Washington — The Supreme Courtroom on Tuesday rejected a bid to cease the execution of Missouri loss of life row inmate Marcellus Williams, who was convicted within the 1998 stabbing loss of life of Felicia Gayle in a St. Louis suburb.
Williams, who has maintained his innocence, is about to be put to loss of life by deadly injection at 6 p.m. CT.
Earlier efforts to halt the execution had been denied Monday by the Missouri Supreme Courtroom and Republican Gov. Mike Parson. His execution is the third in Missouri this 12 months, and amongst 5 going down nationwide throughout a seven-day span if the remaining three are carried out on schedule, in keeping with the Demise Penalty Info Middle.
Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson stated they’d have granted the request to halt the execution.
Williams had been confronted with execution twice earlier than following his 2001 conviction for the homicide of Gayle, a social employee and former reporter for the St. Louis Submit-Dispatch. First, in 2015, the Missouri Supreme Courtroom halted execution plans and appointed a particular grasp to overview DNA testing on the deal with of the homicide weapon, the butcher knife that was used to stab Gayle 43 occasions and was left lodged in her neck.
Williams’ attorneys stated DNA consultants who reviewed the outcomes decided that he was not the supply of DNA discovered on the knife. However the particular grasp despatched the case again to the Missouri Supreme Courtroom, and a second execution date was set for August 2017.
Then, hours earlier than Williams was set to be executed, then-Gov. Eric Greitens known as it off and appointed a panel of 5 retired judges to analyze the DNA proof. The board, nonetheless, was dissolved by Parson in June 2023 and by no means issued its ultimate report.
Confronted with the DNA proof and different new info in Williams’ case, St. Louis County Prosecuting Legal professional Wesley Bell sought to toss out the conviction on quite a few grounds, together with the outcomes of the DNA testing and constitutional violations through the jury choice course of.
However the evening earlier than an evidentiary listening to was set to happen, Bell’s workplace obtained new take a look at outcomes indicating DNA on the knife deal with was in keeping with that of a prosecutor who labored on Williams’ case and a former investigator with the St. Louis County Prosecuting Legal professional’s Workplace.
Williams’ attorneys stated in a submitting that the DNA outcomes confirmed they dealt with the knife with out gloves, contaminating the proof.
With the DNA proof spoiled, Williams and Bell, the prosecuting lawyer, reached an settlement below which Williams would enter a no-contest plea to homicide within the first diploma with a sentence of life with out the potential for parole.
Gayle’s household indicated they didn’t help executing Williams, in keeping with courtroom filings, and in August, a decide signed off on the settlement. However Legal professional Basic Andrew Bailey, a Republican, objected to the plea.
The state supreme courtroom went on to block the plan and ordered an evidentiary listening to on Williams’ claims of innocence.
In the course of the continuing final month, a trial lawyer who tried the 2001 case stated that he eliminated one Black potential juror as a result of he regarded like Williams. When requested whether or not he struck the juror due to his race, the prosecutor, Keith Larner stated, “No. Completely not,” in keeping with courtroom data. Larner stated that he believed the jury, composed of 11 White folks and one Black particular person, was honest.
The prosecutor additionally acknowledged that he dealt with the homicide weapon with out gloves at the very least 5 occasions throughout witness preparation classes earlier than the trial, as he believed the investigation into Gayle’s killing was completed.
On the finish of the listening to, the St. Louis Prosecuting Legal professional’s Workplace instructed the courtroom that it conceded the “constitutional error of mishandling proof” in Williams’ trial, and stated “clear and convincing proof” of quite a few constitutional errors in his prosecution had been offered.
Nonetheless, on Sept. 12, the decide declined to toss out Williams’ conviction and sentence. The Missouri Supreme Courtroom then denied reduction.
In urging the Supreme Courtroom to intervene, Williams’ legal professionals had requested the justices to attend till they’ve determined one other loss of life penalty case involving an Oklahoma inmate, which they stated raises the identical points. The excessive courtroom is poised to listen to arguments Oct. 9 in Richard Glossip’s effort to toss out his conviction resulting from considerations concerning the equity of his trial.
“The ever-present undercurrent of residual doubt as to Mr. Williams’ innocence plagues this case, whilst his execution looms,” his attorneys wrote in a submitting with the excessive courtroom. “Mr. Williams’ conviction and loss of life sentence had been secured by a trial riddled with constitutional errors, racism, and dangerous religion, a lot of which solely got here to gentle lately.”
They known as his conviction a “grave miscarriage of justice” and stated executing him could be an “unthinkable, irreversible travesty.”
High officers in Missouri opposed the request to name off the execution, claiming that Williams has engaged in a “technique of maximum delay” in bringing the claims and accusing him of making an attempt to “manufacture one other emergency by dilatory ways.”
“The state of Missouri, crime victims, for whom the case goes on for many years with out decision, and the legal justice system are all harmed by limitless litigation of meritless claims,” Bailey wrote in a submitting with the Supreme Courtroom.
Williams’ was charged greater than a 12 months after Gayle’s loss of life. Prosecutors declare that he broke into her house in College Metropolis, a suburb of St. Louis, and, after listening to water operating within the bathe upstairs, discovered a butcher knife and waited. After Gayle got here down the steps, Williams attacked and stabbed her 43 occasions, then left along with her purse and husband’s laptop computer, regulation enforcement officers stated.
Prosecutors stated Williams additionally took a jacket that he used to hide the blood on his shirt. His girlfriend later observed that he was carrying a jacket regardless of the summer time climate, and after he eliminated it, noticed that Williams’ shirt was bloody, in keeping with courtroom filings.
The girlfriend additionally testified that she noticed the laptop computer within the automobile and the purse in its trunk, and claimed Williams confessed to killing Gayle, in keeping with courtroom data. Roughly 10 months after Gayle’s loss of life, and after her household provided reward cash, a person named Henry Cole, who was a cellmate with Williams when he was in jail on unrelated prices, claimed he confessed to murdering Gayle, prosecutors stated.
