A Missouri man was executed for a 1998 murder. Was he guilty or innocent?

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – As his life drew to a close, Missouri death row inmate Marcellus Williams was given the opportunity to make a final statement to the world.

His words were few — he neither proclaimed innocence nor admitted guilt in the 1998 slaying of Lisha Gayle, a social worker and former reporter in St. Louis Post-Dispatch, who was stabbed 43 times during a burglary at her home in suburban St. Louis. Instead, Williams seemed to express his peace with his fate, writing simply: “Praise be to Allah in every situation!!!”

Williams’ execution on Tuesday left others debating whether it should have taken place.

Missouri’s governor, attorney general and high court remain convinced of his guilt. Those who defended him continue to insist that he is innocent. The District Attorney of St. Louis, citing lingering questions, believes Williams’ sentence should have been commuted to life in prison. Gayle’s family, while not speaking publicly, also joined the plea to let Williams live.

The execution in Missouri, carried out at a prison in Bonne Terre, was one of five scheduled in one week in the US, renewing a long-running debate over how the death penalty is carried out in the states.

What evidence points to Williams’ guilt?

When Gayle was killed, items stolen from her home were later sold by Williams or found in his possession. An ex-girlfriend and an inmate who shared Williams’ cell also testified at his trial that he confessed to killing Gayle.

The ex-girlfriend told police that when Williams picked her up on the day of Gayle’s death, she noticed that he was wearing a jacket even though it was hot outside and that there was blood on his shirt, scratches on his neck and a laptop. in his car. She told police that when she looked in the trunk of the car the next day, she found a purse containing Gayle’s ID.

When police searched Williams’ car more than a year after Gayle’s death, they found a ruler and calculator St. Louis Post-Dispatch that had belonged to Gayle. Police also recovered a laptop stolen from Gayle’s home from a man who had bought it from Williams.

Williams’ lawyers argued that the ex-girlfriend and cellmate were convicted felons who wanted a share of a $10,000 reward. Williams’ former cellmate received a $5,000 reward. The ex-girlfriend never asked for the reward, the governor’s office said.

What evidence is cited for Williams’ innocence?

Authorities found no physical evidence at the crime scene linking Williams to Gayle’s death.

Williams’ attorneys noted that a bloody shoe print, fingerprints and hair found at the scene did not match Williams. But a prosecutor said such tests were simply inconclusive.

The knife used in the murder was also left at the scene. A crime scene investigator testified at Williams’ 2001 trial that the killer wore gloves. But questions have swirled for years about DNA testing of the knife.

The state Supreme Court overturned Williams’ scheduled execution in 2015, allowing time for additional DNA testing. Just hours before Williams is again scheduled to be executed in 2017, then-Gov. Eric Greitens also canceled lethal injection amid DNA questions. Greitens appointed a panel of retired judges to investigate the case. But the group did not reach a conclusion before Gov. Mike Parson dissolved it in 2023.

In August, new tests showed that the DNA on the knife matched that of members of the criminal investigation team who handled it without wearing gloves. With no evidence to point to anyone else, Williams’ lawyers gave up pursuing a not-guilty plea in court and refocused their arguments on alleged procedural errors, including that prosecutors mishandled evidence and wrongly excluded a black man from jury based partly on race.

Were innocent people executed?

There have been no verified cases of an innocent person being executed in the US since capital punishment was reinstated in 1972, but there have been at least 21 people executed despite “strong and credible” claims of innocence, according to the Death Penalty Information Center . The group said the number includes Williams, who was added to the list on Wednesday.

The center’s roster also includes two other men from Missouri. They are Walter Barton, who was executed in May 2020 for the fatal stabbing of an 81-year-old woman, and Larry Griffith, who was executed in June 1995 for the fatal shooting of a 19-year-old.

In addition, the center lists three current death row inmates who face execution despite strong claims of innocence: Richard Glossip, who was convicted in Oklahoma of the murder-for-hire of a motel owner; Toforest Johnson, who is to die in Alabama for the off-duty killing of a sheriff’s deputy; and Robert Roberson, who was convicted in Texas of killing his 2-year-old daughter.

Why don’t we just let Williams spend his life in prison?

At the time of Williams’ murder trial, he already had an extensive list of convictions for burglary, robbery, theft and assault in other cases. A jury convicted him of first-degree murder in Gayle’s death, which in Missouri is punishable by either death or life in prison without parole. It took the jurors only 90 minutes to decide that he deserved the death penalty.

The St. County Prosecutor Louis Wesley Bell, a Democrat who took office in 2019 and is running for Congress, cited a relatively recent Missouri law to reopen the question of Williams’ guilt or innocence. Bell struck a deal in August with the Midwest Innocence Project, which represented Williams, that would have let him enter a new no contest plea to first-degree murder in exchange for a new life sentence without parole. parole.

Bell’s position made the case highly unusual, said Robin Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, which reports on capital punishment issues and has a database of nearly 1,600 executions.

Maher said it is “very, very unusual, very rare” for a prosecutor to side with a prisoner facing execution.

But Missouri’s Republican Attorney General, Andrew Bailey, objected, and the courts upheld the death penalty.

Ultimately, the execution decision rested with Parson, who could have used government powers to commute Williams’ sentence to life in prison.

A clemency petition filed on behalf of Williams pleaded for mercy, noting that Gayle’s family also supported a life sentence instead of death. But Parson disagreed, explaining in his own closing statement about the case: “No juror or judge ever found Williams’s claim of innocence credible.”

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The story has been corrected to correct the spelling of the Texas convict’s last name. He is Robert Roberson, not Robertson.

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Hanna reported from Topeka, Kansas.