"Missouri Executes Marcellus Williams Despite Prosecutors' Objections"

 

Marcellus Williams, who spent over two decades on Missouri’s death row for a 1998 murder he consistently maintained he didn’t commit, was executed by lethal injection Tuesday evening, despite ongoing efforts to exonerate him based on DNA evidence.

Williams, 55, was pronounced dead at the Potosi Correctional Center in Mineral Point, Missouri.

Following two last-minute execution reprieves, momentum to reexamine Williams’s conviction came from unexpected sources, including the very prosecutor's office that had secured his conviction. Legal advocacy groups like the Midwest Innocence Project and public figures, including a U.S. congresswoman, supported his case, while the family of the victim in the 1998 St. Louis stabbing also opposed his execution.

Despite these efforts, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to stay the execution. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, arguing the execution should have been halted.

Williams’s attorney, Tricia Rojo Bushnell, emphasized the injustice, noting that even the prosecutors who once convicted Williams had admitted their error and sought to overturn his conviction. “The execution of an innocent person is the most extreme manifestation of Missouri’s obsession with ‘finality’ over truth, justice, and humanity,” she said.

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey and Governor Mike Parson, however, argued that the state had met its burden of proof long ago, with Parson maintaining that the execution was necessary to bring closure to the victim's family.

The NAACP condemned the execution, with President Derrick Johnson calling it a "lynching," arguing that capital punishment under such circumstances amounts to murder when DNA evidence fails to prove guilt.

Williams had been convicted of the murder of Felicia Gayle, a former St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter who was stabbed to death in her home in 1998. Though his DNA did not match evidence found at the crime scene, Williams’s conviction rested largely on testimony from witnesses incentivized by reward money and reduced sentences for their own crimes.

In recent years, DNA testing raised significant doubts about Williams’s guilt. Even St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell, who inherited the case, became a vocal advocate for Williams, citing prosecutorial errors and mishandling of evidence. Bell proposed an “Alford plea” to spare Williams’s life, which was blocked by the state Supreme Court and Attorney General Bailey.

Ultimately, Williams's legal team was unable to prevent the execution, despite multiple efforts to prove his innocence and the support of lawmakers like Congresswoman Cori Bush. Governor Parson rejected a clemency request, and the courts refused to pause the execution.