Marcellus Williams, convicted of murder in 1998, was executed by lethal injection on Tuesday evening, despite mounting concerns about the integrity of his case. The execution took place at the Bonne Terre prison, shortly after 6pm (23:00 GMT), Al Jazeera reports, citing The Innocence Project.
Williams, 55, had maintained his innocence throughout the proceedings. His execution came after a series of last-ditch appeals were rejected by the Missouri Supreme Court, Governor Mike Parson, and the United States Supreme Court.
The case centered around the 1998 stabbing death of Lisha Gayle, a 42-year-old former newspaper reporter. Williams was convicted of stabbing Gayle 43 times during what appeared to be a burglary gone wrong.
However, serious questions emerged about the reliability of the evidence presented at trial. Wesley Bell, the current St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney who oversaw the original prosecution, raised concerns about the two main trial witnesses and pointed to the improper exclusion of Black jurors from the original trial. He also noted that new DNA testing revealed no trace of Williams’ DNA on the murder weapon.
Further complicating matters, subsequent tests also revealed the presence of DNA from a prosecutor and an investigator who had handled the weapon without gloves, suggesting potential contamination.
This new evidence led to an agreement in August between prosecutors and Williams’ lawyers to commute his sentence to life in prison. Gayle’s family also supported this deal. However, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey objected, and the state Supreme Court blocked the agreement at his request.
A state judge ultimately upheld Williams’s murder conviction, ruling that the lack of evidence on the knife was not enough to establish his innocence. This decision was affirmed by the Missouri Supreme Court on Monday. Governor Parson, a Republican, also denied Williams’s request for clemency on the same day.
Williams’s execution marks a stark contrast to the declining trend in the use and support of the death penalty in the United States. Twenty-three states have abolished the death penalty, and six others have moratoriums in place. This week saw a high number of executions scheduled in several states, including South Carolina, where an execution took place on Friday, and Texas, which also executed a prisoner on Tuesday evening.
