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, the NAACP said “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.
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 Saturday 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 – contaminating the evidence meant to exonerate Williams and complicating his quest to prove his innocence.
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