A prisoner who spent 20 years on death row in the United States has been executed, even though prosecutors and the victim’s family say he should not lose his life.
According to state authorities, 55-year-old Marcellus Williams was executed by lethal injection shortly after 6 p.m. local time on Tuesday at a prison in Bonne Terre in northern Missouri.
A few hours earlier, the U.S. Supreme Court had declined to intervene in the case, as the state’s governor and its highest court had done the day before.
Protesters against the execution of Marcellus Williams pray outside the state prison in Bonne Terre. Photo: Zachary Linhares/St. Louis Post-D/AP
Williams, whose son watched him die from another room, was found guilty in 2003 of the murder of Felicia “Lisha” Gayle, who was stabbed to death during a break-in at her St. Louis home five years earlier.
According to Wesley Bell of the St. Louis County District Attorney’s Office, which handled the original conviction, there were too many doubts about the case to execute him.
Mr Bell’s concerns included the credibility of the two key witnesses in the trial, the exclusion of black jurors because of their race (Williams was also black) and the absence of the prisoner’s DNA on the murder weapon after new tests.
Further tests revealed that it actually contained DNA traces from a prosecutor and an investigator working on the case, as both had handled the knife without gloves.
In a written statement, Bell said: “If there is even the slightest doubt about the defendant’s innocence, the death penalty should never be an option.”
St. Louis Deacon Dave Billips at a protest against the execution of Marcellus Williams. Photo: AP
Last month, prosecutors and Williams’ lawyers reached a deal to commute his sentence to life in prison, but it was blocked by the Missouri Supreme Court at the request of the state’s Attorney General, Andrew Bailey.
Earlier this month, a state judge upheld the verdict on the grounds that the missing evidence of the knife was not sufficient to prove his innocence.
The verdict was upheld by the state Supreme Court on Monday, the same day Missouri’s Republican governor, Mike Parson, rejected a request for clemency.
In a statement after Williams’ execution, Parson said he hoped it would bring “finality” to a case “that has dragged on for decades and in which Ms. Gayle’s family has been the victim of repeated abuses.”
Read more:
Criminal charges filed against Trump over allegations that he “ate cats and dogs”
Apologies for error that led to global IT outage
Man charged with attempted murder of Trump
It was the third time Williams faced execution after receiving reprieves in 2015 and 2017.
In their petition for clemency, Williams’ lawyers told the US Supreme Court that Ms Gayle’s family also believes he should not be executed because of doubts about his guilt and that they agreed to the deal negotiated in August.
Williams’ public defenders said they could not understand why the “admitted racial discrimination” was not addressed in his trial.
Williams, who converted to Islam, said in his handwritten closing statement: “All praise is due to Allah in every situation!!!”
