Marcellus Williams: Prosecutors say evidence clears him. He’s set to be executed today.

Marcellus Williams, shown in 2018, was convicted of murder after Felicia Gayle was killed in 1998. He denies killing her.

By Kim Bellware

Marcellus Williams has spent more than two decades on Missouri’s death row fighting his execution for a murder he says he did not commit. On Tuesday (US time), Williams, 55, is scheduled for a repeatedly delayed execution that has raised alarms related to DNA evidence and questions of fairness from his 2001 trial.

After two last-minute execution reprieves starting almost a decade ago, momentum to reexamine Williams’s decades-old conviction has gathered from unlikely sources, including the local prosecutor from the office that convicted him. Williams has since received an outpouring of support from legal groups like the Midwest Innocence Project and a member of Congress. The family of the victim in the 1998 St. Louis stabbing now opposes Williams’s execution.

Why is Marcellus Williams on death row?

On August 11, 1998, Felicia “Licia” Gayle, a former reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, was found stabbed to death in her suburban St. Louis home. Though forensic evidence at the crime scene included fingerprints, footprints, hair and DNA on a kitchen knife, the investigation stretched on for more than a year without an arrest.

Williams, who has denied killing Gayle, was eventually convicted of her murder despite his DNA not matching the forensic evidence recovered from the crime scene. His current attorneys said his conviction was built upon testimony from two unreliable witnesses who had incentives to point the finger at Williams: reward money and a bargain for shorter sentences in their own criminal cases.

The Midwest Innocence Project, which has taken up Williams’s case, said the incentives of the witnesses in his case are particularly problematic. Jailhouse informant testimony played a role in 23 percent of death penalty exoneration cases, according to data from the National Registry of Exonerations at the University of Michigan.

What has recently happened with Williams’s case?

Williams was twice spared from execution, first by the state Supreme Court in 2015 and in 2017 when Gov. Eric Greitens (R) granted Williams a reprieve.

Persuaded by arguments that new DNA testing exonerated Williams, Greitens appointed a board of inquiry to investigate the new claims. The board was abruptly disbanded in 2023 by Greitens’s’ successor, Gov. Mike Parson (R), before it issued a final report. Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey (R) set a 2024 execution for Williams.

Parson said last year that it was “time to move forward” with the execution.

“We could stall and delay for another six years, deferring justice, leaving a victim’s family in limbo, and solving nothing,” Parson said in a news release last year. “This administration won’t do that.”

Williams sued Parson in August 2023 for dissolving the board before it could issue a report, but the state Supreme Court dismissed Williams’s claim, clearing the way for the execution.

Marcellus Williams, shown in 2018, was convicted of murder after Felicia Gayle was killed in 1998. He denies killing her.

Meanwhile, St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell (D) learned of the new DNA testing that he says could exonerate Williams.

But hours before an evidentiary hearing on the evidence, Bell and Williams’s team learned the DNA that excluded Williams belonged to former St. Louis prosecutor Keith Larner and an investigator who, years earlier, contaminated the murder weapon by handling it without gloves, according to court filings.

Bell’s office then sought to spare Williams the death penalty with an “Alford plea,” which would allow Williams to plead guilty without admitting to the crime to accept a plea bargain resulting in life in prison. The state Supreme Court and Bailey blocked the deal.

This month, Williams’s attorneys argued before a St. Louis County Circuit Court judge that the prosecution’s mishandling of evidence years ago “destroyed [Williams’s] last and best chance” to prove his innocence, attorney Jonathan Potts said, according to the Associated Press. The circuit court judge declined to vacate Williams’s conviction and death sentence.

Parson rejected Williams’s clemency request, while the state Supreme Court on Monday rejected his request to pause his execution so a lower court could determine whether prosecutors wrongly excluded Black potential jurors at his criminal trial.”

Lawmakers including Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) have urged the state to stop Williams’s execution.

What’s next in Williams’s case?

Williams is schedule to be executed Tuesday evening (Wednesday NZT) at the Potosi Correctional Center, about 70 miles (112km) southwest of St. Louis.

On Monday afternoon, Williams asked the United States Supreme Court to stay his execution based on evidence of racial bias in his jury selection.