The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to halt the execution of Missouri death row inmate Marcellus Williams, convicted in the 1998 stabbing death of Felicia Gayle in a suburb of St. Louis. Williams, who has consistently maintained his innocence, is scheduled for execution by lethal injection at 6 p.m. CT.
Efforts to prevent the execution were previously rejected by both the Missouri Supreme Court and Republican Governor Mike Parson. Williams’ execution marks the third in Missouri this year and is among five scheduled nationwide within a seven-day period, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson expressed that they would have granted the request to delay the execution.
“Tonight, Missouri will execute an innocent man… The victim’s family opposes his execution. Jurors who originally sentenced him to death now oppose his execution. The prosecutor’s office that convicted and sentenced him to death has now admitted they were wrong and zealously fought to undo the conviction and save Mr. Williams’ life,” stated attorney Tricia Rojo Bushnell of the Midwest Innocence Project. “That is not justice. And we must all question any system that would allow this to occur.”
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Previous Stays and DNA Evidence
Williams faced execution twice before following his 2001 conviction for Gayle’s murder. In 2015, the Missouri Supreme Court paused execution plans to appoint a special master for reviewing DNA testing on the handle of the butcher knife used to stab Gayle 43 times. Williams’ attorneys reported that DNA experts concluded he was not the source of DNA found on the knife. Despite this, the special master returned the case to the Missouri Supreme Court, leading to a second execution date set for August 2017.
Just hours before that scheduled execution, then-Governor Eric Greitens halted the process and appointed a panel of five retired judges to investigate the DNA evidence. However, this board was dissolved by Governor Parson in June 2023 without issuing a final report.
