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Comment by knodi123 | Hacker News Reader

> Both of these individuals were known fabricators

Careful- it we're considering their history, then Mr Williams has a history of over a dozen counts of armed violence, burglary, robbery, and assault.

> this is hearsay and not evidence

Conflicting reports say that Asano provided verified information that had not been publicized. And Asano refused a cash reward for relaying the confessions she had heard. Regardless,

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/3501

> Nothing contained in this section shall bar the admission in evidence of any confession made or given voluntarily by any person to any other person without interrogation by anyone, or at any time at which the person who made or gave such confession was not under arrest or other detention

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I would think the far more compelling detail is the one you overlooked:

> Their statements were inconsistent with their own prior statements, with each other’s accounts, and with the crime scene evidence, and none of the information they provided could be independently verified.

Not only were the two known liars, but their accounts could not be verified, and they conflict with each other as well as the existing evidence. That seems enough reason to me to call their testimony into question.

Also, I'm a little curious about your assertion:

> Conflicting reports say that Asano provided verified information that had not been publicized

When TFA specifically included the following:

> neither revealed any information that was not either included in media accounts about the case or already known to the police.

That, coupled with the fact that apparently none of the evidence at the scene was linked to Marcellus Williams makes me wonder how he was ever convicted in the first place. If we can take TFA at its word, the whole thing smells wrong.

TFA is published by The Innocence Project, which obviously only presents one side of the story.

I was also using a statement from the governor,

https://governor.mo.gov/press-releases/archive/state-carry-o...

who makes some assertions which contradict the innocence project's.

Did they explain why they convened a board to research the topic to get to the bottom of this and then disbanded the board before they finished? Seems kind of shady when the government says "We are not sure, we need to do more research before we do this" and then never actually do that research and just kill someone?

Either you trust the government, and agree that they should have waited.

Or you don't trust the government, in which case you really can't trust them to kill someone.

So which is it?

The previous governor stayed the execution and created the commission to investigate which lasted 6 years until the new governor was elected. The new governor disbanded the commission. They were from different political parties and probably had different views on the death penalty / the use of state resources.

So you agree they should have waited.

Gotcha. Thanks!

The quote

> neither revealed any information that was not either included in media accounts about the case or already known to the police.

from The Innocence Project seems carefully worded to imply that they didn't say anything that mattered, while still leaving open that they provided information that the police had, but which had not be publicly released.

It's worded that way as if one side of the interview knows something, it can easily leak to the other side intentionally or accidentally.

Whereas the Governor’s statement does say that information provided to the police by one witness was not known publicly.

> When speaking with law enforcement, the jailhouse informant provided information about the crime that was not publicly available, yet consistent with crime scene evidence and Williams’ involvement.

This is hard to fake and seems like pretty compelling evidence that the informant is telling the truth.

https://governor.mo.gov/press-releases/archive/state-carry-o...

> Careful- it we're considering their history, then Mr Williams has a history of over a dozen counts of armed violence, burglary, robbery, and assault.

This is all superfluous to the question of the credibility of the two witnesses. It isn't about being "fair" and treating Williams and the two witnesses the same -- one is on trial, the others are not.

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