JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – Advocates from all over the country, including the Midwest Innocence Project, are still campaigning for Marcellus Williams’ pardon with less than 48 hours before his execution by the state.
On Monday, the Missouri Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Williams’ case. Attorneys have also filed an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court.
At present, Williams is housed at the Potosi Correctional Center in Mineral Point, according to the Missouri Department of Corrections website. Soon, Williams will be relocated to the Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center in Bonne Terre to await execution by lethal injection on Tuesday, Sept. 24.
Williams, 55, was convicted of first-degree murder in the August 1998 stabbing death of Lisha Gayle during a robbery of her suburban St. Louis home. He has long maintained his innocence.
This past August, St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell and Williams’ attorneys had reached a deal in which Williams would plead guilty to the murder under an Alford plea.
Williams’ lawyers said that by accepting the Alford plea—an admission that prosecutors have enough evidence to obtain a guilty verdict—they would have more time to prove their client’s innocence.
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey got the state supreme court to overrule the agreement and block the Alford plea, allowing the execution to proceed as scheduled.
Members of Gayle’s family have signed a clemency petition pleading with Governor Mike Parson to spare Williams and let him serve a life sentence without parole. Members of the jury are reportedly quoted in the petition, stating they might have reconsidered their verdict and sentenced had they known then what they now know.
But Parson, a former county sheriff, has not granted clemency for capital punishment during his entire tenure as governor.
Investigators claimed that Williams broke a windowpane to get inside Gayle’s home on Aug. 11, 1998, 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 was a social worker who previously worked as a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Prosecutors at the time had alleged that Williams confessed to his girlfriend in the days following the murder and to a cellmate in 1999 while he was jailed in an unrelated case. Williams’ attorneys said the girlfriend and cellmate were only out for reward money.
He was hours away from execution in August 2017 when he was given a reprieve. Former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens halted the process, saying that testing, unavailable at the time of the killing, showed that Williams’ DNA was not on the murder weapon, leading some to argue that Williams was not the killer.
Greitens formed a board of inquiry to examine the case. However, his successor, Parson, dissolved the board of inquiry in June 2023 before it could reach any conclusion regarding Williams’ innocence.
Prosecutor Bell filed a motion last winter to vacate Williams’ murder conviction. Bell cited that new DNA evidence when filing the motion and said he believed Williams was not involved in Gayle’s death.
A Missouri law that took effect in 2021 allows prosecuting attorneys like Bell to file a motion to vacate a conviction if they believe an inmate could be innocent or was otherwise erroneously convicted.
There were concerns that the original members of the prosecution team had mishandled and contaminated the DNA evidence.
Defense attorneys have maintained there is no physical evidence linking Williams to Gayle’s murder.
Missouri has executed two people thus far in 2024: Brian Dorsey and David Hosier.
