Missouri Supreme Court blocks agreement that would have halted execution of inmate who claims innocence
Marcellus Williams’ lawyers had expected his death sentence to be commutted
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The Missouri Supreme Court has blocked an agreement that would have spared the life of death row inmate Marcellus Williams and instead ordered a hearing to proceed on his innocence claim, with just a little over a month to go before his scheduled execution for the 1998 murder of a St. Louis newspaper reporter.
The ruling late Wednesday came hours after St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney’s office told The Independent it had agreed with court officials to a consent judgment that would vacate the 2001 death sentence of Williams if the 55-year-old immediately enters what’s known as an Alford plea.
Under such a plea, an individual accepts the punishment of being found guilty of a crime while still maintaining their innocence.
Williams would have been sentenced to life in prison without parole on Thursday. Instead, the Sept. 24 execution date is still on, pending a hearing before St. Louis County Circuit Judge Bruce Hinton on his innocence claim.
The deal had replaced a hearing that was planned for Wednesday, where Williams’s attorneys were expected to present new DNA evidence they said ruled him out in the stabbing murder of St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Felicia Gayle, which could have upended the inmate’s scheduled execution.
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey has sought to deny Williams’s appeals, arguing courts have already heard his claims, and said Wednesday he opposes the consent judgment.
Bailey argues DNA testing of the murder weapon in the case, a bloodied knife, merely shows law enforcement handled the weapon after the killing, rather than proving Williams’s innocence.
“Throughout all the legal games, the defense created a false narrative of innocence in order to get a convicted murderer off of death row and fulfill their political ends,” Bailey wrote in a statement. “Because of the defense’s failure to do their due diligence by testing the evidence that supposedly proved their point, the victims have been forced to relive their horrific loss for the last six years.”
The state prosecutor also argued other evidence proves Williams’s guilt, such as the testimony of two informants. Police investigating the murder found a St. Louis Post-Dispatch-branded ruler in Williams’s car and discovered a laptop belonging to Gayle’s husband at the home of a man who claimed Williams gave it to him.
A representative of Gayle’s family expressed a “desire that the death penalty not be carried out” and “the family’s desire for finality” as part of a conference regarding the consent judgment, according to court documents obtained by CNN.
“By agreeing to an Alford plea, the parties will bring a measure of finality to Felicia Gayle’s family,” Williams’s lawyer Tricia Rojo Bushnell told the outlet, “while ensuring that Mr. Williams will remain alive as we continue to pursue new evidence to prove, once and for all, that he is innocent.”
Additional reporting by AP.
The Independent and the nonprofit Responsible Business Initiative for Justice (RBIJ) have launched a joint campaign calling for an end to the death penalty in the US. The RBIJ has attracted more than 150 well-known signatories to their Business Leaders Declaration Against the Death Penalty - with The Independent as the latest on the list. We join high-profile executives like Ariana Huffington, Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg, and Virgin Group founder Sir Richard Branson as part of this initiative and are making a pledge to highlight the injustices of the death penalty in our coverage.