The Missouri Supreme Court and Republican Gov. Mike Parson have rejected requests to halt Williams’ execution,
A Missouri man has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene after the state’s top court and governor both rejected requests to stop his scheduled execution.
Marcellus Williams, 55, is scheduled to die by lethal injection at 6 p.m. on Tuesday for the 1998 murder of Lisha Gayle, a social worker and former newspaper reporter who was repeatedly stabbed during a burglary of her home in suburban St. Louis in 1998. Williams has long maintained his innocence.
Missouri Gov. Mike Parson, a Republican who has never granted clemency in a death penalty case, on Monday rejected Williams’ request to spare his life and instead sentence him to life in prison. “Nothing from the real facts of this case have led me to believe in Mr. Williams’ innocence”, Parson said in a statement. The governor’s office has been contacted for further comment via email.
The Missouri Supreme Court also rejected a request to stay the execution so that a lower court could make a new determination about whether a trial prosecutor wrongly excluded a potential Black juror for racial reasons.
Attorneys for Williams, who is Black, have an appeal pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Their petition argues that the issues in the case mirror that of Richard Glossip, an Oklahoma death row inmate whose case the Supreme Court has agreed to review. The case will be argued in October.
“Like Richard Glossip, Marcellus Williams has been sentenced to death and comes before this Court, seeking relief, after the prosecuting authority who prosecuted him—and had previously defended that conviction—conceded constitutional error warranting relief based on previously unknown evidence developed during post-conviction proceedings”, the petition states.
“Additionally, like Glossip, the prosecuting authority not only conceded these errors, but also joins him in petitioning this Court both to stay his execution and grant his writ of certiorari. At minimum, due to the similarities with Glossip, this Court should enter a stay and hold this case for Glossip’s disposition.”
In a statement provided to Newsweek, Tricia Rojo Bushnell, an attorney for Williams, said: “We have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stay Marcellus Williams’ execution on Tuesday based on a revelation by the trial prosecutor that he removed at least one Black juror before trial based on his race.
