A Missouri death row inmate on Wednesday dropped his innocence claim and entered a new no-contest plea in an agreement that calls for a new sentence of life in prison without parole.
Under an agreement reached with St. Louis County prosecutors, Williams entered that plea on Wednesday.
“Marcellus Williams is an innocent man, and nothing about today’s plea agreement changes that fact,” Williams’ attorney, Tricia Bushnell, said in a statement.
Hilton won’t have the luxury of time though: Williams’ execution is 34 days away.
In 2023, a St. Louis judge overturned Johnson’s conviction.
Williams is the first death row inmate whose innocence claim will go before a judge since passage of the 2021 law.
Gayle, who was White, was a social worker who previously worked as a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Prosecutors also cited testimony from Henry Cole, who shared a St. Louis cell with Williams in 1999 while Williams was jailed on unrelated charges.
A death row inmate from Missouri renounced his innocence on Wednesday and entered a new plea of no contest, agreeing to a new life sentence without the possibility of release.
To proceed with the planned September trial, however, the Missouri Attorney General’s Office will file an appeal because it disagrees with the new consent judgment. Marcellus Williams’s execution on 24.
The convoluted development transpired on the day that St. Judge Bruce Hinton of the Louis County Circuit Court was scheduled to preside over a hearing that Wesley Bell, the prosecutor, had requested in order to overturn Williams’ first-degree murder conviction in the 1998 stabbing death of Lisha Gayle. Bell had referenced the lack of DNA testing available at the scene, which had revealed the presence of another person’s DNA on the murder weapon but not Williams’.
Even more recent DNA testing, which was made public on Monday, revealed contamination because the weapon had been handled by a former assistant prosecutor and investigator. This announcement followed a protracted delay during which attorneys met behind closed doors. Special prosecutor Matthew Jacober made this announcement. Evidence that pointed to a different person as the murderer could not be proven due to contamination.
According to Jacober, “appropriate procedures were not followed when handling the murder weapon.”. The incorrect handling happened a few years prior to Bell taking office.
“According to the Court, the State of Missouri, via the St. In his decision on Wednesday, Circuit Judge Bruce Hilton stated, “Louis County Prosecuting Attorney acknowledges that constitutional errors did occur in the original trial that undermine confidence in the original judgment.”.
Despite not admitting guilt, Williams entered an Alford plea, recognizing that there was enough evidence to convict him. As per the understanding made with St. Williams entered that plea on Wednesday, according to the prosecutors from Louis County. It is agreed that he will be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of release on Thursday. Williams consented not to file an appeal.
“Marcellus Williams is innocent, and nothing about today’s plea agreement changes that fact,” Tricia Bushnell, the lawyer for Williams, stated in a statement. The plea offers the family “a measure of finality,” she said, adding that Gayle’s family is in favor of abolishing the death penalty.
Nothing about today’s agreement changes the fact that Marcellus Williams’ DNA is not on the murder weapon, Bushnell said. “Over the past 26 years, no credible evidence has ever connected Mr. Williams to the crime.”. “It is evident from the knife’s DNA match to members of the trial prosecution team that the State of Missouri violated important investigative procedures, including improperly managing crucial evidence. However, it is certain that Marcellus Williams did not touch the weapon between 1998 and the present and leave DNA on it, irrespective of who might have done so. “.”.
Midwest Innocence Project member Bushnell stated that her group will “continue to pursue new evidence to prove, once and for all, that he is innocent.”. “.”.
However, Williams’ execution is still a possibility despite the plea. In an attempt to carry out the execution, Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey is submitting an appeal to the Missouri Supreme Court. He argues that a circuit court lacks the authority to overturn the decision made by the state Supreme Court, which established the execution date.
Bailey said in a statement, “The defense created a false narrative of innocence throughout all the legal games in order to get a convicted murderer off of death row and fulfill their political ends.”. “For the last six years, the victims have been forced to relive their horrific loss because the defense failed to do their due diligence by verifying the evidence that purportedly proved their point. “.
Gayle was stabbed to death in 1998, and Williams, then 55, was found guilty of first-degree murder. In August 2017, just hours before his execution, the then-Gov. Upon discovering that the knife’s DNA belonged to someone else rather than Williams—a test that was not available at the time of the murder—Republican Eric Greitens was granted a stay of proceedings.
Bell reexamined the case in light of that evidence.
Bell’s motion claims that “this never-before-considered evidence, 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’s conviction and sentence.”.
Williams is Black, and the jury that found him guilty included one Black person and eleven White people. Williams was given the death penalty. Williams has also been found guilty of burglary, assault, and attempted armed robbery in addition to first-degree murder.
Despite the fresh DNA claims, Republican Bailey claimed in a June court filing that “evidence supporting conviction at trial was overwhelming.”.
In 2018, co-founder of Innocence Project Barry Scheck expressed his opinion that there is “enough doubt in the case that his sentence should at least be commuted.”. “.
Prosecutors may submit a move to overturn a conviction they feel was unfair under a Missouri statute that goes into effect in 2021. Three men who were imprisoned for decades have been cleared by the law; Christopher Dunn was one of them last month.
After hearing testimony for a few days, the judge usually takes up to two months to consider the material. But Hilton won’t have much time to spare—Williams’ execution is in 34 days.
Shortly after ruling that Republican Parson had the right to dissolve a board of inquiry that Greitens had called after he stopped the 2017 execution, the Missouri Supreme Court set the date of the execution for September 4th.
Whether the new DNA evidence cleared Williams was never decided upon or decided by the five retired judges that made up the inquiry board. In June 2023, Parson announced the board’s dissolution, citing a need to “go forward.”. “.”.
Parson’s spokesperson, Jonathan Shiflett, stated that the governor “has not made a decision yet, but he will give careful thought to the question of clemency for Mr. Williams, just as he has for all other capital punishment cases during his tenure.”. As the governor for eleven executions, Parson—a former county sheriff—has never been given clemency.
Not to mention Dunn, who was imprisoned for 34 years after a 15-year-old St. Louis Boy, two more men, Kevin Strickland and Lamar Johnson, were freed as a result of a Missouri law that permits prosecutors to contest convictions. Although Bailey was not the attorney general at the time Strickland’s case went to trial, his office was against overturning Dunn and Johnson’s convictions.
Bailey also opposed attempts to overturn Sandra Hemme’s murder conviction, despite the fact that the case was decided by appeals rather than a prosecutor’s motion, and Hemme served 43 years in prison. In June, a judge declared Hemme’s release appropriate. Bailey attempted to keep Hemme incarcerated by filing numerous appeals, but in July, she was freed.
A judge determined that Strickland had been unfairly convicted in 1979, and he was released in 2021 after serving more than 40 years for three killings in Kansas City. 2023 will see a St. Johnson was found not guilty by a Louis judge. He spent almost 28 years in prison for a murder that he insisted he did not commit.
Since the 2021 law was passed, Williams is the first death row inmate whose innocence claim will be heard by a judge. One other ex-convict who was sentenced to death is supporting him. The Missouri Supreme Court decided in 2003 that there was insufficient evidence to connect Joseph Amrine to the murder of another prisoner, ending his 17-year sentence on death row.
“Killing the wrong person has no benefit for the state,” Amrine stated in a statement. “I hope the office of the Attorney General can modify their strategy and recognize that their actions affect human beings. “.”.
Williams was accused by the prosecution during his trial of breaking into Gayle’s suburban St. Louis’ house on August 16. 11, 1998, discovered a big butcher knife and heard the shower running. Gayle had 43 stab wounds when she came downstairs. Both her husband’s laptop and her handbag were taken. Gayle, a White social worker, had previously been employed as a St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Williams allegedly stole a jacket to cover up blood on his shirt, according to the authorities. Williams’ girlfriend questioned him about why, on such a hot day, he would wear a jacket. The girlfriend claimed that Williams sold the laptop a day or two later and that she later noticed it in the vehicle. Gayle’s clothes and her husband’s computer were discovered by police in Williams’ vehicle, as previously reported by CBS News.
Additionally, Henry Cole’s testimony—which included a St. while Williams was incarcerated on unrelated charges in 1999, Louis cell with Williams. Cole informed the prosecutors that Williams had admitted to the murder and provided information about it.
In response, Williams’ lawyers said that Cole and the girlfriend were both convicted felons eligible for a $10,000 reward.
