Missouri Court Denies Condemned Prisoner Stay of Execution, Review of Case Despite Exonerating DNA Evidence

After hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly grant­ed Marcellus Williams (pic­tured) a stay of exe­cu­tion in 2015 to per­mit DNA test­ing in his case, the Missouri Supreme Court on August 15 sum­mar­i­ly denied him a new exe­cu­tion stay, despite recent­ly obtained results of that test­ing that sup­port his innocence claim. 

Williams — who was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in 2001 by a near­ly all-white St. Louis County jury in the high­ly pub­li­cized stab­bing death of a for­mer St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter — pre­sent­ed sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence that exclud­ed him as a con­trib­u­tor to DNA on the knife used to kill Felicia Gayle. Williams had filed a motion in the state court to stay his sched­uled August 22 exe­cu­tion, along with a peti­tion seek­ing the appoint­ment of a Special Master to hold hear­ings on his innocence claim. 

Williams’s peti­tion was sup­port­ed by reports from two DNA experts who had deter­mined that DNA evi­dence on the knife did not match Williams or Gayle, but came from an unknown third per­son. One expert con­clud­ed that Williams ​“could not have con­tributed to the detect­ed [DNA] pro­file” and the oth­er found ​“a clear exclu­sion of Marcellus Williams from the knife handle.” 

The peti­tion alleged that the ​“phys­i­cal evi­dence col­lect­ed from the crime scene” — which includ­ed fin­ger­nail scrap­ings from the vic­tim, who had been stabbed more than 40 times — ​“did not match and could not be linked to” Williams. 

Williams was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death based on the tes­ti­mo­ny of a jail­house infor­mant and a pros­ti­tute who was an admit­ted crack addict. He has nev­er been pro­vid­ed an evi­den­tiary hear­ing on the DNA results. The Missouri Supreme Court denied his peti­tion with­out any writ­ten opin­ion with­in one day of its fil­ing, and before Williams had an oppor­tu­ni­ty to respond to the State’s opposition. 

Kent Gipson, one of Williams’s lawyers, said the defense plans to seek review in the U.S. Supreme Court. ​“It cer­tain­ly would give most rea­son­able peo­ple pause to say, ​‘Should you be exe­cut­ing some­body when you’ve got rea­son­able evi­dence sug­gest­ing anoth­er man did it?,’” Gibson said. Williams also has a case pend­ing in fed­er­al court argu­ing that he should be per­mit­ted to re-open his habeas pro­ceed­ings because he can show he is inno­cent; he was denied relief in the fed­er­al dis­trict court and is cur­rent­ly appeal­ing that denial to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. In ear­li­er fed­er­al habeas cor­pus pro­ceed­ings, the dis­trict court had over­turned Williams’s death sen­tence, find­ing that his tri­al lawyer had failed to inves­ti­gate and present sig­nif­i­cant mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence relat­ing to Williams’s his­to­ry of men­tal defi­cien­cies and chron­ic abuse through­out his child­hood. That deci­sion, how­ev­er, was reversed by the Eighth Circuit in a split 2 – 1 deci­sion. Williams had also pre­vi­ous­ly raised a claim alleg­ing that St. Louis County pros­e­cu­tors had a pat­tern and prac­tice of strik­ing black prospec­tive jurors, includ­ing 6 of the 7 African Americans it had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to empan­el in his case.

A Missouri Supreme Court jus­tice not­ed in anoth­er St. Louis County cap­i­tal case ​“a fair­ly repet­i­tive pat­tern” in which St. Louis County ​“has a sub­stan­tial African-American com­mu­ni­ty” yet there are ​“still all white juries and that’s not math­e­mat­i­cal­ly prob­a­ble.” This issue was pre­sent­ed to the U.S. Supreme Court in Herbert Smulls’s death-penal­ty case in 2014, but the Court declined to review the issue and Smulls was executed.