Why is the state of Missouri so impatient to kill Marcellus Williams?
Williams faces execution in September for the 1998 murder of former Post-Dispatch reporter Felicia Gayle in University City. Yes, that’s a long stretch of years, but that’s because serious and still-unresolved questions surrounding Williams’ conviction have prompted caution by state and legal officials until now. Such caution is appropriate when a man’s life is at stake.
There are enough questions about the evidence against Williams that former Gov. Eric Greitens — a pro-death-penalty Republican — paused his pending execution in 2017 and appointed a board of inquiry to investigate the issue of “inconclusive†evidence in the case.
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More recently, ºüÀêÊÓƵ County Prosecutor Wesley Bell filed a motion to overturn Williams’ conviction based on “clear and convincing evidence†of actual innocence. His motion is set for a on Aug. 21.
Taken together, these acts of official hesitance clearly merit, at the very least, a thorough review of the evidence before proceeding with the execution.
Yet Republican Gov. Mike Parson, Greitens’ former lieutenant governor, lifted the stay of execution Greitens had issued, dissolved the review panel he had convened and sought an execution date. Williams’ attorneys allege the panel wasn’t even allowed to finish its inquiry.
Meanwhile, Attorney General Andrew Bailey is opposing Bell’s motion to overturn the conviction, saying the jury’s verdict should be final, doubts about the DNA evidence apparently be damned.
Again — what is the hurry?
This Editorial Board has consistently opposed use of the death penalty in any case, with good reason. The notion that capital punishment serves as a deterrent has been so thoroughly debunked that even its defenders seldom bother to claim it anymore.
It has long been shown to be inconsistently applied and, worse, racially applied. Williams is Black; Gayle was white. That combination has been shown to lead to far higher instances of death sentences than when the victims are Black. Further, the prosecution got all but one of seven prospective Black jurors excluded from to jury.
Given the sheer volume of DNA-based exonerations of former death-row inmates and other convicts, there is no rational way to argue that innocent people haven’t been put to death. It’s an ever-present possibility and one that, in itself, should render the death penalty a relic of the past in any civilized society.
Beyond the principled opposition to state executions in general, Williams’ case in particular presents troubling questions.
Gayle, 42, was found stabbed to death in her home Aug. 11, 1998, with a butcher’s knife from her own kitchen, apparently during a robbery. Police were led to Williams by the testimony of two people — an ex-girlfriend and a jailhouse informant — who, with the significant motivation of a $10,000 reward, said Williams had confessed to them.
Williams, then 29, had a criminal record that included burglary. His ex-girlfriend led police to a laptop computer that belonged to Gayle’s husband and that she claimed Williams had bartered for drugs. That’s clearly serious evidence, but possession of stolen goods isn’t ironclad proof of murder. And there was no forensic evidence at the murder scene tying it to Williams.
The most serious doubts about Williams’ guilt stem from the conclusions of two different experts who examined DNA evidence from the murder weapon.
One found the results inconclusive; the other concluded that the DNA implicated someone other than Williams.
If that’s not reasonable doubt, what is? At the very least, such circumstances demand more extensive testing and more extensive review of the entire case.
Instead, Missouri’s governor and its top legal official are pressing the court system to ignore those questions, strap Williams to a gurney and pump poison into his body.
We get that the death penalty still has its supporters. But shouldn’t those supporters, perhaps more than anyone else, want to be absolutely sure they aren’t executing the wrong person? Doesn’t any uncertainty on that issue hurt the case for keeping the death penalty on the books?