Despite protests, calls for clemency, Missouri executes Marcellus Williams

BONNE TERRE, Mo. – Despite protestations from the prosecutor’s office that sent him to death row and anti-death penalty advocates, as well as calls for clemency from the victim’s family and two men famously convicted by the Missouri justice system for murders they did not commit, the state executed Marcellus Williams late Tuesday afternoon.

Williams, 55, died via a lethal dose of pentobarbital. The execution was carried out just after 6 p.m. on Sept. 24 at the Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center in Bonne Terre, Missouri. He was declared dead at 6:10 p.m.

Earlier that day, Williams released his final statement: “All Praise Be To Allah In Every Situation!!!”

Williams’ last meal was served at 10:53 a.m. Tuesday and included chicken wings and tater tots, Karen Pojmann, a spokeswoman for the Missouri Department of Corrections, said. His last visit was with Imam Jalahii Kacem, from 11:01 a.m. to 12:32 p.m. The imam was with Williams in the execution room.

Williams’ son and two attorneys were in one room, with state agents and three selected media members—David A. Lieb of the Associated Press, Dana Reed of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and Anthony Morabith of MissouriNet—in the other.

During a post-execution news conference before other assembled members of the media, Lieb, Reed, and Morabith said Williams was already strapped to the execution table when the curtain to the room was pulled back. Imam Kacem was in the room with Williams, and the two men were conversing. Williams covered in a white sheet from his feet up to his head. He appeared to wiggle his feet and move his head. His chest heaved about a half dozen times and then stopped, Lieb said. There was no additional movement. Williams did not appear to struggle, Morabith said.

The curtain was closed, at which point a prison doctor entered the room to confirm Williams’ death. The curtain reopened a short time later. The imam had already left the room.

This was Missouri’s third execution of 2024. Brian Dorsey and David Hosier were executed earlier this year. Nine inmates across the state are awaiting execution . Christopher Collings is scheduled to be executed on Dec. 3 for the 2007 rape and murder of a 9-year-old girl in Stella, Missouri.

Williams was convicted of first-degree murder in the August 1998 stabbing death of Lisha Gayle during a robbery of her suburban St. Louis home. He had long maintained his innocence.

Tricia Rojo Bushnell, Williams’ attorney and executive director of the Midwest Innocence Project , filed an emergency appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday morning seeking a stay of the execution. That appeal was denied just over an hour before the execution.

“That is not justice. And we must all question any system that would allow this to occur. The execution of an innocent person is the most extreme manifestation of Missouri’s obsession with ‘finality’ over truth, justice, and humanity, at any cost,” Bushnell said in a statement. “… Tonight, we all bear witness to Missouri’s grotesque exercise of state power. Let it not be in vain. This should never happen, and we must not let it continue.”

St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell, who was not involved in the original case, had requested that the Missouri Supreme Court send the matter back to the St. Louis County Circuit Court for a full hearing.

On Monday, the Missouri Supreme Court and Governor Mike Parson rejected those appeals and a clemency petition that highlighted faulty DNA evidence and claimed racial bias in the jury selection at the time of Williams’ original trial. Gayle’s family had signed that petition , according to the Associated Press.

“The family defines closure as Marcellus being allowed to live,” the petition stated, which had been sent to the AP. “Marcellus’ execution is not necessary.”

Parson, however, disagreed. The governor, a former county sheriff who has not granted clemency for capital punishment during his entire tenure as the state’s chief executive, said Williams received ample consideration from the justice system.

“We hope this gives finality to a case that has languished for decades, revictimizing Ms. Gayle’s family over and over again. No juror nor judge has ever found Williams’s innocence claim to be credible,” Parson said in a statement prior to Williams’ execution. “Two decades of judicial proceedings and more than 15 judicial hearings upheld his guilty conviction; thus, the order of execution has been carried out.”

In his statement rejecting Williams’ clemency petition , Parson accused defense attorneys of attempting to “muddy the waters about DNA evidence.”

Gayle, a social worker who previously worked as a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch , was found stabbed to death inside her University City home in August 1998. Her purse and her husband’s laptop were stolen. Investigators and prosecutors claimed Williams broke a windowpane to get inside the home, heard water running in the shower, and found a large butcher knife. When Gayle came downstairs, they said Williams stabbed her 43 times and left the knife in her throat.

Prosecutors said Williams confessed to the killing to his former girlfriend after she found Gayle’s purse in Williams’ car. She also said Williams threatened to kill her and her family if she told anyone about it. A jailhouse informant also testified that Williams bragged about the murder to him.

Defense attorneys, then and now, said the girlfriend and informant were convicted felons only interested in reward money. However, Parson’s statement said the girlfriend never inquired about the money, and the informant provided investigators with details about the crime that were never made public.

Following Monday’s rejection of the appeals, Bell said in a statement that his office still had questions “about the integrity of (Williams’) conviction.”

“Even for those who disagree on the death penalty, when there is a shadow of a doubt of any defendant’s guilt, the irreversible punishment of execution should not be an option,” Bell said. “As the St. Louis County prosecutor, our office has questions about Mr. Williams guilt but also about the integrity of his conviction. For those reasons, we will continue to do everything in our power to save his life.”

In August 2017, Williams was hours away from execution when he was given a reprieve. Former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens halted the process, saying that testing, unavailable at the time of the killing, showed that Williams’ DNA was not on the murder weapon, leading some to argue that Williams was not the killer.

Greitens formed a board of inquiry to examine the case. However, his successor, Parson, dissolved the board of inquiry in June 2023 before it could reach any conclusion regarding Williams’ innocence.

Prosecutor Bell filed a motion in winter 2023 to vacate Williams’ murder conviction. Bell cited that new DNA evidence when filing the motion and said he believed Williams was not involved in Gayle’s death.

A Missouri law took effect in 2021, allowing prosecuting attorneys like Bell to file a motion to vacate a conviction if they believe an inmate could be innocent or was otherwise erroneously convicted. There were concerns that the original members of the prosecution team had mishandled and contaminated the DNA evidence.

This past August, prosecutor Bell and Williams’ attorney had reached a deal in which Williams would plead guilty to the murder under an Alford plea in St. Louis County Circuit Court and receive a life sentence. Williams’ lawyer said at the time that by accepting the Alford plea—an admission that prosecutors have enough evidence to obtain a guilty verdict—they would have had more time to seek their client’s innocence.

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey argued at the time that the circuit court did not have the authority to overturn Williams’ conviction or resentence him. The Missouri Supreme Court sided with Bailey.

The day before Williams’ execution, FOX 2 News received statements from Ryan Ferguson and Russ Faria, two Missouri men who were each convicted of murders they did not commit.

Ferguson, who was convicted in the 2001 murder of a Missouri sports reporter and lost his 20s as a result, said carrying out an irreversible sentence life the death penalty should concern everyone.

“This is an issue for all Missourians. Evidence exists to prove Marcellus’ innocence. If this is the burden of proof, the state of Missouri is willing to throw out the standard of reasonable doubt to execute a person,” Ferguson said. “It could be any of us. I stand with Marcellus and his family.”

Faria spent more than three years in prison for the December 2011 murder of his wife, Betsy, in their Lincoln County home. Thanks to reporting from FOX 2’s Chris Hayese, Russ Faria received a retrial and was exonerated for the crime. Betsy’s friend Pam Hupp was ultimately charged with the murder. The former county prosecutor and local law enforcement also face allegations of improper prosecution and corruption .

“I have been following this case very closely and am very concerned that we are going to let (Williams) be put to death. As an exoneree, I feel very strongly that if there is even a fraction of a chance of a person’s innocence, we should not execute him,” Russ Faria said. “In this particular case, it would seem that there are quite a lot of uncertainties. I believe the state is making a grave error in allowing this execution to go through.”

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KNWA FOX24.