The execution of Marcellus Williams is set to go ahead as scheduled Tuesday after the Missouri Supreme Court and the state’s governor both rejected requests to stay the proceedings.
A lawyer for Williams supported Monday The state Supreme Court is expected to halt lethal injection because a lawyer blocked a black man he said looked like the defendant from serving on the jury. Williams is scheduled to be executed at 6 p.m. Tuesday for the 1998 stabbing death of Lisha Gayle in University City, a St. Louis suburb.
Williams, 55, has maintained his innocence. But his attorney did not pursue that charge Monday in the state’s highest court, focusing instead on alleged procedural errors in jury selection and the prosecution’s alleged misuse of the murder weapon.
The state Supreme Court should “correct an injustice” either by ruling that a prosecutor wrongly excluded a potential juror based on race or by sending the case back to a lower court to decide that issue, attorney Jonathan Potts argued on behalf of Williams.
Missouri Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s office argued for the execution to go ahead. The trial prosecutor denied he was racially motivated in removing potential jurors and did nothing improper — given procedures at the time — by touching the murder weapon without gloves after it had already been tested by a forensics lab, Assistant Attorney General Michael Spillane said in closing arguments before the state Supreme Court.
Williams’ lawyers also have an appeal before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Williams had also asked Republican Gov. Mike Parson for clemency, a request that focused on how Gayle’s relatives wanted the sentence commuted to life in prison without the possibility of parole. But Parson said Monday that the execution would proceed after the state Supreme Court rules.
“Capital cases are among the most difficult we handle in the governor’s office, but when it comes to this, I respect the law and have confidence in the integrity of our justice system,” Parson said in a statement Monday. “Mr. Williams has exhausted due process and every avenue of justice, including over 15 hearings in an attempt to assert his innocence and overturn his conviction. No jury or court, including at the trial, appellate and Supreme Court levels, has ever found merit in Mr. Williams’ claims of innocence. Ultimately, his guilty verdict and death sentence were upheld. Nothing in the actual facts of this case led me to believe that Mr. Williams is innocent, and as such, Mr. Williams’ sentence will be carried out as ordered by the Supreme Court.”
The NAACP had also urged Parson to stop the execution.
The execution would be the third in Missouri this year and the 100th since the state resumed executions in 1989.
Williams was less than a week away from his execution in January 2015 when the state Supreme Court overturned it, giving his lawyers time to conduct additional DNA testing.
He was hours away from being executed in August 2017 when then-Governor Eric Greitens, a Republican, granted a stay after reviewing DNA evidence that found no trace of Williams’ DNA on the knife used in the killing. Greitens appointed a panel of retired judges to review the case, but the governor resigned over an unrelated scandal and that panel never reached a conclusion.
Questions about the DNA evidence also led Democratic St. Louis County Prosecutor Wesley Bell to request a hearing to challenge Williams’ guilt. But days before the Aug. 21 hearing, new tests showed that the DNA evidence had been altered because members of the prosecutor’s office had handled the knife without gloves before the initial trial.
With DNA evidence unavailable, attorneys with the Midwest Innocence Project reached a compromise with the district attorney’s office: Williams would again plead no contest to first-degree murder in exchange for another life sentence without parole.
Judge Bruce Hilton signed the agreement, as did Gayle’s family. But at Bailey’s request, the Missouri Supreme Court decided not to accept the deal. blocked the deal and ordered Hilton to attend an evidentiary hearing, which took place on August 28.
Hilton ruled on September 12 that the first-degree prison sentence the murder conviction and death penalty would be upheldnoting that his arguments had all been previously rejected.
“There is no basis for a court to conclude that Williams is innocent, and no court has made such a conclusion,” Hilton wrote.
On Tuesday, Williams’ attorney argued that the circumstances were different because the trial prosecutor had not previously been questioned in court by Williams’ attorney about why he dismissed a specific juror.
The prosecutor in the 2001 first-degree murder case, Keith Larner, testified at the August hearing that the trial jury was fair, even though it included only one black member. Larner said he dismissed a potential black juror in part because he looked too much like Williams. He did not explain why he thought that mattered.
The Midwest Innocence Project’s clemency request emphasizes how Gayle’s family wants the sentence commuted to life without parole. Parson, a former sheriff, was in office during 11 executions and has never granted clemency.
Prosecutors in Williams’ original trial said he broke into Gayle’s home on Aug. 11, 1998, heard water running in the shower and found a large butcher knife. Gayle, a social worker and former St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter, was stabbed 43 times as she walked downstairs. Her purse and her husband’s laptop were stolen.
Authorities said Williams stole a jacket to cover up blood on his shirt. Williams’ girlfriend asked him why he was wearing a jacket on a hot day. The girlfriend said she later saw the purse and laptop in his car and that Williams sold the computer a day or two later. The police said They found Gayle’s clothes and the computer in Williams’ car.
Prosecutors also cited testimony from Henry Cole, who shared a cell with Williams in 1999 while Williams was imprisoned on unrelated charges. Cole told prosecutors that Williams confessed to the killing and provided details about it.
Williams’ attorneys responded that the girlfriend and Cole both had felony convictions and wanted a $10,000 reward. Parson said in a statement Monday that the girlfriend “never requested the reward for information.”
