Marcellus Williams Executed After U.S. Supreme Courtroom Declines to Intervene
Williams died by deadly injection on Sept. 24 at 6 p.m. CT. after his homicide conviction for the 1998 stabbing death of newspaper reporter Felicia Gayle. Earlier Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Courtroom denied a stay of execution, studies NBC News and the Associated Press.
The execution was carried out at the Japanese Reception, Diagnostic, and Correctional Middle in Bonne Terre, Mo., according to Fox2Now. Earlier than his execution, Williams launched an announcement studying, "All Reward Be To Allah In Each State of Affairs!!!”
Gayle, a journalist on the St. Louis Put-up-Dispatch, was discovered brutally murdered inside her gated neighborhood dwelling in College Metropolis, Mo., on Aug. 11, 1998, PEOPLE beforehand reported. Investigators later decided that Gayle had been stabbed no less than 43 instances, dying from 16 wounds to her head, neck, chest, and stomach.
Williams had lengthy maintained his innocence within the killing. In late August, his legal professionals appeared earlier than a Missouri decision in search of overturning his conviction and dying sentence at an evidentiary hearing. In response to the Innocence Challenge, his remaining movement was denied after “the invention that the trial prosecutor had contaminated doubtlessly exculpatory DNA proof.”
The St. Louis County Prosecutor's Workplace, which convicted Williams, now helps his claims of innocence. In a 73-page joint brief filed over the weekend, the county prosecutors and protection legal professionals agree there is no such thing as a forensic proof tying Williams to the 1998 stabbing death of Felicia Gayle.
A jury of 11 white individuals and 1 black individual convicted Williams in 2001 of first-degree homicide, first-degree housebreaking, armed legal motion, and theft. The Innocence Challenge claims the prosecutor had eliminated six certified black potential jurors from the pool utilizing peremptory challenges.
Explaining these challenges in court docket in August, the prosecutor on the time, Keith Larner testified, per the joint transient, that he struck one Black juror as a result of he thought the person resembled Williams, who can also be Black, saying they seemed like brothers, partially as a result of they have been Black males who wore glasses and had "piercing eyes."
Republican Gov. Mike Parson stated in a latest assertion after blocking the movement that "no jury nor court docket, together with on the trial, appellate, and Supreme Courtroom ranges, have ever discovered benefit in Mr. Williams’ innocence claims," USA Today studies.
Williams’ legal professional, Tricia Rojo Bushnell, stated in an announcement shared on behalf of the Innocence Project, “Missouri is poised to execute a harmless man, an end result that calls into question the legitimacy of the whole legal justice system."
Williams was the third Missouri inmate executed this 12 months. In response to the Death Penalty Information Center, Williams was the fifteenth individual to be executed within the U.S.