On Taking A Life

Hi,

I didn’t really intend this to be the case when I started Webworm, but this is the place where most of my ideas emerge.

I guess that shouldn’t be too surprising — Tickled started as a series of three blogs on 3News.co.nz (long dead) in 2014, and Mister Organ was a series of written articles over on the excellent The Spinoff.

Needless to say, there are now Webworm pieces I am developing into other things — and I have you to thank for that. It takes so much fucking effort to make things out of nothing. I don’t make documentaries or podcasts that are based on a book or a New Yorker piece written by someone else: I try to find new stuff. New stories. And that takes money and resources and you are kind enough to let me do this for a living.

So thank you.

With that in mind, I wanted to share the short audio documentary I created for Flightless Bird about the execution of a quite possibly innocent man, Marcellus “Khaliifah” Williams.

I travelled to Jefferson City, Missouri, as both the victim’s family and the original prosecutor in the case urged lawmakers to halt the execution — saying terrible mistakes had been made in the case.

This was all based on the reporting I did for Webworm back in September last year.

Some of you are Flightless Bird listeners and will have heard this already, but I figure plenty of you aren’t.

I felt proud of how this turned out and wanted to share it with you. It’s just the audio documentary — no yapping from any podcast hosts.

This reporting wouldn’t have been possible without you. So thank you.

Finally, I wanted to note that January 20, President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order to implement a fed­er­al death penal­ty. Looking back on my time in Jefferson City, this fills me with fucking horror.

David.

Me speaking to Marcellus Williams Jr. about his father.

Me with some of Marcellus Williams’ supporters, outside the prison.

A petition, asking for a stay of execution, is delivered to the Capitol building in Jefferson City.