Marcellus Williams: Prisoner Executed in Missouri After 20 Years on Death Row

Marcellus Williams was executed Tuesday evening in the US state of Missouri after spending more than two decades on death row.

Williams, whose execution had already been stayed twice, maintained he was innocent of the fatal stabbing of Felicia Gayle in 1998 in a St. Louis suburb, and many opposed his death sentence.

An attorney representing Williams argued that there was racial discrimination in jury selection and that DNA evidence in the case was mishandled.

Williams was denied a last-minute reprieve from the U.S. Supreme Court after Missouri’s top court and the governor rejected his clemency requests earlier this week.

In a rare move, the three liberal justices on the U.S. Supreme Court — Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson — said Tuesday that they disagreed with the conservative majority and would have granted a stay. They did not give a reason.

Missouri Corrections Director of Communications Karen Pojmann said there were no witnesses from Ms Gayle’s family who witnessed the execution, the BBC’s US partner CBS reported.

Williams’ son and two of his lawyers were present.

At his trial, prosecutors said Williams broke into Ms Gayle’s home in August 1998 and stabbed her 43 times with a large butcher knife before stealing her purse and her husband’s laptop.

Ms. Gayle was a social worker and a former reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Williams’ lawyers had raised concerns about the handling of his case, arguing that black jurors were wrongly excluded from his trial.

They also said there was no forensic evidence to link Williams to the crime scene and that the murder weapon was mishandled, raising questions about the DNA evidence.

The prosecutor said he followed proper procedure at the time by touching the murder weapon without gloves after it was tested in a crime lab.

Mr. Williams had asked for clemency from Missouri Republican Governor Mike Parson, who denied it.

“We hope this decision brings closure to a case that has dragged on for decades, re-victimizing Ms. Gayle’s family,” Parson said in a statement.

“No juror, no judge has ever found Williams’ claim of innocence credible.

Many people, including British billionaire Richard Branson, campaigned against the execution, the third in Missouri this year.

Mr Branson told the BBC earlier on Tuesday that he had spent part of the day looking into the Williams case.

“He is an innocent man,” he said.

“Even the public prosecutor told the governor that he should not do it, this man is innocent.

The victim’s family had advocated for a life sentence rather than the death penalty, while local prosecutors had pushed to have the conviction overturned.

His execution had been stayed twice – once in 2017 and once in 2015 – because male DNA on the murder weapon did not match Williams’.

Then-governor Eric Greitens, a Republican, formed a panel to review the case after granting the second reprieve, but he later left office amid scandal and the panel never reached a conclusion.

Also concerned about the DNA, local prosecutor Wesley Bell requested a hearing.

But at that point it was discovered that the DNA evidence had been tampered with by someone in the prosecutor’s office who had touched the knife without gloves, and the hearing was canceled.

“This outcome did not serve the interests of justice,” Bell said in a statement Tuesday.

“If there is even the slightest doubt about the innocence of the accused, the death penalty should never be an option.

Midwest Innocence Project, a legal group whose attorneys represented Williams,