JEFFERSON CITY, Missouri — As the end of his life neared, Missouri death row inmate Marcellus Williams was given the chance to make a final statement to the world.
His words were sparse — he neither declared his innocence nor admitted guilt in the 1998 murder of Lisha Gayle, a social worker and former reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch who was stabbed 43 times during a burglary at her suburban St. Louis home. Williams instead appeared to make peace with his fate, writing simply, “Praise be to Allah in every situation!!!”
The execution of Williams On Tuesday there was still discussion about whether this should have happened.
The Governor of Missouri, the Attorney General and top court remain convinced of his guilt. Those who stood up for him continue to maintain that he was innocent. The St. Louis County District Attorney, citing persistent questions, believes Williams’ sentence should have been commuted to life in prison. Gayle’s family, though not publicly vocal, also joined in a request that Williams be allowed to live.
The Missouri execution, carried out at a prison in Bonne Terre, was one of the five planned within a week in the US, reigniting a long-running debate over the use of the death penalty in the states.
When Gayle was murdered, items stolen from her home were later sold by Williams or found in his possession. A former girlfriend and an inmate who shared a cell with Williams also testified at his trial that he confessed to killing Gayle.
The ex-girlfriend told police that when Williams picked her up the day of Gayle’s death, she saw that he was wearing a jacket, even though it was warm outside, and that there was blood on his shirt, scratches on his neck and a laptop in his car. She told police that when she checked the trunk of the car the next day, she found a bag containing Gayle’s identification.
When police searched Williams’ car more than a year after Gayle’s death, they found a St. Louis Post-Dispatch ruler and calculator that had belonged to Gayle. Police also found a laptop that had been stolen from Gayle’s home from a man who had bought it from Williams.
Williams’ attorneys argued that the ex-girlfriend and cellmate were convicted felons who wanted a share of a $10,000 reward. Williams’ former cellmate was offered a $5,000 reward. The ex-girlfriend never asked for the reward, the governor’s office said.
Authorities found no physical evidence at the crime scene that linked Williams to Gayle’s death.
Williams’ attorneys noted that a bloody shoe print, fingerprints and hair found at the crime scene did not match Williams. But a prosecutor said such tests were only inconclusive.
The knife used in the murder was also left at the scene. A crime scene investigator testified at Williams’ trial in 2001 that the killer was wearing gloves. But questions about DNA testing of the knife have persisted for years.
The Supreme Court canceled Williams’ scheduled execution in 2015, allowing time for further DNA testing. Hours before Williams was set to be executed again in 2017, then-Governor Eric Greitens also canceled the lethal injection over DNA questions. Greitens appointed a board of retired judges to review the case. But the panel never reached a conclusion before Gov. Mike Parson disbanded it in 2023.
In August, new testing revealed that DNA on the knife matched that of members of the prosecution team who had handled the knife without wearing gloves. Without evidence pointing to anyone else, Williams’ attorneys stopped pursuing an innocence claim in court and refocused their arguments on alleged procedural flaws, including that prosecutors mishandled evidence and wrongly excluded a black man from the jury, in part based on race.
There have been no verified cases of an innocent person being executed in the U.S. since the death penalty was reinstated in 1972, but at least 21 people have been executed despite “strong and credible” claims of innocence, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. The group said that count includes Williams, who was added to the list on Wednesday.
The center’s list also includes two other men from Missouri. They are Walter Bartonwho was executed in May 2020 for fatally stabbing an 81-year-old woman, and Larry Griffith, who was executed in June 1995 for fatally shooting a 19-year-old man.
In addition, the center lists three current death row inmates who face execution despite strong claims of innocence: Richard Glossipwho was convicted in Oklahoma for the murder of a motel owner; To the forest Johnsonwho will die in Alabama for the murder of an off-duty sheriff’s deputy; and Robert Robersonwho was convicted in Texas for the murder of his 2-year-old daughter.
By the time of Williams’ murder trial, he already had an extensive record of convictions for burglary, robbery, theft and assault in other cases. A jury convicted him of first-degree murder for Gayle’s death, which in Missouri is punishable by death or life in prison without parole. It took just 90 minutes for the jurors to decide he deserved the death penalty.
St. Louis County District Attorney Wesley Bell, a Democrat who took office in 2019 and is running for Congress, cited a relatively recent Missouri law to reopen the question of Williams’ guilt or innocence. Bell struck an agreement in August with the Midwest Innocence Project, which represented Williams, seeking to have Williams enter a new, no-contest plea to first-degree murder in exchange for a new sentence: life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Bell’s position made the case highly unusual, said Robin Maher, director of the Death Penalty Information Center, which reports on problems with the death penalty and maintains a database of nearly 1,600 executions.
Maher said it is “very, very unusual, very rare” for a prosecutor to side with an inmate facing execution.
But Missouri’s Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey objected and the courts the death penalty was maintained.
Ultimately, the decision on the execution rested with Parson, who could have used his powers as governor to commute Williams’s sentence to life imprisonment.
A petition for clemency on Williams’ behalf argued for mercy, noting that Gayle’s family also supported life imprisonment instead of the death penalty. But Parson disagreed, explaining in his own final statement on the case: “No juror or judge has ever found Williams’ claim of innocence credible.”
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The story has been corrected to correct the spelling of the Texas death row inmate’s last name. He is Robert Roberson, not Robertson.
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Hanna reported from Topeka, Kansas.