The execution of Marcellus Williams is set to proceed as scheduled Tuesday after the Missouri Supreme Court and the state’s governor rejected requests to halt the procedure.
Attorney for Williams denied there that the state Supreme Court should stop lethal injection because lawyers tried to prevent black men who they thought resembled the defendant from serving on a jury, but the court rejected that argument.
“Despite nearly a quarter century of litigation in state and federal courts, there is no credible evidence of actual innocence or showing constitutional error that undermines confidence in the original trial,” the court said in its ruling.
Williams is scheduled to be executed at 6 pm on Friday for the 1998 stabbing death of Lisha Gayle in the suburbs of St.
Williams, 55, has maintained his innocence. But the lawyer did not pursue the claim before the highest court in the country, instead focusing on the alleged procedural error in the selection of the jury and the alleged mishandling of the murder weapon.
The state Supreme Court should “correct the injustice” by declaring that prosecutors wrongly dismissed potential jurors for racial reasons or send the case to a lower court to determine the issue, attorney Jonathan Potts argued on behalf of Williams.
The office of Missouri State Attorney General Andrew Bailey has argued for the execution to go ahead. Prosecutors deny that he was racially motivated to eliminate potential jurors and did nothing improper — based on procedures at the time — by touching the murder weapon without gloves after it was tested by a crime lab, Assistant Attorney General Michael Spillane said. in argument to the state Supreme Court.
Attorneys for Williams also have an appeal in the US Supreme Court.
Williams has asked for clemency from Republican Gov. Mike Parson, the question focused mainly on how Gayle’s relatives wanted the sentence commuted to life in prison without parole. But Parson on Monday said the execution would go ahead after the state Supreme Court’s decision.
“Capital punishment cases are some of the most difficult issues the Governor’s Office has to deal with, but when they do, I follow the law and trust the integrity of our justice system,” Parson said in a statement Monday. “Mr. Williams has exhausted the due process and every judicial avenue, including over 15 hearings trying to argue his innocence and overturn his conviction. Neither the jury nor the court, including at the trial, appellate, and Supreme Court levels, have ever found merit in Mr. .Williams’ claims of innocence At the end of the day, the guilty verdict and the death penalty were upheld from the actual facts of this case have led me to believe Mr. Williams’ innocence. ‘ the sentence will be carried out as ordered by the Supreme Court.”
Parson, a former sheriff, has had 11 executions and never granted a pardon. The NAACP also called on Parsons to stop the execution.
“Missouri is poised to execute innocent people, a result that calls into question the legitimacy of the entire criminal justice system,” said Tricia Rojo Bushnell, executive director of the Midwest Innocence Project and the attorney representing Williams. “Given everything we know about the Marcellus Williams case – including the recent revelation that prosecutors dismissed at least one black juror because of race, and the opposition to this execution from the victim’s family and the sitting Prosecutor – the court must step in to prevent an injustice that cannot be fix this.”
The execution will be the third in Missouri this year and the 100th since the state resumed executions in 1989.
Williams was less than a week away from his execution in January 2015 when the state Supreme Court overturned it, allowing time for his attorney to seek additional DNA testing.
He was just hours away from being executed in August 2017 when Gov. Eric Greitens, a Republican, was granted a stay after a review of DNA evidence found no traces of Williams’ DNA on the knife used in the killing. Greitens appointed a panel of retired judges to review the case, but the governor recused himself over an unrelated scandal and the panel never reached a conclusion.
Questions about DNA evidence also led Democratic St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell to request a hearing challenging Williams’ guilt. But the day before the August 21 hearing, new testing showed that DNA evidence was damaged because a member of the prosecutor’s office touched a knife without gloves before the original test.
The state Supreme Court, on Monday, wrote in its decision that the DNA test actually “undermined the prosecution’s claim of actual innocence and supported the circuit court’s finding that the evidence did not indicate the existence of an alternative perpetrator or exclude Williams as the killer.”
With DNA evidence unavailable, Midwest Innocence Project lawyers reached a compromise with the prosecutor’s office: Williams would enter a new plea, no contest to first-degree murder in exchange for a new sentence of life in prison without parole.
Judge Bruce Hilton signed the agreement, as did Gayle’s family. But at Bailey’s urging, the Missouri Supreme Court blocked agreement and ordered Hilton to proceed with the evidence hearing, which took place on August 28.
Hilton ruled on September 12 that the first-degree murder and the death penalty will standnoting that his objections had all been rejected before.
“There was no basis for the court to find that Williams was innocent, and no court made that finding,” Hilton wrote.
On Tuesday, Williams’ attorney argued that the situation was different, because the prosecutor had not previously been questioned in court by Williams’ attorney about his reasons for dismissing certain jurors.
The prosecutor in the 2001 first-degree murder case, Keith Larner, testified at an August hearing that the jury tried to be fair, even though it included only one Black member on the panel. Larner said he struck one of the potential Black jurors because he looked like Williams. He didn’t explain why he felt it was important.
In a statement sent to CBS affiliate KOMO-TV last week, Larner said that “jury strikes from Black jurors at trial have been confirmed as race-neutral and legal, unanimously, by the Missouri Supreme Court in a 7-0 vote in 2003. Bell’s The Innocence Project claims that improper jury selection is a sham.”
Bushnell told KOMO before Monday’s ruling that the August hearing was “the first time prosecutors have had to testify under oath about their practices.”
“He admitted, at least in part, that race was a reason to strike the jury,” Bushnell said. “No court has ever heard, and a federal court that has previously considered a claim of racial discrimination should have had this information when making that decision. The explanation given to reject the claim has now been contradicted by the prosecutor’s own admission.”
In the state Supreme Court said there But that when Larner was “specifically asked if part of the reason he struck juror number 64 because he was Black, the prosecutor tried to answer: ‘No. Absolutely not,'” and said Williams’s lawyer’s objection “. cherry-picked the record , ignores the circuit court’s factual findings, and provides no persuasive justification for reversing the prior court’s decision on this claim.
Bell said in a statement, “Even for those who do not agree on the death penalty, when there is a shadow of doubt about the guilt of any defendant, the irreversible punishment of execution should not be an option. As a prosecutor St. , our office has questions about the guilt of Mr. Williams , but also about the integrity of her beliefs.
Prosecutors in the original trial Williams said he broke into Gayle’s home on August 11, 1998, heard the water running in the shower, and found a large butcher knife. Gayle, a social worker and former reporter for St. Her husband’s wallet and laptop computer were stolen.
Authorities said Williams stole his jacket to hide the blood on his shirt. Williams’ girlfriend asked if she would wear a jacket on a hot day. The girlfriend said she saw a wallet and laptop in the car and that Williams sold the computer a day or two later. The police have said they found items belonging to Gayle in Williams’ car.
Prosecutors also cited testimony from Henry Cole, who shared a cell with Williams in 1999 when Williams was jailed on unrelated charges. Cole told prosecutors Williams confessed to the murder and gave details about it.
Williams’ attorney responded that the boyfriend and Cole were both convicted of the crime and wanted a $10,000 reward. Parson said in a statement his girlfriend “never asked for a reward for information.”
