Missouri Supreme Court to consider death row case one day before scheduled execution

JEFFERSON CITY, Missouri — The Missouri Supreme Court will hear arguments Monday as attorneys working on behalf of Marcellus Williams seek to save him, just one day before his scheduled execution.

Oral arguments were scheduled for Monday morning at the state Supreme Court hearing. Williams, 55, is scheduled to die by injection Tuesday night for the 1998 stabbing death of Lisha Gayle in University City, Missouri, a St. Louis suburb.

Williams has long maintained his innocence. DNA evidence raised enough questions that a former governor stayed an execution in 2017, and the current St. Louis County prosecutor challenged Williams’ guilt in a court hearing last month.

Williams’ attorneys have also appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Meanwhile, a clemency petition filed with Gov. Mike Parson focuses on how Gayle’s family wants the sentence commuted to life in prison without parole. The national NAACP is also urging Parson, a Republican, to stop the execution of Williams, who is black.

The execution would be the third in Missouri this year and the 15th nationwide.

Williams was hours away from execution in August 2017 when then-Governor Eric Greitens, a Republican, granted a stay after reviewing DNA evidence that found no trace of Williams’ DNA on the knife used in the killing. Greitens appointed a panel of retired judges to review the case, but that 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 proceed to an evidentiary hearing, which took place on August 28.

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.

Parson, a former county sheriff, was in office for 11 executions and never granted clemency.

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

The prosecutor in the 2001 first-degree murder case, Keith Larner, testified at the August hearing 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’ execution would perpetuate a history of racial injustice in the application of the death penalty in Missouri and elsewhere, NAACP President Derrick Johnson wrote to Parson last week. 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.

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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Salter reported from O’Fallon, Missouri.