BONNE TERRE: Marcellus Williams was put to death by lethal injection on Tuesday night in the state of Missouri, against the protests of the county prosecutor’s office, which was responsible for Mr. Williams’s 2003 murder conviction. Mr. Williams, who had steadfastly maintained his innocence for decades, had recently asked the State Supreme Court to defer his execution and the governor to grant him clemency. However, the State Supreme Court and Mike Parson, the governor, rejected him on Monday. His last hope, the U.S. Supreme Court, also declined to get involved on Tuesday. In a statement, the Missouri Department of Corrections stated that he was declared deceased around 6:10 p.m. at a state prison located in Bonne Terre.
The Decision Was Incorrect
Midwest Innocence Project attorney Tricia Rojo Bushnell, who represents Mr. Williams, said that it was unfair to put a man to death when the prosecution had acknowledged that the decision was incorrect and had worked to get the death penalty overturned. She added, “The most extreme manifestation of Missouri’s obsession with closure over truth, justice, and humanity is the execution of an innocent person.” “Marcellus Williams ought to be alive today,” stated Wesley Bell, the district attorney, in a statement. “Decisions that could have saved him from the death penalty could have been made at several points in the timeline.” Mr. Williams, who is 55, had been granted two stays of execution over the years: one in 2015 and another in 2017, but neither resulted in the reversal of his conviction.
He now has an additional avenue to contest his conviction for the 1998 murder of prominent newspaper reporter Felicia Gayle in her suburban home, St. Louis according to a law passed in 2021. If prosecutors think there’s been an infringement of justice, they are legally allowed to file a motion to reverse a conviction. The St. Louis County prosecutor, Mr. Bell, looked over Mr. Williams’s case and submitted this kind of request in January. Only a few instances have the law been applied. Judges decided to clear the accused persons in question in the three instances that went to the hearing stage. However, the situation with Mr. Williams was not the same.
Williams’s Constitutional Rights Had Been Violated
In his 63-page movie, Mr. Bell claimed that Mr. Williams’s constitutional rights had been violated multiple times both during the inquiry and the trial. In the lawsuit, Mr. Bell claimed that the prosecution had wrongfully dismissed Black potential jurors, leaving the jury composed of 11 White members and 1 Black member, and that a defense attorney had failed to provide mitigating evidence that may have spared Mr. Williams from execution. The victim, Ms. Gayle was white, and Mr. Williams was black. The Democratic candidate for a Congress seat, Mr. Bell, who just emerged victorious in the Democratic primary, added in his letter that there was good reason to think Mr. Williams was innocent.
He listed numerous problems with the reliability of the two main witnesses, contrary to Mr. Williams and pointed out that neither the DNA on the murder weapon nor the footprints or hair discovered at the scene of the crime came from Mr. Williams. A laptop that was taken from Ms. Gayle’s house was sold by Mr. Williams, but Mr. Bell claimed there was proof he got the computer through his girlfriend, who testified against him as one of the two witnesses because she thought she would get off lightly in her own criminal proceedings. In the years that followed, both witnesses passed away.
Mr. Williams Converted To Islam
The motion of Mr. Bell was set for hearing in August. However, his office got a fresh DNA analysis found on the kitchen knife used in the murder soon before that date. Rather than supporting Mr. Williams’s innocence by pointing to an unidentified suspect, the analysis revealed that the knife was handled by an investigator and a prosecutor during the trial. Mr. Bell retreated from his claim that Mr. Williams actually was innocent in light of the findings. The charges of constitutional violations were the main focus of Mr. Bell’s office during the hearing. They questioned the original prosecutor about the reason for which he had hold the murder weapon with no gloves and excluded Black potential jurors from consideration.
In one case, the prosecution, Keith Larner, said that he had disqualified a potential Black jury because of how much the defendant resembled him. He remarked, “They appeared to be brothers.” While incarcerated, Mr. Williams converted to Islam and adopted the name Khaliifah. In recent weeks, he has been in court wearing the white skullcap, a symbol of Islamic devotion, also he made the decision to have an imam by his side in the execution chamber. Mr. Williams wrote, “All Praise Go to Allah in Every Situation!!!” in response to the Missouri Department of Corrections’ request for him to pen a farewell statement.
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