The 55-year-old was convicted in 2003 of killing Lisha Gayle during what seemed to be a botched burglary. Marcellus Williams, who was convicted of murder 21 years ago, was executed in the midwestern state of Missouri despite doubts about the case’s legitimacy.
The United States Supreme Court, the only entity with the power to overturn Williams’ death sentence, declined to interfere in the case on Tuesday. The 55-year-old was executed by lethal injection shortly after 6 pm (23:00 GMT) at a jail in Bonne Terre, according to The Innocence Project, whose lawyer represented Williams. His death came a day after Missouri Governor Mike Parson and the state’s top court rejected his final appeals to avoid execution.
Williams was found guilty of the 1998 murder of Lisha Gayle, a 42-year-old former newspaper reporter who was stabbed 43 times during what appeared to be a botched burglary. He insisted that he was innocent.
Wesley Bell, whose office handled the first prosecution, attempted to stop the execution owing to concerns about the original trial. “Even for those who disagree with the death penalty, when there is a shadow of doubt about any defendant’s guilt, the irreversible punishment of execution should not be an option,” Bell said in a statement before the execution.
In court documents, Bell questioned the credibility of the two primary trial witnesses, claimed that prosecutors unlawfully disqualified Black jurors based on race, and stated that additional testing revealed no trace of Williams’ DNA on the murder weapon. Williams was African-American. Subsequent tests indicated that the knife included DNA from a prosecutor and an investigator who worked on the case and handled it without gloves.
The contamination of the knife prompted prosecutors and Williams’ lawyers to reach a deal in August to commute the sentence to life in prison. Gayle’s family supported the arrangement, but Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey disagreed, and the state Supreme Court halted it on his request.
A state judge upheld Williams’ murder conviction earlier this month, concluding that the lack of proof on the knife was insufficient to prove his innocence. The Missouri Supreme Court upheld the ruling on Monday.Governor Parson, a Republican, also denied Williams’ mercy appeal that day.
“No jury nor court, including at the trial, appellate, and Supreme Court levels, have ever found merit in Mr. Williams’ innocence claims,” according to a statement he issued. “At the end of the day, his criminal verdict and sentence of capital punishment were upheld.” Williams was one of five death row inmates scheduled to be executed within a week, an extraordinarily high number given the United States years-long fall in the use and support for the death penalty.
The first was carried out Friday in South Carolina. Texas was also scheduled to execute a prisoner on Tuesday evening. Travis Mullis, 38, was convicted of killing his three-month-old son, Alijah Mullis, in 2008. The death penalty has been abolished in 23 US states, and six more – Arizona, California, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee – have moratoriums.
