Missouri loss of life row inmate Marcellus Williams’ is executed

Missouri death row inmate Marcellus Williams was executed Tuesday night following a lengthy court battle, during which even prosecutors expressed doubts about his case.

The 55-year-old was injected with a fatal dose of pentobarbital at the Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center in Bonne Terre just after 6pm, and was pronounced dead by 6.10, Fox 2 reports. 

Reporters on the scene said Williams was covered from head to toe in a white sheet and appeared to wiggle his feet and move his head. His chest then heaved about a half dozen times before it stopped, they said, noting Williams did not appear to struggle. 

His son, Marcellus Williams Jr., his attorneys and Imam Jalahii Kacem were present for the execution Tuesday night, but his alleged victim’s family opted not to attend and did not release a statement, according to Karen Pojmann, a spokeswoman for the Missouri Department of Corrections. 

Williams had earlier received a final meal of chicken wings and tater tots, and released an eight-word final statement: ‘All Praise Be To Allah In Every Situation!!!’

He had been on death row since he was convicted in 2001 of murdering Felicia ‘Lisha’ Gayle, a newspaper reporter who was found stabbed to death in her home in 1998.

He has since appealed his conviction multiple times, as his defense attorneys argued he did not receive a fair trial.

Former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens even halted his execution indefinitely and formed a board of former judges to review the case and to determine whether Williams should be granted clemency.

It investigated Williams’ case for the next six years, but was abruptly shut down in June 2023 under current Gov. Michael Parson, who scheduled Williams’ execution.

He argued on Tuesday that Williams’ case received ample consideration from the justice system. 

‘We hope this gives finality to a case that has languished for decades, revictimizing Ms. Gayle’s family over and over again,’ the governor said.

‘Two decades of judicial proceedings and more than 15 judicial hearings upheld this guilty conviction; thus the order of execution has been carried out.’ 

Prosecutors at Williams’ original trial in 2001 argued that Williams broke into Gayle’s home on August 11, 1998, heard water running in the shower and grabbed a butcher knife.

When she came downstairs, they claimed Williams stabbed Gayle 43 times, left the knife in her throat and made off with her purse and her husband’s laptop.

Authorities said Williams then stole a jacket to conceal blood on his shirt, prompting his girlfriend at the time to ask him why he would wear a jacket on a hot day.

That girlfriend later reported that she saw the stolen laptop in Williams’ car and he sold it to a neighbor a day or two later.

Prosecutors also cited testimony from Henry Cole, who shared a jail cell with Williams in 1999 when Williams was in prison on unrelated charges.

Cole told prosecutors Williams confessed to the killing and offered details about it.

But defense attorneys countered by saying both Williams’ girlfriend and Cole were convicted of felonies and wanted a $10,000 reward for information about Gayle’s death.

Gov. Parson, though, claimed on Tuesday that the girlfriend never inquired about the money and the informant provided investigators with information about the crime that were never made public.  

Yet questions about the integrity of the trial remained for years.

His attorneys had argued that a black juror was excluded from the jury pool, which comprised 11 white people and just one black juror.

Greitens then halted the execution and formed the board to investigate Williams’ conviction – which Williams’ attorneys argued trampled upon his right to due process in a petition to the US Supreme Court to stay the execution.

‘The Governor’s actions have violated Williams’ constitutional rights and created an exceptionally urgent need for the Court’s attention,’ the lawyers argued in a petition to stay the execution.

They went on to note that even the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office announced earlier this year that there were constitutional errors in Williams’ original trial – including the removal of one prospective black juror due to race. 

‘We have asked the US Supreme Court to stay Marcellus Williams’ execution on Tuesday based on a revelation by the trial prosecutor that he removed at least one Black juror before trial based on his race, said Tricia Rojo Bushnell, an attorney for Mr. Williams. 

‘We were astonished to learn that ‘part of the reason’ for striking a juror was because the juror was a young Black man with glasses, so that he and Mr. Williams ‘looked like they were brothers.’ 

‘Under our Constitution, there is a right to a fair trial before a jury of our peers,’ she noted. ‘The prosecutor removed this juror because he looked like Mr. Williams’ peer. 

‘St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell has confessed constitutional error due to this racial bias during jury selection. We hope the Supreme Court will stay Mr. Williams’ execution based on this new evidence of racial bias and the other serious doubts about the integrity of Mr. Williams’ conviction.’ 

Bell had also raised concerns about the DNA evidence on the butcher knife as he requested a hearing challenging Williams’ guilt earlier this year.

He said that the evidence indicated that someone else’s DNA was on the murder weapon.

But just days before an August 21 hearing, new testing showed the DNA evidence was spoiled because members of the prosecutor’s office touched the knife without gloves before the original 2001 trial.

Attorneys with the Midwest Innocence Project then reached an agreement with the prosecutor’s office under which Williams would enter a no-contest plea to first-degree murder in exchange for a new sentence of life in prison without parole.

Judge Bruce Hilton signed off on the agreement, as did Gayle’s family.

But at the behest of Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey, the Missouri Supreme Court blocked the agreement and ordered Hilton to proceed with an evidentiary hearing.

The judge then ruled on September 12 that the first-degree murder conviction and death sentence would stand.

‘[Williams’] remaining evidence amounts to nothing more than re-packaged arguments about evidence that was available at trial and involved in Williams’ unsuccessful direct appeal and post-conviction challenges,’ Hilton ruled.

‘There is no basis for a court to find that Williams is innocent, and no court has made such a finding,’ he continued.

Still, Parson’s office was inundated with requests to stay Williams’ execution in recent weeks.

The NAACP, for example, wrote to the governor arguing that the death penalty has been ‘historically applied in a racially disparate manner’ particularly in Missouri.

‘Killing Mr. Williams, a black man who was wrongfully convicted of killing a white woman, would amount to a horrible miscarriage of justice and a perpetuation of the worse of Missouri’s past,’ NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson and Missouri State Conference President Nimrod Chapel Jr. wrote.

US Rep. Cori Bush also sent her own letter to Parson, urging him to stop Williams’ execution.

‘As lawmakers, we are committed to building a Missouri that is a beacon of justice, and we strive daily to represent the needs and demands of Missourians across the state,’ she wrote in a letter shared to X.

‘For this reason, we are urging you to immediately commute Mr. Williams’ sentence and halt his execution.’

She then went on to highlight the efforts Williams’ attorneys have made to prove his innocence, saying executing him would be a ‘grave injustice and would do serious and lasting harm.’

Hope for a stay of execution, though, seemed to dwindle when the United States Supreme Court denied Williams’ appeal just over an hour before his scheduled death.

‘That is not justice,’ defense attorney Tricia Rojo Bushnell said after the ruling. ‘And we must all question any system that would allow this to occur.

‘The execution of an innocent person is the most extreme manifestation of Missouri’s obsession with “finality” over truth, justice and humanity at any cost,’ she argued.

‘Tonight, we all bear witness to Missouri’s grotesque exercise of state power. Let it not be in vain.

‘This should never happen, and we must not let it continue.’