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MISSOURI EXECUTES MARCELLUS WILLIAMS DESPITE PROSECUTORS AND THE
VICTIM’S FAMILY ASKING THAT HE BE SPARED  
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Cindy Von Quednow and Holly Yan
September 25, 2024
CNN
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_ “While he would readily admit to the wrongs he had done
throughout his life, he never wavered in asserting his innocence of
the crime for which he was put to death tonight.” _

Marcellus Williams, Courtesy Marcellus Williams legal team

 

Marcellus Williams, whose murder conviction was questioned by a
prosecutor, died by lethal injection Tuesday evening in Missouri after
the US Supreme Court denied a stay.

The 55-year-old was put to death around 6 p.m. CT at the state prison
in Bonne Terre.

Williams’ attorneys had filed a flurry of appeal efforts based on
what they described as new evidence – including alleged bias in jury
selection and contamination of the murder weapon prior to trial. The
victim’s family had asked the inmate be spared death.

The US Supreme Court’s action came a day after Missouri’s supreme
court and governor refused to grant a stay of execution.

The high court offered no explanation for its decision, which is
common for cases on its emergency docket. There were no noted dissents
in two of Williiams’ appeals. In a third, Justices Sonia Sotomayor,
Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson said they would have granted the
request to pause the execution.

Williams was convicted in 2001 of killing Felicia Gayle, a former
newspaper reporter found stabbed to death in her home in 1998.

“We hope this gives finality to a case that’s languished for
decades, re-victimizing Ms. Gayle’s family for decades,” Gov. Mike
Parson said in a statement read by Trevor Foley, director of the
Missouri Department of Corrections. “No juror no judge has ever
found Williams’ innocence claim to be credible. Two decades of
judicial proceedings and more than 15 judicial hearings upheld his
guilty conviction. Thus the order of execution has been carried
out.”

In a statement after the execution, one of Williams’ attorneys,
Larry Komp, said his client maintained his innocence to the end.

“While he would readily admit to the wrongs he had done throughout
his life, he never wavered in asserting his innocence of the crime for
which he was put to death tonight,” Komp said. “Although we are
devastated and in disbelief over what the State has done to an
innocent man, we are comforted that he left this world in peace.”

Moments after the high court decision was made, another of Williams’
attorneys, Tricia Rojo Bushnell, told CNN’s Jake Tapper the state
was prepared to kill an innocent man.

“They will do it even though the prosecutor doesn’t want him to be
executed, the jurors who sentenced him to death don’t want him
executed and the victims themselves don’t want him to be executed.
We have a system that values finality over fairness, and this is the
result that we will get from that.”

“It is news to all of us, and I think that it should be a shame to
all of us, that we have a system that will let a man be executed in
spite of all of this, really is not a system of justice,” the
attorney said.

In a statement posted on X
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“Missouri lynched another innocent Black man. Governor Parson had
the responsibility to save this innocent life, and he didn’t … We
will hold Governor Parson accountable. When DNA evidence proves
innocence, capital punishment is not justice – it is murder.”

Recently, the top prosecutor in St. Louis County joined Williams’
attorneys in asking for the conviction to be overturned after new
testimony from the 2001 trial prosecutor and recent DNA testing showed
evidence contamination.

The case highlighted the issue of potentially putting an innocent
person to death – an inherent risk of capital punishment. At least
200 people sentenced to death since 1973 were later exonerated,
including four in Missouri, according to the Death Penalty
Information Center
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Williams’ last moments

Williams’ last statement, witnessed on September 21, was “All
Praise Be to Allah In Every Situation!!!” Williams was a devout
Muslim, an imam for prisoners and a poet, according to his legal team.

Williams’ last meal included chicken wings and tater tots, said
Karen Pojmann, spokesperson for the Missouri Department of
Corrections.

He had a final visit with Imam Jalahii Kacem from around 11 a.m. to
12:30 p.m. CT.

Around 4:50 p.m., the Department of Corrections received word that all
petitions had been denied by the US Supreme Court, and about an hour
later, witnesses, including Williams’ son and two of his attorneys,
were moved into the viewing area of the prison, Pojmann said at a news
conference.

At 6 p.m., state Attorney General Andrew Bailey notified the
Department of Corrections that there were no legal impediments to the
execution. The lethal injection was administered at 6:01 p.m. and
Williams was pronounced dead at 6:10 p.m., Pojmann said.

Around 100 demonstrators were present on the prison grounds protesting
capital punishment and Williams’ execution, Pojmann said.

No one from Gayle’s family was present for Tuesday’s execution.

Attorneys on both sides tried to intervene

Williams’ lawyers and St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley
Bell filled a joint brief
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asking the Missouri Supreme Court to send the case back to a lower
court for a “more comprehensive hearing” on Bell’s January
motion to vacate Williams’ 2001 conviction and sentence.

The St. Louis Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, which handled the trial
against Williams, argued in the motion that DNA testing of the knife
used in the killing might suggest Williams was not Gayle’s killer.

But that effort unraveled at a circuit court hearing last month, after
new DNA testing revealed the murder weapon had been mishandled prior
to the 2001 trial
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contaminating the evidence meant to exonerate Williams and
complicating his quest to prove his innocence.

Attorneys “received a report indicating the DNA on the murder weapon
belonged to an assistant prosecuting attorney and an investigator who
had handled the murder weapon without gloves prior to trial,”
the state’s judicial branch
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But the Missouri Attorney General’s Office said the new DNA
findings
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last month don’t exonerate Williams.

“In this case, a new round of DNA testing proved the office was
right all along; the knife in question has been handled by many
actors, including law enforcement, since being found,” Bailey said.

“In addition, one of the defense’s own experts previously
testified he could not rule out the possibility that Williams’s DNA
was also on the knife. He could only testify to the fact that enough
actors had handled the knife throughout the legal process that
others’ DNA was present.”

Other evidence that helped convict Williams “remains intact,” the
attorney general said.

“The victim’s personal items were found in Williams’s car after
the murder. A witness testified that Williams had sold the victim’s
laptop to him. Williams confessed to his girlfriend and an inmate in
the St. Louis City Jail, and William’s girlfriend saw him dispose of
the bloody clothes worn during the murder,” the attorney
general’s office said
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New testimony from the trial prosecutor

Williams’ attorneys had asked the US Supreme Court
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stay the execution, citing “newly-discovered evidence
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the trial prosecutor’s testimony” last month.

During a motion-to-vacate hearing August 28, a prosecutor from
Williams’ 2001 trial “admitted that he had struck (a potential
juror from the jury pool) because like Mr. Williams, (the potential
juror) was Black,” Williams’ attorneys wrote in an emergency
request
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the US Supreme Court to intervene.

“There was a racial component to this,” attorney Jonathan Potts
said at a Missouri Supreme Court hearing Monday. But the Missouri
Attorney General’s Office disputed that interpretation of the trial
prosecutor’s testimony.

“He said they look like brothers,” Assistant Attorney General
Michael Spillane said at the hearing.

“What did he say when asked directly, ‘Did you strike someone …
with part of the reason for striking someone because (you’re)
Black?’ He said no, absolutely not,” Spillane said. “And he
explained that that would be a violation.”

In the end, the Missouri Supreme Court unanimously decided not to halt
Williams’ execution because his team “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,” the
court’s opinion read
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And “because this Court rejects this appeal on the merits, the
motion for stay of execution is overruled as moot.”

Republican Gov. Parson, who also had the power to halt Williams’
execution, said he would not intervene.

“Mr. Williams has exhausted due process and every judicial avenue,
including over 15 hearings attempting to argue his innocence and
overturn his conviction,” Parson said after the state Supreme
Court’s decision.

“No jury nor court, including at the trial, appellate, and Supreme
Court levels, have ever found merit in Mr. Williams’ innocence
claims. At the end of the day, his guilty verdict and sentence of
capital punishment were upheld. Nothing from the real facts of this
case have led me to believe in Mr. Williams’ innocence, as such, Mr.
Williams’ punishment will be carried out as ordered by the Supreme
Court.”

Victim’s family supported life in prison

The St. Louis Prosecuting Attorney’s Office said it reached an
agreement with Williams last month. Under the consent judgment –
approved by the court and Gayle’s family – Williams would enter
an Alford plea
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guilty to first-degree murder and be resentenced to life in prison.

But the state attorney general’s office opposed the deal and
appealed to the state Supreme Court, which blocked the agreement.

Williams’ team filed a clemency petition to the US Supreme Court
last week, noting Missouri’s previous governor had postponed
Williams’ execution indefinitely amid questions about the integrity
of Williams’ trial.

Former GOP Gov. Eric Greitens previously halted Williams’ execution
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formed a board to investigate his case and determine whether he should
be granted clemency.

“The Board investigated Williams’ case for the next six years —
until Governor Michael Parson abruptly terminated the process,”
Williams’ attorneys wrote.

After Parson took office, he dissolved the board and revoked
Williams’ stay of execution, the inmate’s attorneys said. That
decision deprived Williams of his right to due process, his lawyers
argued.

“The Governor’s actions have violated Williams’ constitutional
rights and created an exceptionally urgent need for the Court’s
attention,” Williams’ attorneys said in court documents.

Parson defended his decision.

“This Board was established nearly six years ago, and it is time to
move forward,” Parson said
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summer. “We could stall and delay for another six years, deferring
justice, leaving a victim’s family in limbo, and solving nothing.
This administration won’t do that.”

* execution
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* innocent victims
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* injustice
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