WASHINGTON (CN) — The state of Missouri executed Marcellus Williams Tuesday night, after the U.S. Supreme Court, the Missouri Supreme Court and the Missouri governor rejected a plea for an execution delay to review prosecutorial misconduct tainting his murder conviction.
The Supreme Court’s denial ended Williams’ decadeslong fight to prove his innocence after his conviction for the 1998 murder of Felicia Gayle, a former newspaper reporter. Williams has fought to overturn his conviction since his sentencing in 2001.
The two-decade fight gained momentum in the last year when the St. Louis County prosecutor’s office filed a petition to vacate Williams’ conviction and death sentence, admitting that the state’s errors during the trial could not be upheld.
Gayle’s family supported a petition to settle the case. Her husband, Dr. Daniel Picus, told the trial court that he didn’t support Williams’ execution.
Despite prosecutors’ concessions, Missouri courts ruled that Williams’ execution could move forward. In a last-ditch effort, Williams filed a series of appeals at the Supreme Court, arguing that staying his execution was necessary “because the lower courts fail to accept what the duly elected minister of justice has accepted — that Williams’ conviction was marred by constitutional error.”
“To execute him would be an unthinkable, irreversible travesty,” Williams’ attorneys wrote.
The justices did not explain why they denied Williams’ stay applications and certiorari petitions. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson would have granted a stay.
Picus found his wife’s body in their University City home. Gayle was stabbed 43 times with a kitchen knife that was left lodged in her neck.
Investigators collected hair and documented bloody footprints and fingerprints left by the perpetrator on the scene, but none of the forensic evidence has ever been traced back to Williams.
Williams’ attorneys say without DNA or eyewitnesses, prosecutors relied only on hearsay testimony from a jailhouse snitch and an ex-girlfriend. The defense claims both witnesses were only interested in a $10,000 reward from Gayle’s family.
Despite his appeals, Williams was first set to be executed in 2017, but only hours before the scheduled time, former Missouri Governor Eric Greitens, a Republican, called off the execution.
The 11th-hour order stemmed from a clemency petition Williams filed. Greitens agreed to form a special board of five retired judges to review the available evidence and provide a clemency recommendation.
The board spent six years reinvestigating Williams’ case, including issuing subpoenas and ordering additional forensic testing. Their work was interrupted, however, by a change in administration.
In 2023, Governor Michael Parson, a Republican, rescinded Greitens’ executive order, terminating the board before a report or recommendation could be publicly issued. Parson then rescheduled Williams’ execution.
Williams said the move deprived him of his life and liberty interests without due process. His attorneys petitioned the Missouri Supreme Court to reinstate the board, but Parson refused to tell the court whether the board had issued a report or clemency recommendation.
The trial court sided with Williams, but the Missouri Supreme Court reversed.
During another hearing on the petition from St. Louis County prosecutor’s office, the state’s lawyer admitted that some of his juror selections were based on race. Of the 11 jurors, only one was Black. The state used six of its nine peremptory strikes against six of the seven Black potential jurors.
The trial prosecutor testified that he used one strike against a potential juror because he and Williams — who are both Black — looked like “brothers.”
“Beyond their race and youth, the only similarities were the type of glasses, and, according to the trial prosecutor, ‘piercing eyes,’” Williams’ attorneys wrote. “Apparently, of the approximately 130 venirepersons, only one had piercing eyes — and he just happened to be a Black man.”
Another Black man stated that he could vote for a death sentence and didn’t see a life sentence as a more lenient penalty. The state removed him for being “weak” on the death penalty despite not striking three white jurors who gave similar answers.
Williams’ lawyers asked the Missouri Supreme Court to send his case back to a trial court for a more comprehensive hearing on juror selection and DNA evidence. The state high court held a hearing on Monday but ultimately rejected Williams’ appeal.
With all other options exhausted, Williams turned to the U.S. Supreme Court. His attorneys pointed to an Oklahoma case, which the court is set to hear in only a few weeks.
Richard Glossip’s innocence appeal follows a similar path as Williams. Both men submitted innocence claims that are backed by prosecutors and have asked the court for new trials to review newly discovered evidence.
“Despite the strength of the evidence supporting the prosecutor’s concession of constitutional error, the state courts gave it no deference or consideration, even in considering the prosecuting attorney’s own motion filed under a statute enacted specifically to give him the power to overturn a wrongful conviction,” Williams’ attorneys wrote.
Williams’ attorneys urged the court to hold off on his execution until the justices rule on Glossip’s case, which will go before the court on Oct. 8.
Missouri had pushed the justices to reject Williams’ application, arguing that the Missouri high court interpreted state law and the U.S. Supreme Court could not overrule the state court on an interpretation of Missouri’s constitution.
“Put simply, the decision below rests on adequate and independent state law grounds, and as ‘a well-established principle of federalism[,]’ these adequate and independent state-law grounds render the decision, ‘immune from review in the federal courts,’” Missouri’s Attorney General Andrew Bailey wrote.
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