John Jefferson
A Missouri man is set to be executed over a 1998 killing as numerous groups, including innocence adovactes and the prosecution, say he likley did not committ the crime.
Marcellus Williams, 55, is scheduled to die by lethal injection at 6pm CT Tuesday for the murder of Lisha Gayle, a social worker and former newspaper reporter who was repeatedly stabbed during a burglary of her suburban St. Louis home almost three decades ago.
On Monday, Missouri Governor Mike Parson, a Republican, rejected Williams’ clemency request to spare him from the death penalty and instead sentence him to life in prison.
The Missouri Supreme Court, almost simultaneously, also rejected a request to cancel the execution.
Williams’ lawyers have argued that multiple errors were made during the trial including the prosecution’s alleged mishandling of the murder weapon and alleged procedural errors in jury selection. They claim that a trial prosecutor wrongly excluded a potential Black juror for racial reasons.
“Missouri is poised to execute an innocent man, an outcome that calls into question the legitimacy of the entire criminal justice system,” Tricia Rojo Bushnell, an attorney for Marcellus Williams, said on Monday.
“Given everything we know about Marcellus Williams’ case – including the new revelations that the trial prosecutor removed at least one Black juror because of his race, and opposition to this execution from the victim’s family and the sitting Prosecuting Attorney, the courts must step in to prevent this irreparable injustice,” Bushnell said.
During Williams’ original trial, prosecutors said he broke into Gayle’s home on August 11, 1998, heard water running in the shower, and found a large butcher knife.
Gayle, a former reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, was stabbed 43 times when she came downstairs. Her purse and her husband’s laptop computer were stolen.
Authorities said Williams stole a jacket to conceal blood on his shirt. Williams’ girlfriend asked him why he would wear a jacket on a hot day. The girlfriend said she later saw the purse and laptop in his car and that Williams sold the computer a day or two later.
However, questions over DNA evidence have led to delays in the trial and two previous stays of execution.
Williams was less than a week away from execution in January 2015 when the state Supreme Court called it off, allowing time for his attorneys to pursue additional DNA testing.
He was just hours away from being executed in August 2017 when then-Governor Eric Greitens, a Republican, granted a stay and appointed a panel of retired judges to examine the case. But that panel never reached a conclusion.
Questions about DNA evidence also led St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell to request a hearing challenging Williams’ guilt.
But days before the August 21 hearing, new testing showed that DNA on the knife belonged to members of the prosecutor’s office who handled it without gloves after the original crime lab tests.
DNA evidence has not pointed to any alternative suspect.
According to The Innocence Project, Gayle’s family also opposes the execution, Williams’ execution is due to be the third in Missouri this year and the 100th since the state resumed executions in 1989.
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