Missouri Supreme Court to Hear Arguments on Efforts to Stop Execution of Death Row Inmate Marcellus Williams

The Missouri Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments Monday in the case involving Marcellus Williams, a death row inmate who has long maintained his innocence, a day before his execution.

On Saturday, Williams’ attorneys and St. Louis County District Attorney Wesley Bell filed a joint brief asking the state Supreme Court to send the case back to a lower court for a “fuller hearing” on Bell’s January motion to vacate Williams’ 2001 conviction and sentence.

Williams, 55, was convicted of the murder of Felicia Gayle, a former journalist found stabbed to death in her home in 1998.

The attorneys asked the Missouri Supreme Court to overturn the circuit court’s decision and send the case back for a new hearing, giving both sides enough time to present evidence and the court enough time to carefully consider the case.

The filing explains that the St. Louis County Circuit Court failed to consider new evidence that came to light in the case, contradicting statements by the prosecutor and the state at trial and on Williams’ prior appeals. The filing also argues that the court erroneously held that the prosecutor’s contamination of DNA evidence did not violate Williams’ due process rights, and expresses concern that the state attorney general’s efforts to prevent reconsideration of Williams’ conviction compromised the circuit court proceedings.

The hearing is scheduled for 9 a.m. CT Monday, while Williams is scheduled to be executed at 6 p.m. CT Tuesday, unless the courts or Gov. Michael Parson intervene.

Earlier this week, Williams’ lawyers asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stay the execution.

In the petition, Williams’ lawyers argued that his due process rights were violated during the years-long legal battle to save his life.

They also noted that former Gov. Eric Greitens had previously indefinitely stayed Williams’ execution and formed a committee to investigate his case and determine whether he should be granted clemency.

“The board investigated Williams’ case for the next six years, until Governor Michael Parson abruptly ended the process,” the attorneys wrote.

When Parson took office, he dissolved the board and revoked Williams’ stay of execution, the petition states. Parson’s decision deprived Williams of his right to due process, Williams’ attorneys argued.

“The Governor’s actions violated Williams’ constitutional rights and created an exceptionally urgent need for the Court’s attention,” the court documents state.

The fight to save a death row inmate’s life

The St. Louis district attorney’s office, which led the original case against Williams, argued in a motion filed in January that DNA testing of the murder weapon could exclude Williams from Gayle’s list of killers. But that argument was shattered last month by new DNA testing that revealed the murder weapon was mishandled, contaminating evidence meant to exonerate Williams and complicating his quest to prove his innocence.

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

Prosecutors asked to overturn Williams’ conviction because “overwhelming evidence” showed his trial was unfair, said one of his lawyers, Tricia Rojo Bushnell.

The case pits Bell, who took office in 2018 and is now running for Congress as a Democrat, against Republican state Attorney General Andrew Bailey, who is seeking reelection. Bailey had challenged Bell’s motion in January, saying new DNA test results indicated the evidence would not exonerate Williams.

In its motion, Bell’s office also raised other issues with Williams’ conviction, including allegations that he was convicted based on the testimony of two unreliable informants facing their own legal troubles and further incentivized by a $10,000 reward.

After Hilton’s attempt to overturn Williams’ conviction was rejected, Bell said he was “extremely disappointed” by the judge’s decision because there are “detailed and well-documented concerns about the integrity” of Williams’ conviction.

Last month, Bell’s office announced it had reached a deal with Williams. Under the consent decree, approved by the court and Gayle’s family, the inmate would have pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and been sentenced to life in prison again.

But the attorney general’s office opposed the deal and appealed to the state Supreme Court, which blocked the deal. At the time, Bailey’s office welcomed the court’s intervention, while the prosecutor’s office said it still had “concerns about the integrity” of Williams’ conviction.

The case also raised the specter of putting a potentially innocent person to death, a risk inherent in capital punishment. At least 200 people sentenced to death since 1973 have subsequently been exonerated, including four in Missouri, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

The NAACP and the Council on American-Islamic Relations are calling on Parson to stop Williams’ execution.

“Killing Mr. Williams, a black man who was wrongfully convicted of murdering a white woman, would amount to a horrific miscarriage of justice and a perpetuation of the worst of Missouri’s past,” NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson and Missouri State Conference President Nimrod Chapel Jr. wrote in an open letter to Parson.

“We call on Governor Parson to immediately halt the execution of Imam Marcellus Khalifah Williams, an innocent man who spent decades serving God behind bars while being wrongly imprisoned for a crime he did not commit,” Edward Ahmed Mitchell, CAIR’s deputy national director, said in a statement. “The DNA evidence proves his innocence, and carrying out this execution would be a grave miscarriage of justice.”

CNN’s Dakin Andone and Lauren Mascarenhas contributed to this report.

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