Missouri Executes Marcellus Williams

The state of Missouri executed Marcellus Williams by lethal injection Monday evening over the objections of his prosecutor and the murder victim’s relatives, The Associated Press reported.

Earlier:

Advocates for a man set to be executed by the state of Missouri on Tuesday lodged desperate pleas for Republican Gov. Mike Parson to change course and grant an eleventh-hour reprieve in a case with such serious red flags that even the office that prosecuted the defendant wants his conviction overturned.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court denied a stay for Williams, one day after both Parson and the Missouri Supreme Court said they would not halt Williams’ killing by lethal injection—a method associated with botched executions—barring a last-minute change of heart by the governor.

“We wish we had better news. But as of now, Marcellus Williams is still scheduled to be executed by Missouri tonight at 6:00 pm Central for a crime he is totally innocent of,” the Innocence Project—which works to exonerate wrongfully convicted people—said in a social media post.

Williams, who is Black, was convicted in 2001 of murdering Felicia Gayle, a white woman, during a 1998 robbery. DNA found on the knife used to kill Gayle matched another man. However, Williams was convicted by a nearly all-white jury after St. Louis County prosecutors were permitted to preemptively strike half a dozen Black prospective jurors from service.

Earlier this year, St. Louis County Prosecutor Wesley Bell, a Democrat running for Congress, asked to vacate Williams’ conviction, citing “clear and convincing evidence” of his innocence including evidence contamination and the revelation that at least one potential juror was excluded because he was Black.

However, the Missouri Supreme Court unanimously ruled against stopping the execution, asserting that Williams’ lawyers “failed to demonstrate by clear and convincing evidence Williams’ actual innocence or constitutional error at the original criminal trial that undermines the confidence in the judgment of the original criminal trial.”

Following the ruling, Parson said that Williams “has exhausted due process and every judicial avenue, including over 15 hearings attempting to argue his innocence and overturn his conviction.”

Congresswoman Cori Bush (D-Mo.)—a death penalty opponent who was recently defeated by Bell in their district’s Democratic House primary—joined civil and human rights defenders in appealing to Parson to reconsider.

“A system that rules that an innocent man can be executed by the hands of the state is anything but just,” Bush said on social media. “Gov. Parson must reverse his disgraceful decision not to stop this inhumane execution and act now to save Marcellus Williams’ life.”

As NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund president and director-counsel Janai Nelson noted:

There is a groundswell of voices calling for either commutation or a temporary reprieve. As you know, these voices include the family of Felicia Gayle… Gayle’s family had communicated their “desire that the death penalty not be carried out in this case.” Mr. Williams has presented compelling evidence that he is innocent of Ms. Gayle’s murder. The perpetrator of this horrific crime left behind significant forensic evidence, including fingerprints, footprints, hair, and trace DNA on the murder weapon. None of this evidence matches Mr. Williams. The St. Louis County prosecuting attorney has recognized that Mr. Williams’ capital trial was marred by constitutional errors and the prosecution’s presentation of unreliable evidence, which undermine confidence in the judgment against him.

“I implore you to use your gubernatorial authority to grant Mr. Williams clemency, or, at a minimum, grant a reprieve until the underlying conviction can be investigated further and applicable law can be determined,” Nelson said.

As Amherst College law professor Austin Sarat noted in Slate Monday, the United States is currently “witnessing the worst execution spree in three decades.”

Republican-led states are set to carry out four state-sanctioned killings in addition to last week’s lethal injection of Freddie Owens in South Carolina, despite the key prosecution witness’ bombshell claim that the convicted man did not commit the murder for which he was put to death.

“This week’s execution spree should unsettle all Americans, whether or not they support the death penalty,” Sarat wrote. “It will offer further reasons for why capital punishment should be abolished everywhere in this country.”

As the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) notes on its website, capital punishment “carries the inherent risk of executing an innocent person.”

“Since 1973, at least 200 people who had been wrongly convicted and sentenced to death in the U.S. have been exonerated,” the group says, adding that it is “clear that innocent defendants will be convicted and sentenced to death with some regularity as long as the death penalty exists.”

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