Missouri Governor Lifts Stay of Execution for Marcellus Williams, Ending Inquiry of Innocence Claim

On June 29, 2023, Missouri Governor Mike Parson (pic­tured) lift­ed the stay of exe­cu­tion for Marcellus Williams, a death-sen­tenced pris­on­er con­vict­ed of mur­der­ing Felisha Gayle, a for­mer St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter in 1998. Governor Parson also dis­solved the Board of Inquiry, a judi­cial pan­el appoint­ed by for­mer Missouri Governor Eric Greitens to review evi­dence of inno­cence and pro­vide rec­om­men­da­tions on Mr. Williams’s appli­ca­tion for executive clemency.

On August 22, 2017, for­mer Missouri Governor Eric Greitens halt­ed Mr. Williams’s exe­cu­tion by order­ing a stay of exe­cu­tion and cre­at­ing the Board of Inquiry to review new­ly dis­cov­ered DNA evi­dence from two experts who had deter­mined that DNA evi­dence on the knife did not match Mr. Williams. Prior to the sched­uled exe­cu­tion, the Missouri Supreme Court denied Mr. Williams a new stay, despite obtain­ing results of that test­ing which sup­port­ed his inno­cence claim. After Greitens resigned from office in 2018, Governor Parson advised the judi­cial pan­el to con­tin­ue review­ing the evi­dence. The St. Louis Public Radio report­ed that the judi­cial pan­el has not con­vened since 2021, but the pan­el deliv­ered its rec­om­men­da­tions to Governor Parson. In his news release, Governor Parson stat­ed all pan­el rec­om­men­da­tions were con­fi­den­tial records under Missouri law. No exe­cu­tion date has been scheduled yet.

Governor Parson stat­ed, ​“Withdrawing the order allows the process to pro­ceed with­in the judi­cial sys­tem, and, once the due process of law has been exhaust­ed, every­one will receive certainty.”