On Tuesday evening at 6:10 pm local time, Missouri executed Marcellus “Khaliifah” Williams—a man that many believed was innocent and despite the fact that both the prosecutor and victim’s family opposed his execution.
“That is not justice. And we must all question any system that would allow this to occur. The execution of an innocent person is the most extreme manifestation of Missouri’s obsession with ‘finality’ over truth, justice, and humanity, at any cost,” said Tricia Raja Bushnell, his attorney, from the Innocence Project.
Bushnell added, “Khaliifah is a kind and thoughtful man, who spent his last years supporting those around him in his role as Imam. We will remember him for his deeply evocative poetry and his love for and service to his family and his community.
“While he yearned to return home, he is a thoughtful man who has worked hard to move beyond the anger, frustration, and fear of wrongful execution, channeling his energy into his faith and finding meaning and connection through Islam. The world will be a worse place without him.”
Bushnell added, “As dark as today is, we owe it to Khaliifah to build a brighter future. We are thankful to the St. Louis Prosecuting Attorney, for his commitment to truth and justice and all he did to try to prevent this unspeakable wrong. And for the millions of people who signed petitions, made calls, and shared Khaliifah’s story.
“Tonight, we all bear witness to Missouri’s grotesque exercise of state power. Let it not be in vain. This should never happen, and we must not let it continue.”
Federal Public Defender Laurence Komp called Khaliifah “extraordinary.”
“We learn a little bit about ourselves with each person we represent. We learned a lot from Imam Khaliifah ibn Rayford Daniels, also known as Marcellus Williams,” Komp said. “While he would readily admit to the wrongs he had done throughout his life, he never wavered in asserting his innocence of the crime for which he was put to death tonight.”
More ominously, Komp also lamented the failures of the criminal legal system.
“We also learn about the actors in our justice system. It is hard to explain how admitted racial discrimination is ignored and never meaningfully addressed,” he continued. “It is hard to explain how a prosecutor can admit that he contaminated evidence his entire legal career, including for over a decade after the passage of a DNA statute designed to prevent the contamination of evidence, but nothing is done.
“The hardest thing to explain, and what we cannot understand, is how rote application of a process to protect finality outweighs finding truth and achieving fairness. The cost is an erosion of public confidence in the system.”
He said, “As public defenders, we are proud defenders of the law. As public defenders, we seek application of the law fairly and equally – not exceptions to the Constitution in the name of expediency or harmless error. We are disappointed how the clemency process unfolded. Ms. Gayle’s family was utterly ignored in the Governor’s discussion of why he denied clemency.
“Also absent from the Governor’s statement is a discussion of the Board of Inquiry, a body the former governor created because he was troubled by Khaliifah’s conviction and death sentence. This absence of information supports a conclusion that there must have been some recommendations from the Board for a commutation—the truth of this will likely never be disclosed.”
Komp concluded, “Transparency is a hallmark of Democracy, and it is woefully missing here.”
The point about finality is critical to understanding the death penalty system.
In the 1993 case, Herrera v. Collins, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said that the Constitution, does not prevent the government from executing a person who new evidence indicated might be “actually innocent.”
“The Supreme Court has ruled it’s perfectly constitutional to execute actually innocent people. Why? Because ‘finality’ of the underlying conviction—even if wrong—is most important,” Scott Hechinger said in a tweet on Tuesday.
In a statement from the Supreme Court, six justices denied a stay of execution while Justices Sotomayor, Kagan and Jackson “would grant the application for stay of execution of sentence of death.”
Previous: Marcellus Williams Scheduled to Be Executed Today Despite Evidence of Innocence, Prosecutor’s Confession of Racial Bias at Trial, and Victim Opposition
Marcellus Williams is scheduled for execution in Missouri today, Tuesday (September 24), even though many supporters believe that there is no reliable evidence proving that he committed the crime for which he was sentenced to death.
His attorneys say that the State destroyed or corrupted the evidence that could conclusively prove his innocence, and the available DNA and other forensic crime-scene evidence does not match him.
“There is far too much uncertainty in this case to allow Mr. Williams to be executed, particularly when the victim’s family believes life without parole is the appropriate sentence,” a statement said on Monday.
Williams asked the United States Supreme Court to stay his execution based on newly disclosed admissions by the trial prosecutor that he removed at least one Black prospective juror based on his race. St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell has confessed constitutional error in Mr. Williams’ case based on the new evidence of racial bias during jury selection, among other issues.
Williams’ stay motion states:
“Astonishingly, at the evidentiary hearing on the Motion to Vacate held in the Circuit Court of St. Louis County on August 28, 2024, the trial prosecutor, on the stand and testifying under an adversarial process for the first time in this case’s history, admitted that he had struck Venireperson 64 because, like Williams, Venireperson 64 was Black.
“He proclaimed that ‘part of the reason’ for his peremptory strike was because the Venireperson 64, a Black man, looked like Williams, also a Black man, and that the venireperson’s race was not ‘necessarily the full reason’ he thought the venireperson and Williams looked so similar. He also declared that Venireperson 64 and Williams ‘looked like they were brothers.”’ (Stay Motion, p. 3)
Williams is asking the Supreme Court to consider whether this newly discovered evidence of racial bias in jury selection warrants reopening his federal habeas corpus proceedings. The Eighth Circuit rejected this claim on Saturday.
On Monday, the Missouri Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the Prosecuting Attorney’s appeal from the circuit court’s denial of his motion to vacate Williams’ conviction and death sentence.
On August 11, 1998, Felicia Gayle, a former reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, was found stabbed to death in her home. The perpetrator left behind considerable forensic evidence, including fingerprints, a bloody shoeprint, hair, and trace DNA on the murder weapon, a knife from Ms. Gayle’s kitchen. None of this forensic evidence matches Williams.
Prior to Williams’ trial, the State destroyed the fingerprints without giving the defense an opportunity to review them, claiming they were of insufficient quality to be used as evidence. And during the recent hearing on Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell’s motion to vacate Williams’ conviction, it was discovered that the State had corrupted the DNA evidence on the murder weapon.
In an additional development, Missouri Governor Mike Parson has denied clemency to Williams.
The victim’s family has also made it clear that they oppose Williams’ execution, and the St. Louis County Prosecutor moved to vacate his conviction. That motion was denied after the discovery that the trial prosecutor had contaminated potentially exculpatory DNA evidence.
“Missouri is poised to execute an innocent man, an outcome that calls into question the legitimacy of the entire criminal justice system,” said Tricia Rojo Bushnell, attorney for Williams. “Given everything we know about Marcellus Williams’ case—including the new revelations that the trial prosecutor removed at least one Black juror because of his race, and opposition to this execution from the victim’s family and the sitting Prosecuting Attorney, the courts must step in to prevent this irreparable injustice.”
Williams has steadfastly maintained his innocence during his decades on death row and has tried to access exculpatory evidence. Nine years ago, the Missouri Supreme Court stayed Williams’s execution and appointed a special master to review DNA testing of potentially exculpatory evidence.
The DNA testing conducted in 2016 showed that 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 Williams’s case back to the Missouri Supreme Court. That court, also without considering the DNA testing results, again scheduled Williams’s execution.
On August 22, 2017, mere hours before he was to be executed and after eating his last meal, Williams received a stay of execution from then-Governor Eric Greitens. Governor Greitens recognized that the new DNA results raised serious doubts about Mr. Williams’s guilt, and he convened a Board of Inquiry to investigate the case.
