US state Missouri set to execute innocent man

  • Post last modified:September 24, 2024
  • Reading time:9 mins read


Today, the US state of Missouri is executing Marcellus Williams, an innocent Black man – for a crime he didn’t commit:

On 11th August 1998, Felicia Gayle – a former reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch was found stabbed to death in her home. The suspect left behind:

considerable forensic evidence, including fingerprints, footprints, hair, and trace DNA on the murder weapon, a knife from Ms. Gayle’s kitchen.

They convicted Marcellus Williams of her murder in August 2001. However:

None of this forensic evidence matches Mr. Williams.

DNA evidence found on the murder weapon ‘affirmatively excluded Williams as the perpetrator’:

Marcellus Williams: onnocent

The prosecutions case against Marcellus Williams was based entirely on the unreliable testimony of two incentivised witnesses.

According to the Innocence Project:

The case against Mr. Williams turned on the testimony of two unreliable witnesses who were incentivized by promises of leniency in their own pending criminal cases and reward money. 

They continued:

Both of these individuals were known fabricators; neither revealed any information that was not either included in media accounts about the case or already known to the police. Their statements were inconsistent with their own prior statements, with each other’s accounts, and with the crime scene evidence, and none of the information they provided could be independently verified.

Ignoring the evidence

In 2015, the Missouri Supreme Court stayed Marcellus Williams’s execution. They also appointed a special master to review DNA testing of evidence that could potentially exonerate Williams. This proved that it was not his DNA on the murder weapon.

Then in 2017, the case was sent back to the Missouri Supreme court – without a hearing. This means the court then scheduled his execution without considering the DNA results. On 22 August, governor Eric Greitens gave Williams a stay of execution. This was just hours before the execution.

Under Missouri Law, the stay was to remain in place until the Board of Inquiry concluded its review and issued a formal report.

However, in June 2023, while enquiries were still ongoing, current governor Mike Parson dissolved the board. Missouri attorney general Andrew Bailey then sought a new execution date. 

According to the Innocence Project:

Mr. Williams filed a civil suit against Governor Parson because the dissolution of the Board without a report or recommendation violated Missouri law and Mr. Williams’s constitutional rights. After a Cole County judge denied the Governor’s motion to dismiss this lawsuit, the Governor persuaded the Missouri Supreme Court to intervene. 

On June 4, 2024, the Missouri Supreme Court dismissed Mr. Williams’s civil lawsuit and immediately scheduled his execution for Sept. 24.

Executing innocent black men

This will not be the first time the US has executed an innocent Black man. Only last week, South Carolina executed Khalil Divine Black Sun Allah – only days after the key witness for the prosecution came forward to say he had lied at trial and they would be killing an innocent man:

Currently, the criminal justice industrial complex in the US is racist to its core. From policing and the murders of innocent Black people, right through to the prison and criminal sentencing system. In 2021, black Americans were imprisoned at five times the rate of white Americans. Seven states imprison black residents at more than nine times the rate of white residents.

Yet another execution of an innocent Black man encapsulates how the criminal justice apparatus doesn’t exist to protect Black lives, but to further oppress Black communities:

They are planning to execute Marcellus Williams today. The Innocence Project have put together a page which tells you how you can help stop it, before its too late. Where’s Michael Schofield when you need him?

Feature image via KSDK News/Youtube





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