Missouri judge denies release of Marcellus Williams, who is now scheduled to face execution

A St. Louis County judge has rejected an attempt to free a man prosecutors now believe is innocent of a 1998 murder.

Judge Bruce Hilton on Thursday refused to overturn the death sentence of Marcellus Williams, who was sentenced to death for the murder of Felicia Gayle. Without the intervention of a higher court, Gov. Mike Parson or the U.S. Supreme Court, Williams will be executed on Sept. 24.

“There is no basis for a court to find Williams innocent, and no court has made such a finding,” Hilton wrote in his opinion. “Williams is guilty of first-degree murder and has been sentenced to death.”

St. Louis County District Attorney Wesley Bell, whose office filed the motion to vacate the conviction in January, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Williams has consistently denied playing a role in the stabbing death of Gayle, a former St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter. Although police later found Gayle’s belongings in a car Williams owned, and he pawned a laptop belonging to her husband, there was no forensic evidence such as DNA, hair or fingerprints linking him to the crime scene.

Bell’s motion cited the lack of forensic evidence, questions about the two witnesses who linked Williams to the crime and the performance of Williams’ attorneys at trial. Williams had made similar arguments in state and federal appeals, all of which were dismissed.

Bell’s office also argued that DNA testing of the murder weapon would completely rule out Williams as a suspect. But just days before an initial evidentiary hearing, testing revealed that what was thought to be unknown male DNA on the knife matched the profile of Edward Magee, an investigator with the district attorney’s office at the time. Keith Larner, who argued the case at trial, also couldn’t be ruled out.

Bell’s office said it was a “bad faith failure to preserve evidence” that violated Williams’ rights. But Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s office disagreed, saying that in 2001, no one knew that simply touching an object could leave enough DNA to be tested.

Hilton rejected all of these arguments, pointing out that every other court had done the same.

The Williams case marked the first time Bell used a 2021 law that gave prosecutors a mechanism to correct what they considered wrongful convictions. It was also the first time the process was used for an inmate on death row.

The law states that a judge must grant a motion to dismiss if the court finds that there is “clear and convincing evidence of actual innocence or constitutional error at the original trial or plea that undermines confidence in the judgment.”

Williams had twice avoided execution as he fought to prove his innocence.

The state Supreme Court had originally set Williams’ execution date for January 28, 2015. But on January 22, 2015, it granted a request for a stay. It then appointed a special expert to examine DNA evidence on the murder weapon.

After rejecting Williams’ efforts to examine that DNA evidence in 2017, the justices set an execution date again, this time for August 22 of that year. Hours before Williams was scheduled to die, then-Governor Eric Greitens issued a stay and appointed a commission of inquiry to determine whether Williams deserved clemency.

The Board of Directors held a closed hearing in 2018. A member told St. Louis Public Radio In 2022, its members met for the last time on July 21, 2021 and made oral recommendations to Parson.

Pastor dissolved the board of directors on June 29, 2023, apparently without taking action on those recommendations. Williams’ lawyers filed a lawsuit, arguing that Parson lacked the authority to take that action. The Supreme Court disagreed in a unanimous decision published on June 4th and quickly set a third execution date — September 24.

The decision kicked off Bell’s annulment proceedings. Hilton had originally scheduled a hearing for August 21. That afternoon, prosecutors and Williams’ attorneys announced that they had reached an agreement That would have allowed him to plead not guilty to Gayle’s murder in exchange for a life sentence. Hilton initially accepted the offer, but withdrew it after the Missouri Supreme Court temporarily stayed it, leading to the hearing a week later.