25 September 2024 :
24/09/2024 - Missouri. Marcellus Williams, 55, Black, was executed on September 24 over the objections of the victim’s family and the prosecutor, who wanted the death sentence commuted to life in prison.
The man was executed by lethal injection at 6 p.m. CT at Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center in Bonne Terre.
Williams was convicted in the 1998 killing of Lisha Gayle, who was stabbed during the burglary of her home.
He had a final visit with Imam Jalahii Kacem from around 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. CT.
Around 4:50 p.m., the Department of Corrections received word that all petitions had been denied by the US Supreme Court, and about an hour later, witnesses, including Williams’ son and two of his attorneys, were moved into the viewing area of the prison, Pojmann said at a news conference.
At 6 p.m., state Attorney General Andrew Bailey notified the Department of Corrections that there were no legal impediments to the execution.
As Williams lay awaiting execution, he appeared to converse with his spiritual advisor seated next to him. Williams wiggled his feet underneath a white sheet that was pulled up to his neck and moved his head slightly while his spiritual advisor continued to talk. Then Williams’ chest heaved about a half dozen times, and he showed no further movement.
Williams’ son and two attorneys watched from another room. No one was present on behalf of the victim’s family.
The Department of Corrections released a brief statement that Williams had written ahead of time, saying: “All Praise Be to Allah In Every Situation!!!”
The lethal injection was administered at 6:01 p.m. and Williams was pronounced dead at 6:10 p.m..
Around 100 demonstrators were present on the prison grounds protesting capital punishment and Williams’ execution.
The NAACP had been among those urging Republican Missouri Gov. Mike Parson to cancel the execution. “Tonight, Missouri lynched another innocent Black man,” NAACP President Derrick Johnson said in a statement.
Parson and the state Supreme Court rejected his appeals in quick succession Monday, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene hours before he was put to death.
Last month, Gayle’s relatives gave their blessings to an agreement between the St. Louis County prosecuting attorney’s office and Williams’ attorneys to commute the sentence to life in prison. But acting on an appeal from Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s office, the state Supreme Court nullified the agreement.
Gayle, 42, was a social worker and former St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter. Prosecutors at Williams’ trial said he broke into her home on Aug. 11, 1998, heard the shower running and found a large butcher knife. Gayle was stabbed 43 times when she came downstairs. Her purse and her husband’s laptop were stolen.
Authorities said Williams stole a jacket to conceal blood on his shirt. His girlfriend asked him why he would wear a jacket on a hot day. She said she later saw the purse and laptop in his car and that Williams sold the computer a day or two later.
Prosecutors also cited testimony from Henry Cole, who shared a cell with Williams in 1999 while Williams was jailed on unrelated charges. Cole told prosecutors that Williams confessed to the killing and provided details about it.
Williams’ attorneys responded that the girlfriend and Cole were both convicted of felonies and wanted a $10,000 reward. They said that fingerprints, a bloody shoeprint, hair and other evidence at the crime scene didn’t match Williams’.
Questions about DNA evidence also led St. Louis Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell to request a hearing challenging Williams’ guilt. But days before the Aug. 21 hearing, new testing showed that DNA on the knife belonged to members of the prosecutor’s office who handled it without gloves after the original crime lab tests.
Without DNA evidence pointing to any alternative suspect, Midwest Innocence Project attorneys reached a compromise with the prosecutor’s office: Williams would enter a new, no-contest plea to first-degree murder in exchange for a new sentence of life in prison without parole. A no-contest plea isn’t an admission of guilt but is treated as such for the purpose of sentencing.
Judge Bruce Hilton signed off, as did Gayle’s family. But Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey appealed, and the state Supreme Court blocked the agreement and ordered Hilton to proceed with an evidentiary hearing, which took place last month.
Hilton ruled on Sept. 12 that the first-degree murder conviction and death sentence would stand, noting that Williams’ arguments all had been previously rejected. That decision was upheld Monday by the state Supreme Court.
Attorneys for Williams, who was Black, also challenged the fairness of his trial, particularly the fact that only one of the 12 jurors was Black. Tricia Bushnell of the Midwest Innocence Project said the prosecutor in the case, Keith Larner, removed six of seven Black prospective jurors.
Larner testified at the August hearing that he struck one potential Black juror partly because he looked too much like Williams — a statement that Williams’ attorneys asserted showed improper racial bias.
Williams becomes the 3rd prisoner executed this year in Missouri, the 100th since the state resumed executions in 1989, the 15th this year in the US, and the n. 1597 since the nation resumed executions in 1977.
https://apnews.com/article/missouri-execution-marcellus-williams-8be20e2f252992610a30fa0cfef4185a
