The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama grant­ed a new penal­ty hear­ing to death-row pris­on­er Marcus Williams on September 23, 2021, find­ing his coun­sel inef­fec­tive for fail­ing to inves­ti­gate and present ​“a con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly ade­quate mit­i­ga­tion case dur­ing the penal­ty phase of his trial.” 

The rul­ing came fol­low­ing an evi­den­tiary hear­ing ordered by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in 2015. The dis­trict court con­duct­ed that hear­ing on May 14 – 16, 2018 and ini­tial­ly denied relief on Williams’ inef­fec­tive­ness claims. However, on Williams’ motion for recon­sid­er­a­tion, the court vacat­ed its rul­ings, say­ing it had improp­er­ly assessed Williams’ future dan­ger­ous­ness in weigh­ing aggra­vat­ing and mitigating evidence. 

The court found that coun­sel unrea­son­ably failed to hire a mit­i­ga­tion spe­cial­ist; inves­ti­gate and obtain insti­tu­tion­al records; ade­quate­ly inves­ti­gate Williams’ back­ground and his­to­ry, includ­ing that he was repeat­ed­ly sex­u­al­ly abused as a child; ade­quate­ly inter­view and pre­pare the penal­ty phase wit­ness­es; com­pile Williams’ his­to­ry of abuse and neglect; and show how Williams’ back­ground con­tributed to his com­mit­ting the offense. But for these fail­ures, the court said, there was a rea­son­able prob­a­bil­i­ty that Williams would have been sen­tenced to life.