A death row inmate set to die tomorrow might be innocent, prosecutor says. Now a high court is considering his case
CNN
One day before he’s scheduled to be executed, a Missouri death row inmate could learn whether his fate will change after the state’s Supreme Court heard arguments in his case Monday.
One day before he’s scheduled to be executed, a Missouri death row inmate could learn whether his fate will change after the state’s Supreme Court heard arguments in his case Monday. Marcellus Williams, 55, was convicted of killing Felicia Gayle, a former newspaper reporter found stabbed to death in her home in 1998. Williams has long insisted he is innocent. And in an unusual move, St. Louis County’s top prosecutor filed a motion in January to vacate Williams’ 2001 conviction and sentence. But that motion was denied. Now, with new information about potential evidence contamination, Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell and Williams’ lawyers recently filed a joint brief asking the Missouri Supreme Court to send the case back to a lower court for a “more comprehensive hearing” of the January request by Bell, a Democrat now running for Congress. Williams’ case raises the specter of a potentially innocent person being executed – an inherent risk of capital punishment. At least 200 people sentenced to death since 1973 were later exonerated, including four in Missouri, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Williams is scheduled to die by lethal injection around 6 p.m. CT Tuesday, unless the courts or Republican Gov. Michael Parson intervene. The NAACP and the Council on American-Islamic Relations have called on Parson to halt Williams’ execution. The governor previously revoked a stay of execution in the case ordered by his predecessor, allowing plans to put Williams to death to proceed.
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