By Roxy Benson
ST. LOUIS, MO – A judge last week in the Circuit Court of St. Louis County in Missouri scheduled a hearing for Aug. 21 to assess additional evidence after Prosecutor Wesley Bell said death row prisoner Marcellus Williams was wrongfully convicted of 1st-degree murder and given the death sentence, according to a report released by the Innocence Project.
As explained by the Innocence Project, the motion to vacate the conviction of Williams for the murder of Felicia Gayle in 1998 comes from an overwhelming amount of evidence proving that Williams was not involved in the crime.
Prosecutor Bell plans to vacate the charges based on strong DNA evidence from the crime scene, including a bloody shoe print, and hair next to the victim’s body that doesn’t match Williams, further excluding him from the crime, the Innocence Project.
The motion to vacate itself, written by Prosecutor Bell, states “Section 547.031(1) provides that the Prosecuting Attorney may move to vacate or set aside a conviction “at any time if he or she has information that the convicted person may be innocent or may have been erroneously convicted.”
DNA evidence supporting a conclusion Williams was not the individual who stabbed Ms. Gayle has never been considered by a court, said the project.
According to the Innocence Project, Williams’s conviction relied on two testimonies from informants deemed unreliable, which were arranged to have received beneficial treatment in their criminal cases as well as reward money.
An earlier report done by the Innocence Project about Williams’s case in 2023 states, “Both of these individuals were known fabricators; neither revealed any information that was not either included in media accounts about the case or already known to the police. Their statements were inconsistent with their own prior statements, with each other’s accounts, and with the crime scene evidence, and none of the information they provided could be independently verified.
“Aside from their testimony, the only evidence connecting Mr. Williams to the crime was a witness who said Mr. Williams sold him a laptop taken from Ms. Gayle’s home, but the jury did not learn that Mr. Williams told the witness he had received the laptop from Laura Asaro.”
According to a release from the Innocence Project attorney, Tricia Bushnell, representing Williams, “After reviewing the DNA evidence that proves Marcellus Williams is actually innocent, Prosecuting Attorney Bell took the appropriate steps under Missouri law to correct his wrongful conviction.
“The court will now do its part to assess this never-before-considered exculpatory evidence. This is the procedure the Missouri Legislature created to ensure the state does not execute an innocent person like Mr. Williams. The Attorney General should not be trying to block the court’s review and the Missouri Supreme Court should stay Mr. Williams’s execution.”
