Judge rejects attempt to release Marcellus Williams, a Missouri inmate facing execution

A judge on Thursday refused to overturn the conviction and sentence Marcellus Williamsa convicted inmate in Missouri who is scheduled to be executed later this month. Williams' case has attracted national attention as he faces the death penalty for the stabbing death of a woman in 1998, although Doubts about DNA traces on the knife was used in the attack and there have long been doubts about whether his original trial was fair.

“Every error raised by Williams on appeal, post-conviction review and habeas corpus review has been rejected by the Missouri courts,” wrote St. Louis County Circuit Court Judge Bruce Hilton. “There is no basis for a court to find Williams innocent, and no court has made such a finding. Williams is guilty of premeditated murder and was sentenced to death.”

Williams' attorneys, the St. Louis County District Attorney's Office and the Missouri Attorney General's Office did not respond to messages seeking comment Thursday. Williams' lawyers are expected to ask Republican Gov. Mike Parson for clemency and may file further appeals.

The latest decision came after the Missouri Supreme Court in August an agreement blocked that could have saved Williams' life, and instead called a hearing to hear his plea of ​​innocence. Williams, now 55, has maintained his innocence since his conviction in the murder of Lisha Gayle, a social worker and former reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch who was found stabbed to death in her home in August 1998. He is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on September 24.

Hilton presided over an evidentiary hearing last month contesting Williams' guilt after agreeing to a plan that allowed Williams to enter a new guilty plea to first-degree murder. The inmate's lawyers said at the time that he maintained his innocence, but the plea acknowledged that the evidence was sufficient for a conviction.

In January, Democratic St. Louis County Prosecutor Wesley Bell cited questions about DNA evidence on the murder weapon to request a hearing to overturn Williams' conviction. Bell said the evidence suggested there was another person's DNA on the butcher knife used to kill Gayle, and he asked the judge to overturn Williams' murder conviction based on that testing.

Bell filed the lawsuit under a 2021 Missouri law that allows prosecutors to ask a court to review a verdict they believe is unjust. That, along with the setting of an execution date, meant everything for Williams, from having his conviction overturned and released to having it confirmed and facing execution.

Despite Bell's request, the Missouri Supreme Court in June set the execution date for September 24. At Bell's request, an August hearing was initially scheduled to address questions about the DNA evidence. However, shortly before the hearing, a new report revealed that the DNA evidence was contaminated because St. Louis County prosecutors had handled the knife without gloves before the original trial in 2001.

Because the DNA evidence had been destroyed, attorneys representing Williams from the Midwest Innocence Project reached a compromise with prosecutors: in exchange for a new life sentence without parole, Williams would enter a new plea of ​​first-degree murder.

Hilton signed the agreement. Gayle's family did too. However, the Missouri Attorney General's Office did not.

At the urging of Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey, the Missouri Supreme Court blocked the agreement and ordered Hilton to proceed with the evidentiary hearing on August 28.

Jonathan Potts, a lawyer for Williams, said during the hearing that the mishandling of the murder weapon was devastating for Williams because it “destroyed his last and best chance” to prove his innocence.

Hilton agreed in his judgment.

“In light of this report, (Williams) fails to demonstrate that the genetic material on the knife handle can provide a basis for 'clear and convincing evidence' of Williams' innocence,” Hilton wrote.

Deputy Attorney General Michael Spillane said additional evidence pointed to his guilt.

“You describe the evidence in this case as weak. It was overwhelming,” Spillane said at the hearing.

Prosecutors in Williams' original case said he broke into Gayle's home on August 11, 1998, heard water running in the shower and found a large butcher knife. As Gayle came down the stairs, she was stabbed 43 times. Her purse and her husband's laptop were stolen.

Authorities said Williams stole a jacket to hide blood on his shirt. Williams' girlfriend asked him why he would wear a jacket on a hot day. The girlfriend said she later saw the laptop in the car and Williams sold it a day or two later.

Prosecutors also relied on testimony from Henry Cole, who was in a cell with Williams in 1999 when Williams was incarcerated on other charges. Cole told prosecutors that Williams confessed to the murder and provided details about it.

Williams' lawyers responded that the girlfriend and Cole were convicted felons with a $10,000 reward.

Three other men – Christopher Dunn, Lamar Johnson and Kevin Strickland – were released after decades in prison under the 2021 Missouri law.

Williams was close to execution once before. In August 2017, just hours before his scheduled death, then-Republican Governor Eric Greitens granted a reprieve after reviewing the same DNA evidence that had prompted Bell's attempt to overturn the conviction.

Bell, a rising star in Missouri Democratic politics, defeated incumbent U.S. Rep. Cori Bush in a primary this month and is considered a clear favorite for the general election in November.

Williams is black, and at the hearing, his accuser, Keith Larner, was asked why the jury had only one black juror. Larner said he had rejected only three potential black jurors, including one who he said looked like Williams.

Williams' trial attorney, Joseph Green, told Hilton that during the trial, Williams also represented a man who killed his wife and injured several others in a 1992 shooting at the St. Louis County Courthouse. That case distracted him from his work on Williams' defense, Green said at the hearing.

“I don't think he did our best,” said Green, now a judge.