ST. LOUIS COUNTY, Mo. – A judge has denied a motion to vacate the murder conviction and scheduled execution of Marcellus Williams.

Williams, a man on death row in the 1998 death of Lisha Gayle, agreed to an Alford plea on Aug. 21, which allowed him to maintain his claim of innocence while still being convicted of first-degree murder in Gayle’s death.

One day later, Missouri’s highest court halted the scheduled Alford plea . As a result, Williams is still scheduled to be executed for the murder on Sept. 24, 2024 without further intervention.

An court order returned Thursday reads, “Every claim of error Williams has asserted on direct appeal, post-conviction review, and habeas review, has been rejected by Missouri’s court. … There is no basis for a court to find that Williams is innocent, no court has made such a finding. … Motion to vacate or set aside Williams’ conviction and sentence is hereby denied.”

St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell originally filed a motion to vacate Williams’ conviction last winter based on DNA analysis done on the suspected murder weapon, which was not available when Williams was originally convicted.

The testing revealed that Williams’ DNA was not on the knife used in the murder, leading some to argue that he was not the killer. But then questions were raised about the DNA evidence being mishandled and contaminated by original members of the prosecution team.

“Today’s a sad day for Missouri… It’s a day that they decided a man who was found innocent based on DNA evidence is now saying, ‘Forget that…we’re going to kill you anyway,'” defense attorney Herman Jimerson said.

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Williams agreed to take a plea deal where he would spend the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of parole but would avoid execution. However, Missouri Attorney Andrew Bailey opposed that deal and went to the Missouri Supreme Court to stop it.

“The main thing with this particular case is his innocence. That should be the ground zero for any work that we do to make sure that an innocent person is not incarcerated but also not executed. That definitely should be where we completely draw a line,” Michelle Smith with the group Missourians to Abolish the Death Penalty said. “I believe that the evidence and its mishandling definitely had an effect on the case overall, and we don’t know what would’ve happened had that evidence not been mishandled—had it not been lost, had it not been basically destroyed for evidentiary purposes.”

Before his murder conviction, investigators claimed that Williams broke a windowpane to get inside Gayle’s home on Aug. 11, 1998, heard water running in the shower, and found a large butcher knife. When Gayle came downstairs, she was stabbed 43 times. Her purse and her husband’s laptop were stolen. Gayle was a social worker who previously worked as a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Tricia Rojo Bushnell, an attorney for Marcellus Williams, shared the following statement after Thursday’s ruling:

“The decision of a prosecutor to move to vacate a murder conviction and death sentence is not done lightly. Prosecuting Attorney Bell filed a motion because there is overwhelming evidence that Marcellus Williams’ trial was constitutionally unfair, including revelations that the State contaminated the most critical evidence in the case—the murder weapon.

“We will continue pursuing every possible option to prevent Mr. Williams’ wrongful execution. There is still time for the courts or Governor Parson to ensure that Missouri does not commit the irreparable injustice of executing an innocent person.”

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