The Daily Cartoon and Live Briefing: Monday, July 13, 2026

Notably: The trial of Jermaine Williams Sr. begins this morning. I’ll be covering it, gavel to gavel. His wife, his victim, Yolonda Williams, was a colleague of my wife’s at Flagler Cares where, among the ironies that may never be told in this trial, Yolonda cared for victims of domestic abuse, among others. She had been one going back to her mid-teens, at Jermaine’s hands. I have covered death penalty proceedings before, but most of them were during that brief window when the state Supreme Court had ruled Florida’s death penalty sentencing method unconstitutional, back when non-unanimous juries could recommend death, even though only unanimous juries may convict anyone of any offense, from stealing a piece of pizza to mass killings. For a time many individuals condemned to die had their sentences commuted, including three in Flagler County. Every time it happened, I cheered inwardly–not for the murderers. The commutation did not change their crime or their guilt. But for the state: each time it took a step back from barbarism, from being a murderer itself, in our name. Williams faces the death penalty. He’ll be tried by Jason Lewis, the assistant state attorney who does not lose. I won;t be cheering for the defense. No one will. Not after they see the video of the stabbing. Eighteen, nineteen stabs. Not after they hear–if they hear–about Jermaine’s torture of Yolonda from the time before they married. Why did she stay with him? Not for us to ask. Not even concerning a woman who took care of domestic violence victims, the question being the first step toward victimizing her all over again. Jermaine is on trial, not Yolonda. I’ll be rooting for Lewis during the trial phase. I have no doubt. I have no doubt about Jermaine’s guilt. It is written in his smug smirk every time he appears in court. I will not be cheering for Lewis during the penalty phase. Nor will I be cheering if and when I ravel to the state prison the day Williams is murdered in turn, in our name, if that day comes before my own death, considering the length of the appeals ahead. Jermaine is in his early 50s. He can run out the clock until his 70s, especially since DeSantis, that mass killer, will soon be out of the governor’s mansion. Something tells me Byron Donalds will not be as inclined to serially kill what’s left of death row. So there Jermaine will linger, where he should linger, since none of us knows whether killing him wouldn’t be a favor. What we know is prison. What we know is that our prisons are barbaric enough. Revenge makes barbarians of us all, it degrades us and the victim’s survivors, and does nothing to punish the murderer but for that moment of glee for some of the rest of us, a moment that vanishes anyway, no sooner than that morbid van drives out of the prison at Starke with the victim of the executed, on its way to the autopsy. That other irony. As if we needed know why he died. As if the medical examiner’s report could put a sheen of science on inhumanity.

The machinery crushed everything: you were killed discreetly, with a little shame and a lot of precision. (“La mécanique écrasait tout: on était tué discrète-ment, avec un peu de honte et beaucoup de précision.”)

–From Camus’ Stranger (1942).

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