County prosecutors and defense attorneys both allege that mishandled evidence and racial bias tainted the murder trial. Marcellus Williams is scheduled for execution on Sept. 24.
Marcellus Williams’ Legal Team
Marcellus Williams.
Since January, prosecutors in the county have been trying to get Marcellus Williams, a man they believe is likely innocent of a crime they convicted him of decades ago, off Missouri’s death row.
In a joint 73-page petition filed this weekend — the latest attempt to halve his execution by lethal injection, scheduled for tomorrow, Sept. 24 at 6 p.m. CT — county prosecutors and defense attorneys agree that there is no forensic evidence linking Williams to the 1998 stabbing death of Felicia Gayle.
The bloody footprints Gayle left in her house don’t match his.
The hairs found on her body are not his.
And the kitchen knife shows no fingerprints of his.
Missouri Department of Corrections via AP; Missouri Department of Corrections
Marcellus Williams in arrest photos from 2014 and 2023, during his more than 20 years in captivity.
Related: Despite Prosecutors’ ‘Concerns’ Over Sentencing, Marcellus Williams Still On Death Row After Judge’s Ruling
Earlier this month, Judge Bruce F. Hilton denied Williams’ request to throw out his murder conviction, saying there was “no basis for a court to find Williams not guilty.”
In the joint plea, prosecutors and defense attorneys argue that the judge’s decision was “wrong.”
Oral arguments were scheduled for Monday, Sept. 23, in the Missouri Supreme Court, the same day that the Innocence Project, which represents Williams, filed an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, citing racial bias in jury selection and asking for a stay of his execution. (In the joint plea, county prosecutors admitted that the office had used such racial bias in the selection of at least one potential juror.)
The latest attempt to prevent Williams’ execution is the latest in a years-long effort that state officials have repeatedly resisted.
Potentially exculpatory evidence first came to light seven years ago, but in 2023, Gov. Mike Parson disbanded the investigative commission created to review the evidence before issuing a report or recommendation.
After additional DNA evidence emerged on the murder weapon in August, matching that of the assistant district attorney and one of the investigators (both of whom eventually admitted in affidavits to handling the knife without gloves prior to Williams’ 2001 trial, according to the joint filing), county prosecutors and defense attorneys reached an agreement on Aug. 21 aimed at getting Williams off death row.
But later that day, Attorney General Andrew Bailey blocked the deal.
“It is in the best interest of every Missourian that the rule of law is fought for and upheld — every time, without fail,” Bailey said in a statement after his filing, adding: “All of the evidence the jury relied on to convict the defendant remains intact. The victim’s personal items were found in Williams’ car after the murder. A witness testified that Williams sold the victim’s laptop to him. Williams confessed to his girlfriend and an inmate at the St. Louis City Jail, and Williams’ girlfriend saw him throw away the bloody clothing he had been wearing during the murder. All of the evidence in question was available at trial.”
County prosecutors said in a motion to dismiss the case in January that the testimony had been “undermined” and that the pair were “known unreliable witnesses who lied to benefit themselves.” County prosecutors further allege that “the only physical evidence” supporting the girlfriend’s testimony was the laptop, which Williams gave to his girlfriend to sell at the time of the pawning.
AP Photo/David A. Lieb
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey (left) with Gov. Mike Parson (right) during a news conference on unregulated psychoactive cannabis products at the state Capitol in Jefferson City, Missouri, Aug. 1, 2024.
Related: Evidence of Marcellus Williams’ potential innocence came to light in 2017. He is scheduled for execution in 26 days
Neither the governor’s nor the attorney general’s offices responded to PEOPLE’s comments in time for publication.
Johnathan Shiflett of the governor’s office told PEOPLE in a Sept. 13 email that the governor was following “standard practice” in the death row case, adding: “Mr. Williams has a right to a fair trial and Governor Parson respects that. Governor Parson has not said that Mr. Williams should or should not be executed — the courts decide that, following state law.”
In the new filing, both sides call for an extensive hearing to prove that Williams’ constitutional rights were allegedly violated in prior proceedings, despite evidence of “bad faith destruction of potentially favorable evidence” and “despite clear and convincing new evidence” allegedly showing that the prosecution eliminated “at least one potential juror” for “racially discriminatory reasons.”
At trial, Williams was convicted of first-degree murder, first-degree burglary, armed robbery, and robbery by a jury of eleven white people and one black person.
The prosecution used six of the nine peremptory expungements to keep black jurors off the case, the joint filing shows.
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Then-District Attorney Keith Larner explained those decisions in court last month, testifying, according to the filing, that he removed one of those jurors because he thought the man resembled Williams, who is also black. He said they looked like brothers — in part because they were both young black men with glasses — and that the potential juror had the same “piercing eyes” as Williams.
In his September 12 ruling, Hilton found that Larner “acted in good faith and had good reason to handle the knife without gloves” and cited the prosecution’s own testimony excusing his decision to exclude black jurors.
According to calculations by Amnesty International USA, Williams is one of eight executions scheduled in the country next month.
Williams, who writes poetry and serves as an imam for Muslim inmates at the Potosi Correctional Center in Washington County, Missouri, has never spoken publicly about his time on death row but has released a series of poems to PEOPLE through his attorneys.
In a poem titled “Exoneration Over Mitigation,” the 55-year-old writes: “add my case to the shameless growth, / how can those be stopped who use and abuse the criminal law as a tool to oppress a race – / and a multitude of undesirables like a caste system? / yes, yes the subject is sensitive and delicate, / sensitive but necessary for the awake, / is it possible for the lost to be found before it is too late?”
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