Who has faced execution under Missouri Gov. Mike Parson?

MISSOURI – Marcellus Williams, a man convicted of repeatedly stabbing former St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter, Lisha Gayle in 1998, was executed Tuesday evening, making him the third inmate in Missouri to die by lethal injection this year.

According to the Death Penalty Information Organization , Williams is the 12th inmate to be put to death under Missouri Gov. Mike Parson and the 100th inmate since Missouri reinstated the death penalty in 1989.

The first inmate to be executed under Gov. Parson was in 2019. Russell Bucklew was convicted for the murder of a man named Michael Sanders in 1996.

Authorities said Bucklew also kidnapped and raped a woman, Stephanie Ray Pruitt, then got into a shootout with the Missouri State Highway Patrol. Bucklew was executed in October 2019.

In 2020, Walter Barton was put to death for the fatal stabbing of an 81-year-old woman.

On Oct. 5, 2021, Ernest Lee Johnson was executed for his conviction of killing three employees inside a Columbia, Missouri, store in 1994. Gov. Parson denied him clemency after Johnson’s attorney’s argued he had an intellectual disability and said it would be unconstitutional for the state to execute him.

Two people were executed in 2022, Kevin Johnson , 37, for the 2007 killing of Kirkwood Police Sergeant, and Carman Deck , 56, was put to death for the killing of a De Soto couple in 1996.

Four inmates were executed in 2023 being Johnny A. Johnson for first-degree murder of a six-year-old girl and Michael A. Tisius for the shooting death of two officers while trying to free a friend from jail. Leonard S. Taylor was also executed for killing his girlfriend and her three children in Jennings.

Amber McLaughlin was executed in January 2023 and was the first transgender woman in the U.S. to be executed. McLaughlin was convicted of stalking and killing a former girlfriend, then dumping the body near the Mississippi River.

As of 2024, David Hosier was executed on June 11 for the killing of woman with whom he was having an affair and her husband. Brian Dorsey was put to death April 9 for killing his cousin and her husband two decades ago.

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