Missouri Supreme Court and governor refuse to halt the execution of man convicted of 1998 killing

JEFFERSON CITY — A Missouri man seeking to avoid execution suffered dual setbacks Monday as the state’s top court and governor each rejected requests to cancel his scheduled lethal injection.

Marcellus Williams is set to be executed at 6 p.m. Tuesday for the 1998 murder of Lisha Gayle, a social worker and former newspaper reporter who was repeatedly stabbed during a burglary of her suburban St. Louis home.

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson, a Republican, rejected Williams’ clemency request to spare him from the death penalty and instead sentence him to life in prison. The Missouri Supreme Court, almost simultaneously, also rejected a request to cancel the execution so that a lower court could make a new determination about whether a trial prosecutor wrongly excluded a potential Black juror for racial reasons.

Attorneys for Williams still have an appeal before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Williams, 55, has asserted his innocence. But his attorney did not pursue that claim Monday before the state’s highest court, instead focusing on alleged procedural errors in jury selection and the prosecution’s alleged mishandling of the murder weapon.

The state Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, affirmed a lower court ruling rejecting Williams’ arguments.

“Despite nearly a quarter century of litigation in both state and federal courts, there is no credible evidence of actual innocence or any showing of a constitutional error undermining confidence in the original judgment,” Judge Zel Fischer wrote in the state Supreme Court ruling.

Parson said Williams received extensive legal opportunities to try to argue his innocence and accused Williams’ attorneys of trying to “muddy the waters about DNA evidence” with claims that courts have repeatedly rejected.

“Nothing from the real facts of this case have led me to believe in Mr. Williams’ innocence,” Parson said in a statement. “As such, Mr. Williams’ punishment will be carried out as ordered by the Supreme Court.”

Parson, a former sheriff, has never granted clemency in a death penalty case.

St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell has sought to set aside Williams' sentence, citing questions about his guilt. He plans to appeal the Missouri Supreme Court ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, spokesman Chris King said.

“Even for those who disagree on the death penalty, when there is a shadow of a doubt of any defendant’s guilt, the irreversible punishment of execution should not be an option,” Bell said in a statement.

Williams's case has been championed by the Midwest Innocence Project.

“Missouri is poised to execute an innocent man, an outcome that calls into question the legitimacy of the entire criminal justice system," said Tricia Bushnell, a Midwest Innocence Project attorney.

Williams' execution would be the third in Missouri this year and the 100th since the state resumed executions in 1989.

This marks the third time Williams has faced execution. He was less than a week away from execution in January 2015 when the state Supreme Court called it off, allowing time for his attorneys to pursue additional DNA testing.

He was just hours away from being executed in August 2017 when then-Gov. Eric Greitens, a Republican, granted a stay and appointed a panel of retired judges to examine the case. But that panel never reached a conclusion.

Questions about DNA evidence also led Bell to request a hearing challenging Williams’ guilt. But days before the Aug. 21 hearing, new testing showed that DNA on the knife belonged to members of the prosecutor's office who handled it without gloves after the original crime lab tests.

Without DNA evidence pointing to any alternative suspect, Midwest Innocence Project attorneys reached a compromise with the prosecutor’s office: Williams would enter a new, no-contest plea to first-degree murder in exchange for a new sentence of life in prison without parole.

Judge Bruce Hilton signed off on the agreement, as did Gayle’s family. But at the urging of Republican Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, the Missouri Supreme Court blocked the agreement and ordered Hilton to proceed with an evidentiary hearing, which took place Aug. 28.

The prosecutor in the 2001 murder case testified at the August hearing that the trial jury was fair, even though it included just one Black member on the panel. He said he struck one potential Black juror partly because he looked too much like Williams — a statement which Williams’ attorneys asserted showed improper racial bias.

Hilton ruled on Sept. 12 that the first-degree murder conviction and death sentence would stand, noting that Williams' arguments all had been previously rejected. That decision was upheld Monday by the state Supreme Court.

Prosecutors at Williams’ original trial said he broke into Gayle’s home on Aug. 11, 1998, heard water running in the shower, and found a large butcher knife. Gayle, a former reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, was stabbed 43 times when she came downstairs. Her purse and her husband’s laptop computer were stolen.

Authorities said Williams stole a jacket to conceal blood on his shirt. Williams’ girlfriend asked him why he would wear a jacket on a hot day. The girlfriend said she later saw the purse and laptop in his car and that Williams sold the computer a day or two later.

Prosecutors also cited testimony from Henry Cole, who shared a cell with Williams in 1999 while Williams was jailed on unrelated charges. Cole told prosecutors Williams confessed to the killing and offered details about it.

___

Salter reported from O'Fallon, Missouri.