Missouri Attorney General Opposes Opportunity for Marcellus Williams to Establish His Innocence Before Execution Date

On July 18, 2024, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey asked the state Supreme Court to block a sched­uled evi­den­tiary hear­ing for Marcellus Williams and deny him the oppor­tu­ni­ty to estab­lish his inno­cence before his sched­uled exe­cu­tion on September 24, 2024. The Circuit Court of St. Louis County sched­uled the August 21^st hear­ing to assess the ​“clear and con­vinc­ing” evi­dence of Mr. Williams’ actu­al inno­cence that prompt­ed St. Louis Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell to file a motion to vacate Mr. Williams’ con­vic­tion and death sen­tence. At the time DA Bell filed this motion, AG Bailey indi­cat­ed his office would file a motion in oppo­si­tion but wait­ed four months to do so. Tricia Rojo Bushnell, an attor­ney for Mr. Williams, believes that ​“instead of try­ing to pre­vent the cir­cuit court from con­sid­er­ing the DNA evi­dence that exon­er­ates Mr. Williams, the Attorney General should join us in this truth-seek­ing process in Mr. Williams’ case.”

In a motion filed in the Circuit Court of St. Louis County in January 2024, DA Bell deter­mined that the results of DNA test­ing, which have nev­er been con­sid­ered by a court, ​“when paired with the rel­a­tive pauci­ty of oth­er, cred­i­ble evi­dence sup­port­ing guilt, as well as addi­tion­al con­sid­er­a­tions of inef­fec­tive assis­tance of coun­sel and racial dis­crim­i­na­tion in jury selec­tion, casts inex­orable doubt on Mr. Williams’ con­vic­tion and sen­tence.” AG Bailey’s office has argued that the court should dis­miss Mr. Williams’ inno­cence claims and pro­ceed with his sched­uled exe­cu­tion. The Missouri Attorney General’s office has pre­vi­ous­ly said that inno­cence is not enough to pre­vent an exe­cu­tion. In a 2003 oral argu­ment at the Missouri Supreme Court, Justice Laura Denvir Stith asked then-Assistant Attorney General Frank Jung if he was sug­gest­ing that ​“even if [the court] find[s] Mr. Amrine is actu­al­ly inno­cent, he should be exe­cut­ed?” In response, AG Jung said ​“that is cor­rect your, hon­or.” Ultimately the court ruled in favor of Mr. Amrine who was lat­er exon­er­at­ed after 17 years on death row. 

The Missouri Attorney General’s office has a decades-long his­to­ry of oppos­ing relief in inno­cence cas­es, even when those requests are made by local pros­e­cu­tors attempt­ing to over­turn wrong­ful con­vic­tions. In 2021 and 2023, respec­tive­ly, Kevin Strickland and Lamar Johnson were exon­er­at­ed despite the AG’s efforts to pre­vent their exon­er­a­tion and release.

Mr. Williams was sen­tenced to death in 2001 for the 1998 killing of a local news­pa­per reporter, Felicia Gayle, but has main­tained his inno­cence through­out his incar­cer­a­tion. No phys­i­cal evi­dence tied Mr. Williams to the crime and the tri­al court judge refused to allow DNA test­ing of some of the crime scene evi­dence. At tri­al, pros­e­cu­tors relied large­ly on the tes­ti­mo­ny of two wit­ness­es whose tes­ti­mo­ny con­tra­dict­ed phys­i­cal evi­dence col­lect­ed from the crime scene. In 2015, Mr. Williams was final­ly grant­ed per­mis­sion for DNA test­ing of the mur­der weapon, which revealed a male DNA pro­file incon­sis­tent with that of Mr. Williams.