Missouri Governor Stays Execution of Marcellus Williams to Consider Evidence of Innocence

Calling a sen­tence of death ​“the ulti­mate, per­ma­nent pun­ish­ment,” Missouri Governor Eric Greitens (pic­tured) has stayed the exe­cu­tion of Marcellus Williams ​“in light of new infor­ma­tion” that Williams’s lawyers say demon­strate he is inno­cent of the mur­der of for­mer St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Felisha Gayle. 

Hours before Williams’s sched­uled August 22 exe­cu­tion, Greitens issued an exec­u­tive order that grant­ed Williams a stay and cre­at­ed a Board of Inquiry to review ​“new­ly dis­cov­ered DNA evi­dence” and ​“any oth­er rel­e­vant evi­dence not avail­able to the jury” and to make rec­om­men­da­tions on Williams’s appli­ca­tion for exec­u­tive clemen­cy. In a state­ment post­ed on the Governor’s web­page, Greitens said ​“To car­ry out the death penal­ty, the peo­ple of Missouri must have con­fi­dence in the judg­ment of guilt.” 

Williams’s lawyers had pre­sent­ed the gov­er­nor and Missouri’s state and fed­er­al courts with the results of new DNA test­ing of the knife used in the killing, which a defense expert said exclud­ed Williams and impli­cat­ed an unknown man as the killer. No phys­i­cal evi­dence links Williams to the mur­der, and nei­ther foot­prints from the mur­der scene nor DNA from the vic­tim’s cloth­ing and under her fin­ger­nails match Williams. The courts had denied Williams an evi­den­tiary hear­ing on his new evi­dence and declined to stay his exe­cu­tion, and his lawyers’ motions to stay his exe­cu­tion were pend­ing before the U.S. Supreme Court when Greitens issued the stay. 

Kent Gibson, one of Williams’s lawyers, said at the time, ​“They’re nev­er going to ever con­front an actu­al inno­cence cause more per­suad­ing than this involv­ing exon­er­at­ing DNA evi­dence. I’ve seen a lot of mis­car­riages of jus­tice, but this one would take the cake.” 

Nina Morrison, senior staff attor­ney at the Innocence Project, which assist­ed Williams’s lawyers in their request to the gov­er­nor, praised Greitens’s deci­sion. ​“We are relieved and grate­ful that Gov. Greitens halt­ed Missouri’s rush to exe­cu­tion and appoint­ed a Board of Inquiry to hear the new DNA and oth­er evi­dence sup­port­ing Mr. Williams’ inno­cence,” she said. ​“While many Americans hold dif­fer­ent views on the death penal­ty, there is an over­whelm­ing con­sen­sus that those sen­tenced to death should be giv­en due process and a full hear­ing on all their claims before an exe­cu­tion, and the gov­er­nor’s action hon­ors that principle.” 

NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund lit­i­ga­tion direc­tor, Sam Spital, called the governor’s action ​“sig­nif­i­cant” because it reflect­ed the recog­ni­tion that ​“when you have cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment as an issue, the peo­ple of Missouri, like the peo­ple of many states, need to have absolute con­fi­dence that the con­vic­tion is sound.” The case, he said, was ​“marred by racial dis­crim­i­na­tion,” with pros­e­cu­tors strik­ing all but one black juror from a case with a black male defen­dant and white female victim. 

Following the governor’s deci­sion, Gipson said he was ​“look­ing for­ward to” the oppor­tu­ni­ty to present the evi­dence of Williams’s inno­cence. ​“I’m con­fi­dent that we’re going to get a favorable recommendation.”