NAACP President Urges Missouri Governor to Stay Execution Scheduled for Next Week

Executing a black man in Missouri who says he was wrongly convicted would amount to a “horrible miscarriage of justice,” the president of the NAACP said in a letter Wednesday asking the governor to halt the execution scheduled for next week.

Prosecutors want to overturn Marcellus Williams’ conviction because of concerns about the evidence in the case, NAACP President Derrick Johnson said in the letter obtained by The Associated Press. Relatives of the woman who was killed also oppose the execution.

Several efforts are underway to spare Williams’ life. Attorneys for the Midwest Innocence Project filed an emergency appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday seeking a stay. They have also asked a federal court and the Missouri Supreme Court to intervene, and have asked Gov. Mike Parson to grant clemency.

No physical evidence has linked Williams to the 1998 stabbing death of Lisha Gayle, according to a statement from the St. Louis County District Attorney’s Office included in Johnson’s letter. Executing Williams would perpetuate a history of racial injustice in the use of the death penalty in Missouri and elsewhere, Johnson wrote. The NAACP opposes the death penalty.

“Taking the life of Marcellus Williams would be an unequivocal statement that when a white woman is killed, a black man must die. And any black man will do,” Johnson wrote.

Williams, 55, is scheduled to die by injection Tuesday despite a claim of innocence strong enough to prompt Missouri’s former governor to grant a last-minute reprieve in 2017. The current St. Louis County prosecutor also was convinced that Williams’ murder conviction and death sentence should be overturned.

Questions of racial bias in Williams’ conviction have already been raised.

Williams was convicted of first-degree murder in 2001. The prosecutor in the case, Keith Larner, testified at a hearing last month that the trial jury was fair, even though it included only one black member.

Larner said he only dismissed three potential black jurors, including one man because he looked too much like Williams. He did not explain why he thought that mattered.

Williams had narrowly escaped execution before. In August 2017, hours before he was scheduled to die, then-Governor Eric Greitens, a Republican, granted a stay after reviewing DNA evidence that found no trace of Williams’ DNA on the knife used to kill Gayle. Greitens appointed a panel of retired judges to review the case, but the panel never reached a conclusion.

It was that same DNA evidence that prompted Democratic St. Louis County District Attorney Wesley Bell to request a hearing to challenge Williams’ guilt. But days before the Aug. 21 hearing, new testing showed that the DNA evidence had been altered because members of the district attorney’s office had handled the knife without gloves before the original trial.

With DNA evidence unavailable, attorneys with the Midwest Innocence Project reached a compromise with the district attorney’s office: Williams would again plead no contest to first-degree murder in exchange for another life sentence without parole.

Judge Bruce Hilton signed the agreement, as did Gayle’s family. But at the request of Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey, the Missouri Supreme Court blocked the deal and ordered Hilton to hold an evidentiary hearing.

On September 12, Hilton ruled that the first-degree murder conviction and death sentence would stand.

“Every claim of error made by Williams on his direct appeal, post-conviction review, and habeas corpus review has been rejected by the Missouri courts,” Hilton wrote. “There is no basis for any court to conclude that Williams is innocent, and no court has made such a conclusion.”

The Midwest Innocence Project’s clemency request emphasizes how Gayle’s family wants the sentence commuted to life without parole. “The family defines closure as allowing Marcellus to live,” the petition states.

U.S. Rep. Cori Bush, a St. Louis Democrat, also wrote to Parson asking for clemency.

“You have the power to save a life today by granting clemency to a man who has already spent 24 years unjustly in prison for a crime he did not commit,” Bush wrote. “We urge you to use it.”

Parson, a Republican and former county sheriff, has been in office for 11 executions and has never granted a pardon. His spokesman said a decision would likely be made at least 24 hours before the scheduled execution.

Prosecutors in Williams’ original trial said he broke into Gayle’s home on Aug. 11, 1998, heard water running in the shower and found a large butcher knife. When Gayle came downstairs, she was stabbed 43 times. Her purse and her husband’s laptop were stolen.

Authorities said Williams stole a jacket to cover up blood on his shirt. Williams’ girlfriend asked him why he was wearing a jacket on a hot day. The girlfriend said she later saw the laptop in the car and that Williams sold it a day or two later.

Prosecutors also cited testimony from Henry Cole, who shared a cell with Williams in 1999 while Williams was imprisoned on unrelated charges. Cole told prosecutors that Williams confessed to the killing and provided details about it.

Williams’ attorneys responded that the girlfriend and Cole had both been convicted of felonies and wanted a $10,000 reward.

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Whitehurst reported from Washington, D.C. Salter reported from O’Fallon, Missouri.