The Missouri chapter of the NAACP called it a “lynching.” His defense lawyers condemned it as a “grotesque” interpretation of justice, and the state’s community of criminal public defenders said that politicians in the so-called Show Me State “value finality over fairness” by insisting on killing an innocent man.
Even state prosecutors — who made national headlines after finding that Marcellus Williams, an inmate who had been on Death Row for nearly a quarter century, had been condemned to die on tainted evidence and flimsy testimony — told several judges and the state’s governor that Williams’ execution set for Sept. 24 must be stopped, in the name of justice.
Yet just before 6 p.m. Tuesday, after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his 11th-hour appeal, Williams, 55, was strapped to a gurney and wheeled into the death chamber of Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center in Bonne Terre, Missouri.
There, before a select group of eyewitnesses, an anonymous executioner injected a lethal dose of chemicals into Williams’s veins. His breathing halted, Williams died within minutes.
Despite substantial doubt Williams might not be guilty, Gov. Mike Parson, a conservative Republican, said he hoped the execution would bring peace to the family of the victim, Felicia Gayle, 42. The case, Parson said, had dragged on since Williams’ 2001 trial, and every court he appealed to validated the outcome.
“No juror, no judge has ever found Williams’ innocence claim to be credible,” Parson said in a statement shortly after the execution. “Two decades of judicial proceedings and more than 15 judicial hearings upheld his guilty conviction.”
Although Black people are 13% of the population, they make up 42% of all Death Row inmates.
But several members of Gayle’s family, disturbed by the possibility Williams was innocent, had supported commutation of Williams’s sentence to life in prison rather than the death penalty. In a statement, they told the court that closure to them is “Marcellus being allowed to live.”
His execution, they wrote, “is not necessary.”
The case is the latest flash point around capital punishment in the U.S., the only developed Western nation whose laws include state-sponsored executions. Since a national ban on the death penalty was lifted in 1976, 27 states have reinstated the punishment.
Yet studies have shown that the death penalty is racially biased: although Black people are 13% of the population, they make up 42% of all Death Row inmates, including Williams.
Furthermore, Black defendants are more likely to receive a death sentence for capital murder than whites particularly if the victim was white; far fewer defendants, black or white, are condemned for killing a Black person. And of all inmates exonerated for a death-penalty crime they did not commit, 54% are Black.
St. Louis County Prosecutor Wesley Bell — whose predecessors put Williams on trial for capital murder and argued for the death penalty — said the state should have spared him.
In a statement shortly after the execution, Bell said Williams “should be alive today. If there is even the shadow of a doubt of innocence, the death penalty should never be an option.”
This outcome, he said, “did not serve the interests of justice.”
The case centered on the murder of Gayle, a journalist who was ambushed and stabbed to death inside her gated-community apartment complex in University City, Missouri, on the morning of Aug. 11, 1998. Her assailant stabbed her dozens of times and left the knife lodged in her neck; he subsequently stole Gayle’s laptop computer as he fled.
Williams, who had a long criminal record, was arrested not long after the murder.
At trial, St. Louis County prosecutors built their case on the testimony of a jailhouse informant and Williams’ former girlfriend; both said he had confessed, and the former girlfriend said she’d seen some of Gayle’s belongings, including the laptop, in his car. Investigators also linked hair, fibers and a footprint collected from the crime scene to Williams.
Despite a substantial criminal history, WIlliams repeatedly and consistently maintained his innocence, and was hours away from the death chamber in 2015 and 2017 when his execution was stayed. His lawyers argued that DNA tests on the physical evidence didn’t match Williams. Meanwhile, the two star witnesses were later found to be not credible: the informant received a $5,000 reward and both he and the ex-girlfriend had substance abuse issues.
Both are now deceased.
In 2017, then-Gov. Eric Greitens, a Republican, set up a commission to reexamine the case, but Parson, his successor, dissolved it in 2023 — even though the commission hadn’t finished its work. Parson lifted the stay, and the clock for Williams’ execution began ticking.
As Williams’ last-minute appeals failed, his lawyers sought clemency with support of the victim’s family, but to no avail. As his execution date moved closer, Williams was moved from a maximum-security prison to the Bonne Terre center.
Throughout his final hours, Williams was calm, his lawyers said. In the death chamber, Williams, a devout Muslim, used his final words for a clear, strong declaration of faith.
“All praise be to Allah in every situation!” he said.
