Marcellus Williams, who spent more than two decades on death row in a prison in the US state of Missouri, was hanged this Tuesday after the man was presumed innocent. According to Reuters, the African-American man was put to death by lethal injection at a prison in Bonne Terre just after 6pm local time.
Although always maintaining his innocence, Williams was stabbed to death in 2003 at the home of Felicia “Lisha” Gayle, a former newspaper reporter. The man’s death came a day after Missouri Gov. Mike Parsons and the Supreme Court rejected a last-ditch effort to block the execution.
According to Reuters, St. Louis County District Attorney Wesley Bell, whose office handled the original indictment, sought to block the execution due to suspicions of the original investigation. “Even for those who disagree about the death penalty, the irrevocable sentence of death should not be an option when there is a shadow of doubt about any defendant’s guilt,” Bell said in a statement before the execution.
In court documents, prosecutors questioned the credibility of two key witnesses in the trial, found that prosecutors improperly excluded black jurors based on race, and noted that new tests found no trace of Williams’ DNA on the murder weapon. Later tests revealed DNA from the knife of the prosecutor and investigator who worked on the case, as well as someone who handled the weapon without gloves.
Knife contamination prosecutors and Williams’ attorneys reached a deal in August that required him to enter a no contest plea and receive a life sentence.
Williams’ attorney, Tricia Rojo Bushnell of the Midwest Innocence Project, noted in a statement before the execution that the victim’s family opposed Williams’ execution.
“This is not justice. We should all question any system that allows this to happen,” Bushnell wrote. “The execution of an innocent man is the most extreme expression of Missouri’s obsession with ‘end’ over truth, justice and humanity,” he wrote.