Marcellus Williams: Prosecutor seeks to substantiate Missouri death row inmate’s claim of innocence

CNN
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Lawyers for the St. Louis district attorney's office are scheduled to present evidence in court Wednesday that would exclude a Missouri death row inmate from his role in a 1998 murder for which he is scheduled to be executed next month.

Marcellus Williams, 55, is scheduled to be executed on Sept. 24 for the fatal stabbing attack of former St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Felicia Gayle, despite having maintained his innocence. Williams' lawyers and St. Louis District Attorney Wesley Bell cite three DNA experts who say Williams can be ruled out as Gayle's killer based on the 2016 murder weapon – a claim they say is bolstered by the fact that he cannot be linked to other forensic evidence from the crime scene.

“There is nothing to indicate that Marcellus Williams was at the crime scene,” Tricia Rojo Bushnell, one of Williams' attorneys and executive director of the Midwest Innocence Project, told CNN. “Nobody saw him there, none of the physical evidence indicates that he was there… He was not the one carrying the knife. We already had this very unreliable evidence; now add the DNA evidence and his innocence becomes even clearer.”

With his execution looming, Williams' claim that he was wrongfully convicted underscores the inherent risk of the death penalty: A potentially innocent person could be executed. In fact, since 1973, at least 200 people sentenced to death have later been acquitted, four of them in Missouri, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Bell – who defeated U.S. Rep. Cori Bush in the Democratic primary for her seat earlier this month – filed a motion in January to overturn the inmate's conviction and death sentence, the result of an independent review by the office's Conviction and Incident Review Unit, Rojo Bushnell said. While the St. Louis District Attorney's Office tried Williams in 2001, Bell did not take office until 2018.

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey's office fought the request and tried last month to block the St. Louis County District Court from holding Wednesday's hearing and reviewing the evidence, arguing that the state Supreme Court – which had set Williams' execution date for June – had already rejected the claims Bell's office wants to make. But that attempt was unsuccessful: The Missouri Supreme Court denied Republican Bailey's request.

In its own motion to dismiss the prosecution's motion, Bailey's office argued that only the state Supreme Court had the authority to stay Williams' execution.

But the prosecution's motion states that the DNA evidence at issue has “never been examined by a court.”

“This previously unconsidered evidence, coupled with the relative paucity of other credible evidence establishing guilt, as well as additional considerations of inadequate legal representation and racial discrimination in jury selection, raises inescapable doubts about Mr. Williams' conviction and sentence.”

Williams was convicted primarily based on the testimony of two unreliable informants, the motion states. These were “known liars” who had faced legal problems of their own and were “motivated” by a $10,000 reward offered by Gayle's family.

Williams was scheduled to be executed in 2017, but Republican former Governor Eric Greitens postponed the execution and appointed a five-member panel to review new evidence in the case, including DNA. But Greitens resigned about a year later, and last year Republican Gov. Mike Parson issued an executive order dissolving the committee and lifting the stay, saying in a statement that the delay had delayed justice and left Gayle's family “in limbo.” A day later, Attorney General Bailey filed a motion with the state Supreme Court to set Williams' execution date.

A spokesperson for the St. Louis District Attorney's Office referred CNN to the motion to overturn Williams' conviction. The Missouri Attorney General's Office did not respond to a request for comment. CNN has also reached out to Daniel Picus, Gayle's widower.

In a 2017 opinion piece for the Post-Dispatch, Picus' wife, Laura Friedman, said he and Gayle's family were victims not only of her murder, but also of “a justice system so unbearably slow that there is no end in sight nearly two decades after the crime, and now because of the media hype.”

“Moreover, if the convicted murderer is innocent, as some claim, it means there is a murderer who has not yet been caught – a scenario too horrific to contemplate – and almost certainly too late to seek or find justice,” Friedman wrote. “This is the necessary but unspoken implication and the first thought of family members when the innocence of a convicted murderer is resolutely asserted.”

Gayle, 42, was killed in her home in the St. Louis suburb of University City on Aug. 11, 1998, after being stabbed 43 times with a kitchen knife, according to the prosecutor's motion and other court documents. She was a “kind and gentle woman who went out of her way to do good for people,” the Post-Dispatch editorial board wrote in 2017, adding that she had left the newspaper six years before her death to pursue full-time volunteer work.

At the crime scene, investigators found hair, footprints and fingerprints that did not belong to Gayle or her husband. Picus' laptop and Gayle's purse containing several personal items were missing from the house.

But the investigation was slow, the motion says. Hoping to encourage someone to come forward with information, Gayle's family offered a $10,000 reward, which was “underscored” by “significant television and newspaper coverage of the case,” according to the motion.

The first informant surfaced in June 1999, the motion says: Henry Cole called police and told them he had been in prison with Williams, who was behind bars for an armed robbery the year before. Cole — who admitted he came forward for the reward and struggles with drug addiction and mental illness, the motion says — claimed Williams confessed to Gayle's murder and gave details of the crime he believed Williams was involved in.

But Cole's statements were inconsistent and at times contradicted the evidence, the prosecutor's motion said. When investigators tried to corroborate his testimony, they nevertheless turned to Williams' ex-girlfriend Laura Asaro, who Cole had told them Williams had seen her on the day of the murder.

The woman initially denied having any information about the crime, prosecutors' motion says. But after meeting with police several times – and being promised that charges against her would be dropped and the reward would be awarded to her – Asaro finally cooperated and told police she had actually seen Williams on the afternoon of the murder, the motion says.

Williams had blood on his shirt, scratches on his neck and a computer in his car, she said, according to the prosecutor's motion. Williams later confessed to killing Gayle, she told investigators, The motion also notes inconsistencies between the statements of Asaro and Cole and contradictions with known evidence in the case.

The next day, police seized Williams' car and found a ruler from the Post-Dispatch inside, although the case file says it was never reported as one of Gayle's missing items. Police found Picus' missing laptop at the home of a man named Glenn Roberts, who said he received it from Williams.

The prosecutor's motion says Williams' conviction was based “primarily” on the testimony of Asaro and Cole because none of the evidence from the crime scene could be linked to Williams: The bloody footprints were not his, nor was the hair, the motion says. The fingerprints could never be linked to Williams either.

And although Picus' laptop was found, according to prosecutors, Roberts told investigators that Williams said he got it from Asaro – a statement Roberts corroborated in a 2020 affidavit. Jurors at trial never heard that testimony, which the prosecutor's motion said shows that “the person with the most direct connection to the crime” was “Laura Asaro, not Marcellus Williams.”

The DNA evidence that is now at the heart of Williams's claim of innocence was not available at his trial. The state Supreme Court ordered the evidence examined in 2015, but two years later – after the examinations were conducted – refused to stop the inmate's execution without a hearing.

The prosecutor's motion cites three DNA experts who have determined that the results rule out Williams as the source of the male DNA found on the knife. “When you stab, DNA is transferred because of restraint and violence. When you stab someone, there's a good chance their DNA is transferred because of that violence,” one of those experts previously told CNN.