Executing a black man in Missouri who says he was wrongly convicted would amount to a “horrible miscarriage of justice,” the president of the NAACP said in a letter Wednesday urging the governor to halt the execution scheduled for next week.
Prosecutors want the conviction of Marcellus Williams about doubts about evidence in the case, NAACP President Derrick Johnson said in the letter obtained by The Associated Press. Relatives of the slain woman also oppose the execution.
There are several attempts underway to save Williams’ life. Attorneys for the Midwest Innocence Project filed an emergency appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday seeking a stay. They have also asked a federal district court and the Missouri Supreme Court to intervene, and asked Gov. Mike Parson to grant clemency.
No physical evidence has linked Williams to the 1998 stabbing death of Lisha Gayle, according to a statement from the St. Louis County District Attorney’s Office included in Johnson’s letter. Williams’ execution would perpetuate a history of racial injustice in the use of the death penalty in Missouri and elsewhere, Johnson wrote. The NAACP opposes the death penalty.
“Taking the life of Marcellus Williams would be an unequivocal statement that when a white woman is murdered, a black man must die. And every black man will do so,” Johnson wrote.
Williams, 55, is expected to die by injection tuesday despite a claim of innocence strong enough to prompt the previous governor of Missouri to grant a last-minute reprieve in 2017. The current St. Louis County district attorney also believed that Williams’ murder conviction and death sentence should be overturned.
The racial bias underlying Williams’ conviction has been reported before.
Williams was convicted of first-degree murder in 2001. The prosecutor in the case, Keith Larner, testified at a hearing last month that the jury was fair, even though it had only one black member.
Larner said he rejected only three potential black jurors, including one man because he looked too much like Williams. He did not say why he thought that was important.
Williams narrowly escaped execution. In August 2017, just hours before his scheduled death, then-Governor Eric Greitens, a Republican, postponement granted after examining DNA evidence that found no trace of Williams’ DNA on the knife used to kill Gayle. Greitens appointed a panel of retired judges to investigate the case, but the panel never reached a conclusion.
That same DNA evidence led the Democratic district attorney of St. Louis County to Wesley Bel to request a hearing challenging Williams’ guilt. But just days before the hearing on August 21, new tests showed that the DNA evidence had been rendered useless because members of the prosecution had handled the knife without gloves before the original trial.
Because DNA evidence was not available, attorneys for the Midwest Innocence Project reached a compromise with the prosecution: Williams would again plead guilty to first-degree murder in exchange for a new sentence: life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Judge Bruce Hilton signed the agreement, as did Gayle’s family. But at the urging of Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey, the Missouri Supreme Court blocked the agreement and ordered Hilton to proceed with a evidence hearing.
Hilton ruled on September 12 that the conviction for premeditated murder and the death penalty would be upheld.
“Every claim of error Williams has asserted on direct appeal, post-conviction review, and habeas review has been rejected by the Missouri courts,” Hilton wrote. “There is no basis for any court to find that Williams is innocent, and no court has made such a finding.”
The Midwest Innocence Project’s clemency petition focuses on how Gayle’s family members want the sentence commuted to life without parole. “The family defines closure as Marcellus being allowed to live,” the petition states.
St. Louis Democrat Cori Bush, a U.S. Representative, also wrote a letter to Parson asking for clemency.
“You have the power to save a life today by pardoning a man who has spent 24 years wrongfully imprisoned for a crime he did not commit,” Bush wrote. “We urge you to take advantage of it.”
Parson, a Republican and former county sheriff, has served 11 terms in office and has never granted a pardon. His spokesman said a decision would likely come at least 24 hours before the scheduled execution.
Prosecutors at Williams’ original trial said that on Aug. 11, 1998, he broke into Gayle’s 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.
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 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 had been convicted of crimes and that they wanted a $10,000 reward.
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Whitehurst reported from Washington, D.C. Salter reported from O’Fallon, Missouri.