William Weaver received a death sentence for a murder conviction in the state of Missouri; the sentence was received for the 1987 murder of a drug case witness named Charles Taylor. William Weaver, along with another man, shot and killed Charles Taylor over a dispute pertaining to a number of drug houses. The Eight Circuit Court reversed Weaver's sentence based on an argument presented by Weaver that during the closing remarks of the case the prosecuting attorney, George R. Westfall, posed subversive comments that biased the jury before the jurors reached their final determination in the case. The Eight Circuit Court founded the reversal based on the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act.
According to the argument, a writ of habeas corpus offered by Weaver's attorney, the prosecutor of Weaver's case had advised jurors that he fully believed that the death penalty was a justified act and that the jurors had an obligation to give Weaver a death sentence. The prosecutor also advised the jurors that in the act of sentencing Weaver to death they would be dissuading others from executing similar crimes and that if the jury did not come back with a death sentence verdict, the death penalty should not even exist: such arguments were believed to provoke the jury into making the decision for the death penalty handed down to Weaver. When the Supreme Court addressed the case it was dismissed, leaving the decision of the Eight Circuit Court to stand, and Weaver managed to obtain a new sentence hearing.
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