like Florida, rewrote their laws to reinstate the death penalty in 1988 as "capital punishment."

This all relates to an unjust system because even though Black Americans make up 13% of the population, 37% are currently incarcerated. This harmful unbalanced statistic leads back to an infamous former president, Ronald Reagan's "War on Drugs" campaign.

The "War on Drugs" campaign was supposed to be utilized to crack down on the amount of crack and cocaine that was exposed to American citizens. Some key features were increased penalties on drug offenses, increased enforcement, and the overall time served for drug offenders.

Through this, mandatory minimum sentences were imposed and they were abnormally high. The disproportionate police presence in Black neighborhoods led to Black Americans suffering more than their white counterparts. Throughout the entire campaign, it was no longer about stopping drugs. It was about using Black people as criminals for a statement.

According to the Brennan Center For Justice, The Violent Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1994 allowed 13-year-olds to be tried as adults in court, and it increased police presence. A total of 100,000 new cops were assigned to the streets to crack down on drug use.

Even though the National Insititute for Drug Abuse reported that there were more white cocaine users than Black cocaine users, there was a ghastly amount of Black people being arrested.

This allowed for the destruction of Black families and communities. Not only that, but these non-violent offenders were facing anywhere between 10 and 30 years of incarceration despite having low amounts of drugs on their persons. Allowing incarceration rates to jump from 50,000 people to 400,000 people.

So, due to the mass amount of Black people being arrested, the public prisons started to overflow, and there needed to be a solution. That solution? Private prisons.

Private prisons were put in place to reduce the overcrowding in public prisons. Corporations that run these prisons are in contract with the government. Not only that, but they gain revenue by the amount of bodies in the cells and also by the inmate's time served.

CoreCivic, formerly Corrections Corporation of America, was introduced in 1983. Under the Reagan Administration, there was an increase in the number of private prisons across America because of the ineffectiveness of the "War on Drugs" campaign. This allowed for more prisons and helped combat the overcrowding of public prisons that the Reagan Administration allowed to happen.

One of the founders of CoreCivic, Terrell Don Hutto, the former Director of the Arkansas Department of Corrections, ran a cotton plantation in 1967. It was made up of Black convicts, and he gained revenue through their use of free labor.

This model allowed private prisons to find financial gain through the labor of the inmates. This labor can include construction, agriculture, manufacturing, etc.

And while the use of labor on people who aren't being compensated is illegal, it is not. The Thirteenth Amendment states, "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." This allows for the loophole that allows for prison labor.

So any manual free labor that is being completed by a person who is not in prison is illegal. However, in the event that the person is incarcerated, it is completely legal. Allowing for prisons, both private and public, to profit off the amount of inmates and their prison sentences.

Private prisons have higher rates of people of color, they are under federal jurisdiction, and they offer short sentences. On average, an inmate can generate between $30 and $200. However, it does vary on the state and the type of facilities.

All of this reverts to the fact that prisons were never for rehabilitation purposes but for profit, especially when you are holding the inmates on death row, even if evidence proves their innocence.

According to statistics done in 2014, 42% of Black people are on death row, while 54% are wrongfully convicted and still sentenced to death.

While private prisons do not hold death row inmates, they are responsible for an alarming number of Black people in jail. Due to their practices and foundations, they are accountable for keeping inmates imprisoned for long periods due to them gaining more revenue. Because at the end of the day, these prisoners are held captive like animals and are reverting to violence because of how they are treated.

They are forced into prison gangs because of the narrative they need protection; they become violent because they don't have basic human necessities.

The American prison system, private or public, is not meant for rehabilitation, and, sadly, another innocent Black man has fallen into this system of mistreatment and economic dirtiness.

Due to the amount of excessive police presence in predominantly Black neighborhoods, current laws that affect Black communities at disproportionate rates to white counterparts, and the systemic racism on all fronts allow for these things to happen.

It allows for the murder of Marcellus Williams, the murder of George Stinney Jr., Troy Davis, and millions of others.

Zahiyah Carter is a Gen Z writer based in Dallas. Her work focuses on topics that matter most to young people, from social issues and pop culture to technology and beyond.