A Missouri man is set to be put to death Tuesday despite opposition from the state’s prosecutor’s office, objection from the victim’s family and concerns about lack of evidence linking him to the crime — a day after both Gov. Mike Parson and the state top court rejected efforts to halt the execution.
Marcellus Williams, 55, is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection at 6 p.m., local time, for the stabbing death of Lisha Gayle, a social worker and former newspaper reporter, at her St. Louis home in 1998.
Attorneys for Williams — who has maintained his innocence since his arrest — say the execution is scheduled to go ahead despite the office of the St. Louis County prosecuting attorney’s motion to overturn the conviction amid prosecutor concerns about a lack of DNA evidence linking Williams to the crime.
“The very office that secured Mr. Williams’ conviction and his death sentence now concedes that his trial was unfair,” Tricia Rojo Bushnell, executive director of the Midwest Innocence Project, told MSNBC’s Joy Reid Monday night.
“The very office that secured Mr. Williams’ conviction and his death sentence now concedes that his trial was unfair.” -Tricia Rojo Bushnell (@Tcita), attorney for Marcellus Williams, who is scheduled to be executed today in Missouri, despite an appeal before U.S. Supreme Court. pic.twitter.com/y9oIV9auRX
— The ReidOut (@thereidout) September 24, 2024
According to the criminal justice reform nonprofit, the prosecuting attorney has “also confessed [to] constitutional error based on racially biased jury selection.”
Citing recently uncovered revelations that the trial prosecutor removed at least one Black juror from the case because of his race, as well as opposition to the execution by both the sitting prosecuting attorney and the victim’s family, Bushnell has urged the courts to step in “to prevent this irreparable injustice.”
While Williams still has an appeal before the U.S. Supreme Court, the state top court on Monday unanimously denied his attorneys’ request to halt the execution based on alleged errors in jury selection and alleged mishandling of the murder weapon by prosecutors.
Earlier this year, St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell filed a motion to halt the conviction writing that three DNA experts had “concluded that Mr. Williams is excluded as the source of the male DNA on the handle of the murder weapon.” However, subsequent tests determined the weapon had been mishandled by prosecutors, which would make it impossible to identify the killer.
“Missouri is poised to execute an innocent man, an outcome that calls into question the legitimacy of the entire criminal justice system,” Bushnell said Monday.
With News Wire Sources