Missouri executed Marcellus Williams by lethal injection on Tuesday, despite the objections of the prosecutor’s office that initially convicted him. Williams, convicted in 2003 for the murder of Felicia Gayle, maintained his innocence throughout the years, and his lawyer, Tricia Rojo Bushnell of the Midwest Innocence Project, condemned the execution. “The execution of an innocent person is the most extreme manifestation of Missouri’s obsession with finality over truth, justice, and humanity,” she said.
Williams’s case had previously received stays of execution in 2015 and 2017 but ultimately did not result in the overturning of his conviction. A 2021 Missouri law allowed prosecutors to challenge convictions if they believed there had been a miscarriage of justice. In January, St. Louis County prosecutor Wesley Bell filed a motion to overturn the conviction, citing violations of Williams’s constitutional rights, including a failure to present mitigating evidence during the trial and the improper exclusion of Black jurors.
Bell’s investigation revealed that key witnesses against Williams were not credible, and DNA evidence did not match him. However, just before a scheduled hearing in August, new DNA analysis showed that the murder weapon had been handled by a prosecutor and an investigator, weakening Williams's claims of innocence. Despite this, Bell offered a deal that would take Williams off death row, with the approval of the victim’s widower. Yet, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey objected, and the court rejected Bell’s arguments.
The U.S. Supreme Court refused to intervene, and Governor Mike Parson, citing that Williams’s guilt was “settled,” declined calls for clemency from figures such as Representative Cori Bush and Richard Branson. In his final years, Williams converted to Islam and took the name Khaliifah. He served as an imam to fellow prisoners before his execution.
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