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The Missouri Supreme Court and Gov. Mike Parson have declined to halt Tuesday’s execution of a demise row inmate prosecutors say could also be harmless, leaving his destiny in the palms of the US Supreme Court with lower than 24 hours to go earlier than he's scheduled to die by deadly injection.
“Mr. Williams has exhausted due process and every judicial avenue, including over 15 hearings attempting to argue his innocence and overturn his conviction,” Parson mentioned in a press release.
“No jury nor court, including at the trial, appellate, and Supreme Court levels, have ever found merit in Mr. Williams’ innocence claims. At the end of the day, his guilty verdict and sentence of capital punishment were upheld. Nothing from the real facts of this case have led me to believe in Mr. Williams’ innocence, as such, Mr. Williams’ punishment will be carried out as ordered by the Supreme Court.”
Marcellus Williams, 55, was convicted of killing Felicia Gayle, a former newspaper reporter discovered stabbed to demise in her house in 1998. Williams has lengthy insisted he's harmless. And in an uncommon transfer, St. Louis County’s prime prosecutor filed a movement in January to vacate Williams’ 2001 conviction and sentence.
But that movement was denied. With new details about potential proof contamination, Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell and Williams’ legal professionals had lately filed a joint brief asking the Missouri Supreme Court to ship the case again to a decrease courtroom for a “more comprehensive hearing” of the January request by Bell, a Democrat now operating for Congress.
Williams’ case raises the specter of a doubtlessly harmless individual being executed – an inherent threat of capital punishment. At least 200 folks sentenced to demise since 1973 had been later exonerated, together with 4 in Missouri, in accordance to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Williams is scheduled to die by deadly injection round 6 p.m. CT Tuesday.
The NAACP and the Council on American-Islamic Relations have referred to as on Parson to halt Williams’ execution. The governor beforehand revoked a keep of execution in the case ordered by his predecessor, permitting plans to put Williams to demise to proceed.
The courtroom thought-about a number of questions, the state’s judicial branch mentioned.
The first includes whether or not the prosecutor in Williams’ 2001 trial struck a possible juror from the jury “as a result of discriminatory intent.”
Williams’ attorneys have additionally requested the US Supreme Court to keep the execution, primarily based on “newly-discovered evidence from the trial prosecutor’s testimony” final month.
During a motion-to-vacate listening to on August 28, a prosecutor from Williams’ trial “admitted that he had struck (a potential juror from the jury pool) because like Mr. Williams, (the potential juror) was Black,” Williams’ attorneys wrote in an emergency request for the US Supreme Court to intervene.
During Monday’s listening to in the Missouri Supreme Court, Williams legal professional Jonathan Potts claimed the trial prosecutor nixed the potential juror “in part because he was a young Black man with glasses.”
“There was a racial component to this,” Potts mentioned.
But the Missouri legal professional common’s workplace disputed that notion, saying the trial prosecutor’s intent for putting the potential juror was not due to race.
“What did he say when asked directly, ‘Did you strike someone partially with part of the reason for striking someone because you’ve been Black?’ He said no, absolutely not,” Assistant Attorney General Michael Spillane mentioned throughout Monday’s listening to. “And he explained that that would be a violation.”
Another query the courtroom thought-about concerned whether or not there was adequate proof offered that the prosecutor’s workplace “engaged in the destruction of potentially favorable evidence in bad faith,” the state’s judicial department mentioned.
That consists of “whether the prosecutor destroyed any DNA evidence on the murder weapon by handling it without gloves.”
Ultimately, the state Supreme Court unanimously determined not to halt the execution of Marcellus Williams as a result of the prosecuting legal professional “failed to demonstrate by clear and convincing evidence Williams’ actual innocence or constitutional error at the original criminal trial that undermines the confidence in the judgment of the original criminal trial,” the opinion read. The opinion additionally acknowledged “because this Court rejects this appeal on the merits, the motion for stay of execution is overruled as moot.”
In a press release after the choice Monday, Tricia Rojo Bushnell, an legal professional for Williams, mentioned the “courts must step in to prevent this irreparable injustice.”
“Missouri is poised to execute an innocent man, an outcome that calls into question the legitimacy of the entire criminal justice system,” she mentioned.
In his personal assertion Monday, Bell mentioned he and different advocates will proceed the struggle to save Williams’ life.
“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 mentioned.
In their joint temporary, Bell and Williams’ attorneys argue the St. Louis County Circuit Court failed to credit score newly disclosed proof that contradicts representations by the prosecutor in Williams’ 2001 trial and in his prior appeals.
The Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, which dealt with that trial towards Williams, mentioned in its January movement that DNA testing of the homicide weapon might exclude Williams as Gayle’s killer. But the argument fell aside final month after new DNA testing revealed the homicide weapon had been mishandled, contaminating the proof meant to exonerate Williams and complicating his quest to show his innocence.
Attorneys on each side “received a report indicating the DNA on the murder weapon belonged to an assistant prosecuting attorney and an investigator who had handled the murder weapon without gloves prior to trial,” in accordance to a docket summary of the case.
However, “the circuit court concluded there was no new evidence sufficient to set aside the conviction or to establish Williams’ innocence.”
Williams’ attorneys mentioned the prosecution’s contamination of the DNA proof earlier than Williams’ trial violated his due course of rights. They joined the county’s present prime prosecutor in asking the Missouri Supreme Court to cancel the circuit courtroom’s determination and ship the case again to give each side time to current proof and the courtroom sufficient time to fastidiously think about the case.
Bell and Williams’ attorneys are attempting to get the conviction overturned due to “overwhelming evidence” exhibiting Williams’ trial was unfair, mentioned one in every of his attorneys, Tricia Rojo Bushnell.
The prosecutor’s workplace has raised different considerations about Williams’ conviction, together with claims he was convicted on the testimony of two unreliable informants dealing with their very own authorized troubles and additional incentivized by $10,000 in reward cash.
But in the end, a state decide dominated towards Bell’s movement to vacate Williams’ conviction and sentencing.
“There is no basis for a court to find that Williams is innocent,” Judge Bruce F. Hilton wrote in his judgment, “and no court has made such a finding. Williams is guilty of first-degree murder, and has been sentenced to death.”
The case has pitted Bell, who assumed the workplace in 2018, towards Republican state Attorney General Andrew Bailey, who's in search of reelection. Bailey had fought Bell’s January movement, saying new DNA check outcomes indicated the proof would not exonerate Williams.
Last month, Bell’s workplace introduced it had reached an settlement with Williams. Under the consent judgment authorised by the courtroom and Gayle’s household, the inmate would have entered an Alford plea of responsible to first-degree homicide and be resentenced to life in jail.
But the state legal professional common’s workplace opposed the deal and appealed to the state Supreme Court, which blocked the settlement.
Former GOP Gov. Eric Greitens beforehand halted Williams’ execution indefinitely and fashioned a board to examine his case and determine whether or not he ought to be granted clemency.
But after Parson took workplace, he dissolved the board investigating Williams’ case and revoked Williams’ stay of execution in 2023.
“This Board was established nearly six years ago, and it is time to move forward,” Parson said final summer season. “We could stall and delay for another six years, deferring justice, leaving a victim’s family in limbo, and solving nothing. This administration won’t do that.”
The transfer successfully denied Williams his proper to due course of, Williams’ legal professionals mentioned.
“The Governor’s actions have violated Williams’ constitutional rights and created an exceptionally urgent need for the Court’s attention,” courtroom paperwork state.
But Parson’s determination to dissolve the Williams board of inquiry does not imply the governor had determined Williams ought to or ought to not be executed, spokesperson Johnathan Shiflett wrote in an e-mail to CNN earlier Monday.
“That is for the Courts to decide.”
CNN’s Dakin Andone, Lauren Mascarenhas and Jennifer Hauser contributed to this report.
