Vanguard Sacramento Bureau Chief
ST. LOUIS, MO – Lawyers for Marcellus Williams – scheduled to be executed Sept 4 – said after a hearing Wednesday that St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell “conceded” committing “constitutional errors contributing” to Williams’ murder conviction and death sentence, including “mishandling a key piece of evidence that could have exonerated Williams.”
PA Bell filed a motion to vacate Williams’ conviction in January after “conducting a comprehensive review of the case, including new DNA analysis that excluded Williams as the source of male DNA on the murder weapon,” according to the defense.
“Despite the fact that no reliable evidence has ever connected Mr. Williams to the 1998 murder of Felicia Gayle and that Ms. Gayle’s family has made clear they do not support his execution, Attorney General Andrew Bailey has vigorously fought to prevent the court from vacating Mr. Williams’ conviction and to execute him on Sept. 24,” according to the defense statement this week.
The defense, in the statement, said the circuit court had set a hearing on PA Bell’s motion for Aug. 21, “but on the eve of the hearing, PA Bell discovered that the murder weapon had been mishandled by members of the trial prosecution team, whose DNA was identified on the knife.”
Williams entered an “Alford plea” to avoid execution, and accepted a sentence of life imprisonment without possibility of parole, said the defense, adding, “The victim’s family supported this resolution, which would have brought closure to the legal proceedings while ensuring Mr. Williams remains alive if new, reliable evidence of his innocence is revealed in the future.”
AG Bailey opposed this agreement and the Missouri Supreme Court ordered the circuit court to hold the hearing this week.
“In addition to acknowledging that his office was responsible for mishandling the murder weapon, PA Bell also conceded error resulting from the State’s destruction of bloody fingerprints left at the crime scene, and from the trial prosecutor’s improper removal of Black prospective jurors on the basis of their race.
“These serious constitutional errors, PA Bell acknowledged, undermine the fairness and reliability of Mr. Williams’ conviction and death sentence and require that they be vacated,” claimed the defense.
“We hope the circuit court will agree with PA Bell that the admitted constitutional errors in this case require Mr. Williams’ conviction and death sentence be vacated,” said Tricia Rojo Bushnell, an attorney for Williams, who added this statement:
“Today, we saw two different approaches to prosecution, one committed to serving justice, the other intent on winning at any cost. Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell’s office acknowledged that Marcellus Williams’ conviction and death sentence are unreliable, that their own office’s mishandling of evidence has foreclosed Mr. Williams’ ability to conclusively prove his innocence at this moment in time, and that under these circumstances, it would be unconscionable to allow his execution.
“Meanwhile, Attorney General Andrew Bailey continues to make every effort to try to kill this innocent man, including fighting the proposed resolution that would have brought finality to the proceedings while respecting the wishes of the victim’s family.”
The defense charges, “No reliable evidence ever connected Mr. Williams to the crime – bloody footprints and hairs at the crime scene were not his,” and blames unreliable jailhouse informant testimony.
On Aug. 11, 1998, Felicia Gayle, a former reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, was found stabbed to death in her home, notes the defense and there was “considerable forensic evidence, including a bloody shoe print, hair, and trace DNA on the murder weapon, a knife from Ms. Gayle’s kitchen. None of this forensic evidence matches Mr. Williams.”
Jailhouse testimony is, added the defense, “one of the leading contributing factors of wrongful convictions nationally, playing a role in 15 percent of DNA exoneration cases. Eleven of the 54 individuals exonerated in Missouri were convicted with the use of informant testimony.”
In capital cases, the defense asserts, “false testimony from incentivized witnesses is the leading cause of wrongful convictions, with informant testimony present in 49.5 percent of wrongful convictions since the mid-1970s.
“The case against Mr. Williams turned on the testimony of two unreliable witnesses who were incentivized by promises of leniency in their own pending criminal cases and reward money,” charging they are “known fabricators,” whose testimony is inconsistent and unreliable.
Williams has repeatedly faced execution, and nine years ago, said the defense, “the Missouri Supreme Court stayed his execution and appointed a special master to review DNA testing of potentially exculpatory evidence. This testing showed that Mr. Williams was not the source of male DNA found on the murder weapon
“However, in 2017, after the testing was completed but without conducting a hearing or making any findings based on the outcome of the testing, the appointed special master sent Mr. Williams’s case back to the Missouri Supreme Court. That court, also without considering the DNA testing results, again scheduled Mr. Williams’s execution.”
The defense added, “Recognizing that the new evidence raised serious doubts about Mr. Williams’s guilt, on Aug. 22, 2017, mere hours before his execution and after his last meal, then-Governor Eric Greitens stayed the execution and convened a Board of Inquiry to investigate the case. Under Missouri law, the stay was to remain in place until the Board of Inquiry concluded its review and issued a formal report.
“Yet in June 2023, while the Board of Inquiry’s review remained ongoing, Gov. Mike Parson without warning or notice dissolved the Board without a report or recommendation from the Board. Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey then promptly sought a new execution date.”
