A Missouri inmate is set to die tonight after appeals from prosecution, defense

CNN — Marcellus Williams, whose murder conviction was questioned by a prosecutor in light of what he described as new evidence, will be executed Tuesday evening after the US Supreme Court denied his request for a stay of execution.

The court offered no explanation for its decision, which is common for cases on its emergency docket.

There were no noted dissents in two of Williiams’ appeals. In a third, Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson said they would have granted the request to pause the execution.

The 55-year-old is set to be executed by lethal injection at 6 p.m. CT at the state prison in Bonne Terre.

The US Supreme Court’s action came a day after Missouri’s supreme court and governor refused to grant a stay of execution. His attorneys filed a flurry of appeal efforts based on what they describe as new evidence – including alleged bias in jury selection and contamination of the murder weapon prior to trial.

Williams was convicted in 2001 of killing Felicia Gayle, a former newspaper reporter found stabbed to death in her home in 1998.

Recently, the top prosecutor in St. Louis County joined Williams’ attorneys in asking for the conviction to be overturned after new testimony from the 2001 trial prosecutor and recent DNA testing showing evidence contamination.

The case highlights the issue of potentially putting an innocent person to death – an inherent risk of capital punishment. At least 200 people sentenced to death since 1973 were later exonerated, including four in Missouri, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Attorneys on both sides tried to intervene

Williams’ lawyers and St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell filled a joint brief Saturday asking the Missouri Supreme Court to send the case back to a lower court for a “more comprehensive hearing” on Bell’s January motion to vacate Williams’ 2001 conviction and sentence.

The St. Louis Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, which handled the trial against Williams, argued in the motion that DNA testing of the knife used in the killing might suggest Williams was not Gayle’s killer.

But that effort unraveled at a circuit court hearing last month, after new DNA testing revealed the murder weapon had been mishandled prior to the 2001 trial – contaminating the evidence meant to exonerate Williams and complicating his quest to prove his innocence.

Attorneys “received a report indicating the DNA on the murder weapon belonged to an assistant prosecuting attorney and an investigator who had handled the murder weapon without gloves prior to trial,” the state’s judicial branch said.

But the Missouri Attorney General’s Office said the new DNA findings released last month don’t exonerate Williams.

“In this case, a new round of DNA testing proved the office was right all along; the knife in question has been handled by many actors, including law enforcement, since being found,” Attorney General Andrew Bailey said.

“In addition, one of the defense’s own experts previously testified he could not rule out the possibility that Williams’s DNA was also on the knife. He could only testify to the fact that enough actors had handled the knife throughout the legal process that others’ DNA was present.”

Other evidence that helped convict Williams “remains intact,” the attorney general said.

“The victim’s personal items were found in Williams’s car after the murder. A witness testified that Williams had sold the victim’s laptop to him. Williams confessed to his girlfriend and an inmate in the St. Louis City Jail, and William’s girlfriend saw him dispose of the bloody clothes worn during the murder,” the attorney general’s office said.

New testimony from the trial prosecutor

Williams’ attorneys had asked the US Supreme Court to stay the execution, citing “newly-discovered evidence from the trial prosecutor’s testimony” last month.

During a motion-to-vacate hearing August 28, a prosecutor from Williams’ 2001 trial “admitted that he had struck (a potential juror from the jury pool) because like Mr. Williams, (the potential juror) was Black,” Williams’ attorneys wrote in an emergency request for the US Supreme Court to intervene.

“There was a racial component to this,” attorney Jonathan Potts said at a Missouri Supreme Court hearing Monday. But the Missouri Attorney General’s Office disputed that interpretation of the trial prosecutor’s testimony.

“He said they look like brothers,” Assistant Attorney General Michael Spillane said at the hearing.

“What did he say when asked directly, ‘Did you strike someone … with part of the reason for striking someone because (you’re) Black?’ He said no, absolutely not,” Spillane said. “And he explained that that would be a violation.”

In the end, the Missouri Supreme Court unanimously decided not to halt Williams’ execution because his team “failed to demonstrate by clear and convincing evidence Williams’ actual innocence or constitutional error at the original criminal trial that undermines the confidence in the judgment of the original criminal trial,” the court’s opinion read.

And “because this Court rejects this appeal on the merits, the motion for stay of execution is overruled as moot.”

Republican Gov. Michael Parson, who also has the power to halt Williams’ execution, said he would not intervene.

“Mr. Williams has exhausted due process and every judicial avenue, including over 15 hearings attempting to argue his innocence and overturn his conviction,” Parson said after the state Supreme Court’s decision.

“No jury nor court, including at the trial, appellate, and Supreme Court levels, have ever found merit in Mr. Williams’ innocence claims. At the end of the day, his guilty verdict and sentence of capital punishment were upheld. Nothing from the real facts of this case have led me to believe in Mr. Williams’ innocence, as such, Mr. Williams’ punishment will be carried out as ordered by the Supreme Court.”

The victim’s family supports life in prison

The St. Louis Prosecuting Attorney’s Office said it reached an agreement with Williams last month. Under the consent judgment – approved by the court and Gayle’s family – he would enter an Alford plea of guilty to first-degree murder and be resentenced to life in prison.

But the state attorney general’s office opposed the deal and appealed to the state Supreme Court, which blocked the agreement.

The Williams case has pitted Bell – who became St. Louis County’s top prosecutor in 2018 and is now a Democratic candidate for Congress – against Republican state Attorney General Bailey, who is seeking reelection.

Bailey fought Bell’s efforts to get Williams’ conviction vacated, saying new DNA test results would not exonerate Williams.

US Supreme Court was Williams’ last hope

Williams’ team filed a clemency petition to the US Supreme Court last week, noting Missouri’s previous governor had postponed Williams’ execution indefinitely amid questions about the integrity of Williams’ trial.

Former GOP Gov. Eric Greitens previously halted Williams’ execution and formed a board 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 terminated the process,” Williams’ attorneys wrote.

After Parson took office, he dissolved the board and revoked Williams’ stay of execution, the inmate’s attorneys said. That decision deprived Williams of his right to due process, his lawyers argued.

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

Parson defended his decision. “This Board was established nearly six years ago, and it is time to move forward,” Parson said last summer. “We could stall and delay for another six years, deferring justice, leaving a victim’s family in limbo, and solving nothing. This administration won’t do that.”

But allowing Williams to be executed without further investigation would undermine the criminal justice system, his attorneys said.

The US Supreme Court “must step in to prevent this irreparable injustice,” attorney Tricia Rojo Bushnell said before Tuesday’s action by the high court.

“Missouri is poised to execute an innocent man, an outcome that calls into question the legitimacy of the entire criminal justice system.”

CNN’s Dakin Andone, Lauren Mascarenhas, John Fritze and Jennifer Hauser contributed to this report.

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