Missouri executes Marcellus Williams for murdering woman in 1998 despite her family’s calls for his life to be spared

BONNE TERRE, Mo. (AP) – A Missouri man was executed Tuesday for breaking into a woman’s home and killing her, despite calls from her family and prosecutors who placed him on death row to let him live out the rest of his life serving time in prison.

Marcellus Williams55, was convicted of the 1998 murder of Lisha Gayle, who was stabbed repeatedly during the burglary of her suburban St. Louis home.

Williams’ hope to have his sentence commuted to life in prison experienced double setbacks Monday when Republican Gov. Mike Parson almost simultaneously denied him clemency and the Missouri Supreme Court declined to grant him a stay of execution. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene on Tuesday.

Williams was put to death despite questions raised by his lawyers about jury selection at his trial and the handling of evidence in the case. His clemency petition focused on how Gayle’s relatives wanted Williams’ sentence commuted to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

“The family defines closure as Marcellus being allowed to live,” the petition said. ‘There is no need for Marcellus’ execution.’

Last month, Gayle’s relatives gave their blessing to an agreement between the St. Louis County District Attorney’s Office and Williams’ attorneys to commute the sentence to life in prison. But at the request of Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, the state Supreme Court overturned the agreement.

Williams was one of them death row inmates in five states who were scheduled to be put to death within a week – an unusually high number that a years of decline in the use and support of the death penalty in the US The first was carried out Friday in South Carolina. Texas was also expected to execute a prisoner on Tuesday evening.

Gayle, 42, was a social worker and former St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter. Prosecutors at Williams’ trial said he broke into her home on August 11, 1998, heard the shower running and found a large butcher knife. Gayle was stabbed 43 times when she came down. Her handbag and her husband’s laptop were stolen.

Authorities say Williams stole a jacket to hide the blood on his shirt. His girlfriend asked him why he would wear a jacket on a hot day. She said she later saw the bag and laptop in his car and that Williams sold the computer a day or two later.

Prosecutors also cited testimony from Henry Cole, who shared a cell with Williams in 1999 while Williams was jailed on unrelated charges. Cole told prosecutors that Williams confessed to the murder and provided details about it.

Williams’ attorneys responded that the girlfriend and Cole had both been convicted of felonies and wanted a $10,000 reward. They said fingerprints, a bloody shoe print, hair and other evidence at the crime scene did not match Williams’.

A crime scene investigator had testified that the killer was wearing gloves.

Tuesday marked the third time Williams was executed. He was less than a week away from lethal injection in January 2015 when the state Supreme Court ruled called it offallowing time for his lawyers to pursue additional DNA testing.

It was hours before Williams was executed in August 2017, when then-Gov. Eric Greitens, a Republican, granted a stay. Greitens a panel appointed of retired judges to investigate the case. But that panel never came to a conclusion.

Questions about DNA evidence also led to St. Louis prosecutor Wesley Bell request a hearing challenging Williams’ guilt. But days before the August 21 hearing, new tests showed that DNA on the knife belonged to members of the prosecutor’s office who handled it without gloves after the original tests in the crime lab.

Without DNA evidence pointing to an alternative suspect, lawyers at the Midwest Innocence Project reached a compromise with the prosecution: Williams would enter a new, uncontested plea to first-degree murder in exchange for a new life sentence without parole release. A no contest plea is not an admission of guilt, but is treated as such for purposes of sentencing.

Judge Bruce Hilton signed off, as did Gayle’s family. But Bailey appealed and the state Supreme Court blocked the deal and ordered Hilton to move forward with an agreement evidentiary hearingwhich took place last month.

Hilton ruled on September 12 that the first-degree murder conviction and death penalty would stand, noting that Williams’ arguments had all previously been rejected. That decision was upheld Monday by the state Supreme Court.

Lawyers for Williams, who was black, also challenged the fairness of his trial, particularly the fact that only one of the 12 jurors was black. Tricia Bushnell of the Midwest Innocence Project said the prosecutor in the case, Keith Larner, dismissed six of the seven black potential jurors.

Larner testified at the August hearing that he struck a potential black juror in part because he looked too much like Williams — a statement that Williams’ lawyers said showed inappropriate racial bias.

Larner claimed the jury selection process was fair.

Williams was the third Missouri inmate put to death this year and the 100th since the state resumed the death penalty in 1989.

AP writer Mark Sherman contributed from Washington. Salter reported from O’Fallon, Missouri.