The state of Missouri executed Marcellus Williams on Tuesday, September 24, by lethal injection following the rejection of a request to delay the execution, reports the New York Times. The Department of Corrections said he was pronounced dead at 6:10 p.m. CT. Williams vehemently maintained his innocence until his death.
In 1998, Williams was charged with the murder of Felicia “Lisha” Gayle, a notable reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, who was stabbed approximately 43 times in her home in University City, a suburb of St. Louis. After two witnesses claimed that Williams had confessed to the crime, he was convicted and sentenced to death in August 2001.
It was reported that Imam Jalahii Kacem who was with Williams—who changed his name to Khaliifah Ibn Rayford Daniels after converting to Islam—stayed in the execution chamber with him until his final moments. He said that Williams’ last words were, “All praise be to Allah in every situation!”
The state of Missouri has executed Marcellus Williams.
His final words: pic.twitter.com/eKdedHPQQh
— Justina Coronel (@JustinaCoronel) September 24, 2024
Williams was executed despite the objection of Wesley Bell, the local prosecutor, and the opposition of Gayle’s family.
“The family defines closure as Marcellus being allowed to live,” the family stated in a petition. “Marcellus’ execution is not necessary.”
Declining last-ditch efforts to save Williams’ life, Republican Governor Mike Parson and the Missouri Supreme Court both denied efforts to stay Williams’ execution on Monday, September 23.
“Despite nearly a quarter century of litigation in both state and federal courts, there is no credible evidence of actual innocence or any showing of a constitutional error undermining confidence in the original judgment,” the court’s ruling read.
When Governor Parson came into office in 2023, he disbanded the Board of Inquiry for Williams before it could unveil its final report and he ordered the attorney general to set a new execution date for Williams.
“We could stall and delay for another six years, deferring justice, leaving a victim’s family in limbo and solving nothing,” Parson said in June 2023. “This administration won’t do that.”
The Supreme Court ruling stated that “there was no credible evidence of constitutional violations.” The court‘s three liberal judges—Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson—noted that they were in favor of delaying the execution.
Tricia Rojo Bushnell, Williams’s attorney who’s also affiliated with the Midwest Innocence Project, released a statement criticizing the Supreme Court’s decision.
“Missouri will execute an innocent man,” Bushnell said. “The victim’s family opposes his execution. Jurors, who originally sentenced him to death, now oppose his execution. The prosecutor’s office that convicted and sentenced him to death has now admitted they were wrong and zealously fought to undo the conviction and save Mr. Williams’ life.”
Tonight, Missouri executed an innocent man.
Our hearts are with Marcellus and his loved ones.https://t.co/ebCcFv0vWg pic.twitter.com/aSQxazoK9X
— Innocence Project (@innocence) September 24, 2024
“That is not justice. And we must all question any system that would allow this to occur,” Bushnell said.
“This is a murder,” said Marcellus Williams Jr., Williams’ son, in an interview with KSDK-TV.
NAACP President Derrick Johnson issued a statement saying, “Tonight, Missouri lynched another innocent Black man.”
Williams is the third inmate executed in Missouri this year, the 15th in the nation, and with several more scheduled for the remainder of 2024.
Previously, Williams had his execution delayed in 2015 and 2017 by Republican Governor Eric Greitens following his review of the DNA evidence, which found no trace of Williams’ DNA on the knife, which was mishandled by law enforcement, that was used to kill Gayle. Also, the fingerprints that were taken at the crime scene were destroyed and the bloodied footprints nor hair at the scene of the crime was identified as Williams’.
The stay delayed Williams’ execution date, but it did not result in his conviction being overturned.
Williams’ case is just the latest example of a Black person who lost their life due to this pattern of justice handed out by the courts that were built on the premise of racism and adds to the majority of the Black community’s distrust of the legal system. According to a research study conducted by the National Registry of Exonerations, more than half of the 3,300 people who were exonerated between 1989 and 2022 were African American. However, Black people make up only 13.6% of the U.S. population. Additionally, a 2022 report found that “innocent Black people were seven times more likely to be wrongly convicted of murder than innocent white people.”
The report also discovered that Black people exonerated from murder convictions are 50% more likely to involve misconduct from law enforcement than white people who were exonerated from murder convictions and witness identifications occur twice as frequently in the cases of Black and Latinx exonerees as they do in the cases of white exonerees.
The death of Williams is the brutal remainder of the dehumanization of Black life in America and how the criminal justice system often kills instead of protects Black citizens.
Bushnell expressed gratitude for the work of the local prosecutor attorney who tried to save Williams’ life, “for his commitment to truth and justice and all he did to try to prevent this unspeakable wrong.”
“We will remember him for his deeply evocative poetry and his love for and service to his family and his community,” Bushnell said. “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.”
