By Robert J. Hansen | OBSERVER Staff Writer
Missouri is scheduled to execute Marcellus Williams on Sept. 24 for a crime he did not commit, according to the Innocence Project. Williams, 55, was convicted of murdering Felicia Gayle, a former newspaper reporter who was found stabbed to death in her home in 1998.
The lack of DNA evidence has raised significant doubts about Williams’s conviction and has been central to his defense. In 2017, then-Governor Eric Greitens issued a stay of execution based on tests that found no trace of Williams’s DNA on the murder weapon.
“The state destroyed or corrupted evidence that could conclusively prove his innocence, and the available DNA and forensic evidence does not match him. There is far too much uncertainty in this case to allow Mr. Williams to be executed, especially since the victim’s family believes life without parole is the appropriate sentence,” the Innocence Project stated.
St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell filed a motion to vacate Williams’s conviction, believing that forensic evidence excluded him from the crime. During an evidentiary hearing on Aug. 28, Bell’s office acknowledged that the previous prosecutor had made constitutional errors that contributed to Williams’s unreliable conviction and death sentence, including mishandling evidence in his case.
However, last week, St. Louis County Judge Bruce Hilton denied the request to vacate Williams’s conviction and death sentence, despite the prosecutor’s admissions of prior errors.
Now, just one day before his scheduled execution, the Missouri Supreme Court will hear last-minute arguments on Monday as Williams’s attorneys fight to halt the execution. Religious leaders, civil rights organizations, and elected officials have all called for the execution to be stopped.
National NAACP President Derrick Johnson wrote a letter to Governor Mike Parson, urging him to halt Williams’s execution.
“Mr. Williams is a perfect example of these statistics. Executing a Black man wrongfully convicted of killing a White woman would be a horrific miscarriage of justice and a perpetuation of Missouri’s troubling past,” Johnson wrote.
The letter included a 2015 study from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which found that Missouri’s use of the death penalty shows significant racial and geographic disparities.
“These disparities are so pronounced that they call into question the fairness of the death penalty’s application, adding to concerns that it is enforced in an arbitrary and capricious manner,” the study authors noted.
The study also revealed that homicides involving white female victims are nearly 14 times more likely to result in execution than those involving Black male victims. Eighty-one percent of individuals executed in Missouri were convicted of killing white victims, despite the fact that white victims make up less than 40% of all murder victims in the state.
The majority of murders involve offenders and victims of the same race, and 54% of African-American men executed in Missouri were convicted of killing white victims.
Missouri Congresswoman Cori Bush also urged Governor Parson to stay Williams’s execution, emphasizing that most innocent people executed were people of color. “State-sanctioned violence has no place in a humane society,” Bush said on the House floor last week.In a letter to Governor Michael Parson, faith leaders from Christian, Jewish, and Muslim backgrounds asked for mercy for Williams. According to Word in Black, they wrote, “We advocate for life without parole, allowing Marcellus to remain in prison with the possibility of redemption, mercy, and the healing power of God, while continuing to serve the Muslim community.”