Prosecutor’s push to vacate conviction of death row inmate Marcellus Williams denied in Missouri

(CNN) — A Missouri judge on Thursday rejected an effort by the St. Louis prosecutor to vacate the conviction of Marcellus Williams, a death row inmate who claims he’s innocent of the murder for which he’s scheduled to be executed this month.

The St. Louis Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, led by Wesley Bell, had in a January motion argued DNA testing of the murder weapon could exclude Williams as the killer of Felicia Gayle, who was found stabbed to death in her home in 1998.

But the argument fell apart last month in the face of new DNA testing that revealed the murder weapon had been mishandled, contaminating the evidence meant to exonerate Williams and complicating his quest to prove his innocence.

“There is no basis for a court to find that Williams is innocent,” state Judge Bruce F. Hilton wrote Thursday in his judgment, “and no court has made such a finding. Williams is guilty of first-degree murder, and has been sentenced to death.”

The case raises the specter of a potentially innocent person being put to death, an inherent risk of capital punishment. At least 200 people sentenced to death since 1973 have thereafter been exonerated, four of them in Missouri, according to the Death Penalty Information Center .

This is a developing story and will be updated.

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