His footsteps and the bloody fingerprints that were found on the wall next to her corpse were not his. It was determined that the DNA recovered on the knife and inside the residence of the Missouri lady did not match his. The hairs that were discovered in her palms were not his. He did not own them.
According to a request to revoke his death sentence that was submitted by prosecutors and seen by PEOPLE, both county prosecutors and his defense counsel are in agreement that the guy who has been incarcerated for more than twenty years for the stabbing murder of newspaper reporter Felicia Gayle in 1998 most likely had nothing to do with the incident.
But Marcellus Williams is scheduled to be put to death on September 24, 2024, at six o’clock in the evening.
It has been seven years since the possibly exonerating DNA evidence was brought to light. It has been examined by three specialists from the prosecution, all of whom have reached the conclusion that it is very unlikely to belong to Williams.
On the other hand, on August 28, a court in Missouri heard the evidence for the very first time as part of a last-ditch attempt by William’s attorneys to prevent him from being executed the next month.
Prosecutors and defense attorneys from St. Louis County each testified for two hours, asking the court to overturn Williams’ execution. Meanwhile, the Missouri Attorney General’s Office argued that the execution should proceed as planned. According to the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, the court asked that all final papers be submitted by September 4th.
On the 11th of August in the year 1998, the body of Gayle, a writer who worked for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, was discovered inside the gated community house that she resided in in University City, Missouri.
According to the 63-page petition that was submitted by the prosecution in January, her husband, Dr. Daniel Picus, discovered her with a knife stuck in her neck and wearing just a purple blouse. This was in accordance with a new Missouri legislation that allows the state to interfere in a previous conviction if the integrity of that conviction is dubious.
Later on, the investigators came to the conclusion that Gayle had been stabbed a minimum of 43 times, and she had passed as a result of sixteen wounds to her head, neck, chest, and abdomen.
The perpetrator of the crime had used one of her own kitchen knives during the attack, which resulted in the theft of a number of goods, including her pocketbook and a laptop, but she did not take her wedding ring or any of her jewels.
Additionally, throughout the course of the inquiry, the police discovered bloody shoe prints on the carpeting next to her corpse as well as near the knife sheath that was located in the kitchen. Hairs were gathered from her hands, t-shirt, and floor, and bloody fingerprints went down the wall. Her hands were also covered in blood.
When asked about it, two neighbors reported seeing a minivan of a dark hue being driven by a white guy that morning. “Williams is of mixed race.”
However, despite the fact that the woman’s loss received a lot of attention from the media, the police made very little headway in their investigation until two informants came forward and named Williams individually.
Williams was arrested on August 31, 1998, for robbing a donut store. Williams had been struggling with drug addiction at the time of his arrest. In spite of the fact that his fiancée at the time and someone he had been detained with provided investigators with contradictory accounts, the investigators nevertheless utilized those accounts to arrest Williams in 1999 and put him on trial two years later.
In 2001, he was found guilty of first-degree murder, first-degree burglary, armed criminal action, and robbery by a jury consisting of 11 White individuals and 1 Black person.
According to the Innocence Project, the prosecution had used peremptory challenges to exclude six eligible Black potential jurors from the pool of candidates for the jury.
In his move to vacate the sentence, the current prosecuting attorney, Wesley Bell, alluded to the “history of excluding” Black jurors from the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Office as “no secret” and said that the practice had violated Williams’ constitutional rights. Bell also stated that the practice had been shown to be improper.
Prosecutors and the Innocence Project assert that the DNA found on the murder weapon did not belong to Williams. An earlier execution date for Williams was postponed by the Supreme Court of Missouri in 2015, and a special master was appointed to analyze the DNA evidence. The conclusion reached by the special master was that Williams did not deserve to be executed.
Two years later, the special master, who did not make any conclusions on the test results, handed the matter back to the Missouri Supreme Court, which rescheduled Williams’ execution for August 22, 2017, without taking into consideration the new information. Williams was executed on that day.
Just a few hours before his scheduled execution, the governor at the time, Eric Greitens, decided to postpone the execution and instead create a Board of Inquiry to investigate the matter further. In line with Missouri law, the Board of Inquiry was required to submit an official report when it had completed its investigation.
As an alternative, Governor Mike Parson abolished the board in June of 2023, before to the publication of any report or recommendation.
Within a short amount of time, Attorney General Andrew Bailey requested a new date for the execution.
According to the Innocence Project, Williams filed a lawsuit against the governor, saying that the dissolution of the board was a violation of his constitutional rights. In June of this year, the governor filed a petition with the state supreme court, which ultimately rejected the complaint. Williams’s execution date was then scheduled for September 24.
Parson, who refused to address questions from PEOPLE via his office, cited ongoing litigation as the reason for his decision. In a recent statement, Parson said that he was adhering to “standard practice” and that his actions were “not unique to Mr. Williams’ case.”
After that, on August 21, the defense of Williams discovered that the prosecutors had accidentally gotten their own fingerprints on the knife. Both parties confirmed this information to PEOPLE, with Chris King of the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Office conceding that it “reflected improper handling of evidence.”
A compromise was reached between the two parties over an Alford plea, which would enable the state to maintain its conviction while Williams, who was not admitting guilt, would be removed from the loss row.
The application for a writ was submitted by Attorney General Andrew Bailey on the same day, which prevented the court from resentencing Williams to life in prison without the possibility of release and prompted the judge of the circuit court to set the date of the evidentiary hearing for August 28.
Bailey said in a statement that “it is in the interest of every Missourian that the rule of law is fought for and upheld – every time, without fail.” This comment was made in response to a question.
At the hearing that took place on August 28, the prosecuting attorney, Bell, informed the court that his office had improperly handled the murder weapon. He also stated that the state had destroyed bloody fingerprints at the crime scene and removed Black jurors based solely on race. These constitutional errors, according to a press release issued by the Innocence Project, Bell claimed undermined the conviction.
Following the conclusion of the hearing, Bushnell, who is affiliated with the Innocence Project, issued a statement in which he said, “Today, we witnessed two distinct approaches to prosecution: one committed to serving justice, and the other intent on winning at any cost.”
