Missouri Supreme Court to hear arguments on the effort to stop the execution of death row inmate Marcellus Williams
By Cindy Von Quednow, CNN
(CNN) — The Missouri Supreme Court on Monday is scheduled to hear arguments in the case involving Marcellus Williams, a death row inmate who has long maintained his innocence, a day before he is set to be executed.
On Saturday, Williams’ lawyers and St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell filed a joint brief asking the state Supreme Court to send the case back to a lower court for a “more comprehensive hearing” on Bell’s January motion to vacate Williams’ 2001 conviction and sentence.
Williams, 55, was convicted of killing Felicia Gayle, a former newspaper reporter found stabbed to death in her home in 1998.
The attorneys asked the Missouri Supreme Court to vacate the circuit court’s decision and remand the case for a new hearing, giving both sides adequate time to present evidence and the court enough time to carefully consider the case.
The brief explains that St. Louis County Circuit Court failed to credit newly disclosed evidence in the case, which contradicted the trial prosecutor’s and the state’s representations at trial and in Williams’ prior appeals. The brief also argues the court mistakenly ruled the prosecutor’s contamination of DNA evidence did not violate Williams’ due process rights, and expresses concern that the state attorney general’s efforts to prevent reconsideration of Williams’ conviction compromised the proceedings in the circuit court.
The hearing is set for 9 a.m. CT Monday, while Williams is scheduled to be executed at 6 p.m. CT Tuesday, unless the courts or Gov. Michael Parson intervene.
Earlier in the week, Williams’ attorneys asked the US Supreme Court to stay the execution.
In that petition, Williams’ lawyers argued his due process rights were denied during the yearslong legal battle to save his life.
They also noted former Gov. Eric Greitens previously halted Williams’ execution indefinitely and formed a board to investigate his case and determine whether he should be granted clemency.
“The Board investigated Williams’ case for the next six years—until Governor Michael Parson abruptly terminated the process,” the lawyers wrote.
When Parson took office, he dissolved the board and revoked Williams’ stay of execution, the petition noted. Parson’s decision denied Williams his right to due process, Williams’ lawyers argued.
“The Governor’s actions have violated Williams’ constitutional rights and created an exceptionally urgent need for the Court’s attention,” the court documents state.
The fight to save a death row inmate’s life
The St. Louis Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, which handled the original trial against Williams, argued in a January motion that DNA testing of the murder weapon could exclude Williams as Gayle’s killer. But the argument fell apart last month in the face of new DNA testing that revealed the murder weapon had been mishandled, contaminating the evidence meant to exonerate Williams and complicating his quest to prove his innocence.
“There is no basis for a court to find that Williams is innocent,” state Judge Bruce F. Hilton wrote in his judgment, “and no court has made such a finding. Williams is guilty of first-degree murder, and has been sentenced to death.”
Prosecutors had moved to vacate Williams’ conviction because “overwhelming evidence” showed Williams’ trial had been unfair, one of his attorneys, Tricia Rojo Bushnell, said.
The case has pitted Bell, who assumed the office in 2018 and now is running for Congress as a Democrat, against Republican state Attorney General Andrew Bailey, who is seeking reelection. Bailey had fought Bell’s January motion, saying new DNA test results indicated the evidence would not exonerate Williams.
In its motion, Bell’s office also raised other issues with Williams’ conviction, including claims he was convicted on the testimony of two unreliable informants facing their own legal troubles and further incentivized by $10,000 in reward money.
After the effort to vacate Williams’ conviction was rejected by Hilton, Bell said he was “immensely disappointed” by the judge’s ruling because there are “detailed and well-documented concerns regarding the integrity” of Williams’ conviction.
Last month, Bell’s office announced it had reached an agreement with Williams. Under the consent judgment, approved by the court and Gayle’s family, the inmate would have entered an Alford plea of guilty to first-degree murder and be resentenced to life in prison.
But the attorney general’s office opposed the deal and appealed to the state Supreme Court, which blocked the agreement. At the time, Bailey’s office praised the court’s intervention, while the prosecutor’s office said it still had “concerns about the integrity” of Williams’ conviction.
The case also raised the specter of a potentially innocent person being put to death, an inherent risk of capital punishment. At least 200 people sentenced to death since 1973 were later exonerated, four of them in Missouri, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
The NAACP and the Council on American-Islamic Relations are calling on Parson to halt Williams’ execution.
“Killing Mr. Williams, a Black man who was wrongfully convicted of killing a White woman, would amount to a horrible miscarriage of justice and a perpetuation of the worst of Missouri’s past,” NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson and Missouri State Conference President Nimrod Chapel Jr. wrote in an open letter to Parson.
“We are calling on Governor Parson to immediately halt the execution of Imam Marcellus Khalifah Williams, an innocent man who has spent decades serving God behind bars while being falsely imprisoned for a crime he did not commit,” CAIR National Deputy Director Edward Ahmed Mitchell said in a statement. “The DNA evidence proves his innocence, and proceeding with this execution would be a grave miscarriage of justice.”
CNN’s Dakin Andone and Lauren Mascarenhas contributed to this report.
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