Testimony begins Wednesday during a life-or-death hearing for Missouri inmate Marcellus Williams.
The case is pending before St. Louis County District Judge Bruce Hilton. motion submitted by District Attorney Wesley Bell, who wants to overturn Williams’ 1998 murder conviction. Time is of the essence: Williams is planned to be carried out September 24, and neither Missouri Governor Mike Parson nor Attorney General Andrew Bailey have shown any inclination to delay the process.
Williams, 55, was convicted of first-degree murder in the 1998 stabbing death of Lisha Gayle. He was hours away from execution in August 2017 when then-Governor Eric Greitens, a Republican, granted a reprieve after DNA testing that was not available at the time of the killing showed that the DNA on the knife matched that of someone else, not Williams.
This evidence prompted Bell to re-examine the case.
“This previously unconsidered evidence, combined with the relative paucity of other credible evidence supporting guilt, as well as additional considerations of ineffective assistance of counsel and racial discrimination in jury selection, casts irrefutable doubt on Mr. Williams’ conviction and sentence,” Bell’s motion states.
Williams, who is black, was found guilty and sentenced to death by a jury of 11 white people and one black person.
Bailey, a Republican, said in a June court filing that “the evidence supporting the conviction at trial was overwhelming” despite the new DNA claims.
A 2021 Missouri law allows prosecutors to file a motion to overturn a conviction they believe is unjust. The law has resulted in the exoneration of three men who spent decades in prison, including Christopher Dunn last month.
Normally, a judge hears a few days of testimony and then takes up to two months to weigh the evidence. Hilton, however, won’t have the luxury of time: Williams’ execution is in 34 days.
The Missouri Supreme Court set the September execution date for June 4, hours after ruling that Parson, a Republican, was within his rights when he dissolved a commission of inquiry convened by Greitens after he prevented the 2017 execution.
The commission, made up of five retired judges, never ruled or reached a conclusion on whether the new DNA evidence exonerated Williams. Parson disbanded the commission in June 2023, saying it was time to “move forward.”
Parson’s spokesman Johnathan Shiflett said the governor “will carefully consider the issue of a pardon for Mr. Williams, as he has done for all other death penalty cases during his tenure, but no decision has been made at this time.” Parson, a former county sheriff, has been governor for 11 executions and has never granted a pardon.
In addition to Dunn, who served 34 years behind bars for the death of a 15-year-old St. Louis boy, Missouri’s law allowing prosecutors to appeal convictions led to the freedom of two other men: Kevin Strickland And Lamar JohnsonBailey was not attorney general when Strickland’s case came to trial, but his office opposed the overturning of Dunn’s and Johnson’s convictions.
Bailey also opposed efforts to overturn the conviction of Sandra Hemmewho served 43 years in prison for murder, though that case was decided on appeals, not a motion by the prosecutor. A judge ruled in June that Hemme should be released. Bailey filed multiple appeals to keep her behind bars, but Hemme was released in July.
Strickland was released in 2021 after serving more than 40 years for three murders in Kansas City after a judge ruled that he was wrongly convicted in 1979In 2023, a judge in St. Louis overturned Johnson’s conviction. He had served nearly 28 years for a murder he committed always said he was not guilty.
Williams is the first death row inmate to have his claim of innocence heard by a judge since the 2021 law passed, and he has support from another former death row inmate. Joseph Amrine spent 17 years on death row before being released in 2003 after the Missouri Supreme Court ruled there was no credible evidence linking him to the murder of another inmate.
“The state has nothing to gain from killing the wrong person,” Amrine said in a statement. “I hope the attorney general’s office can change its approach and recognize that there are people who are affected by their actions.”
Prosecutors at Williams’ trial said that on Aug. 11, 1998, he broke into Gayle’s suburban St. Louis home, 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. Gayle, who was white, was a social worker who had previously worked as a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Authorities say Williams stole a jacket to cover up the blood on his shirt. Williams’ girlfriend asked him why he would be 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 St. Louis cell with Williams in 1999 while Williams was incarcerated on unrelated charges. Cole told prosecutors that Williams confessed to the killing and provided details about the killing.
Williams’ attorneys responded that both the girlfriend and Cole were convicted felons who wanted a $10,000 reward.
