Missouri death row inmate Marcellus Williams is set to be resentenced to life without parole following a consent judgment announced by the St. Louis Prosecuting Attorney's Office. This comes just over a month before Williams was scheduled for execution for the 1998 murder of Felicia Gayle, a crime he has consistently denied committing. The judgment requires Williams to enter an Alford plea, allowing him to maintain his innocence while acknowledging that a trial may not be in his best interest.
Williams is expected to formally enter the Alford plea on Thursday, which will result in his death sentence being vacated. "Under this agreement and in accordance with Missouri law, we anticipate Williams will be sentenced by the court to a term of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole," the prosecuting attorney's office stated. Williams' attorney, Tricia Rojo Bushnell, emphasized that her client's plea does not alter his claims of innocence. "Nothing about today's plea agreement changes that fact," she said, adding that the plea brings finality for Gayle's family while allowing the pursuit of new evidence to prove Williams' innocence.
The case against Williams has been controversial, particularly due to the DNA evidence that three experts concluded excludes him as the individual who wielded the knife that killed Gayle.
Despite this, the Missouri Attorney General's Office opposed the judgment, arguing that the knife had been handled by multiple individuals and that the other evidence against Williams remains intact. The office contended that the defense created a "false narrative of innocence" to remove Williams from death row.
Williams, now 55, was convicted primarily based on the testimony of two informants, whom his defense claims were unreliable and motivated by a reward. The DNA evidence at the center of his innocence claim was not available at his trial and has never been considered by a court.
Link: CNN
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