Who Is Marcellus Williams: Man Facing Execution in Missouri Despite Evidence of Innocence, Prosecutor’s Confession of Racial Bias at Trial, and Victim Opposition

Article updated on Sept. 18, 2024.

Case update from Sept. 12: The Circuit Court for St. Louis County, Missouri denied Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell’s motion to vacate Marcellus Williams’ conviction and death sentence. 

Case update from July 2: The Circuit Court of St. Louis County, Missouri, scheduled a hearing for August 21, 2024, to assess the “clear and convincing evidence” of actual innocence that led Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell to move to vacate Marcellus Williams’ wrongful conviction and death sentence.

There is no reliable evidence proving that Marcellus Williams committed the crime for which he is scheduled to be executed on Sept. 24. The State destroyed or corrupted the evidence that could conclusively prove his innocence and the available DNA and other forensic crime-scene evidence does not match him. 

Even the victim’s family believes life without parole is the appropriate sentence. 

Time is running out to stop Missouri from executing an innocent person on Sept. 24. Now it’s up to Gov. Mike Parson to grant clemency and commute Mr. Williams’ sentence to life without parole, or, at a minimum, stay the execution for further appeals to be resolved. 

Here’s what you need to know about his case:

1. A crime scene covered with forensic evidence contained no link to Mr. Williams.

Mr. Williams has been seeking to prove his innocence throughout the 23 years he has spent on Missouri’s death row. On August 11, 1998, Felicia Gayle, a former reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, was found stabbed to death in her home. The perpetrator left behind considerable forensic evidence, including fingerprints, footprints, hair, and trace DNA on the murder weapon, a knife from Ms. Gayle’s kitchen. None of this forensic evidence matches Mr. Williams. 

2. The prosecution’s case against Mr. Williams was based entirely on the unreliable testimony of two incentivized witnesses.

The case against Mr. Williams turned on the testimony of two unreliable witnesses who were incentivized by promises of leniency in their own pending criminal cases and reward money. The investigation had gone cold until a jail inmate named Henry Cole, a man with a lengthy record, claimed that Mr. Williams confessed to him that he committed the murder while they were both locked up in jail. Cole directed police to Laura Asaro, a woman who had briefly dated Mr. Williams and had an extensive record of her own. 

Both of these individuals were known fabricators; neither revealed any information that was not either included in media accounts about the case or already known to the police. Their statements were inconsistent with their own prior statements, with each other’s accounts, and with the crime scene evidence, and none of the information they provided could be independently verified. Aside from their testimony, the only evidence connecting Mr. Williams to the crime was a witness who said Mr. Williams sold him a laptop taken from Ms. Gayle’s home, but the jury did not learn that Mr. Williams told the witness he had received the laptop from Laura Asaro.

3. Mr. Williams has repeatedly faced imminent execution as he has tried to prove his innocence.

Nine years ago, the Missouri Supreme Court stayed Mr. Williams’s execution and appointed a special master to review DNA testing of potentially exculpatory evidence. The DNA testing conducted in 2016 showed that Mr. Williams was not the source of male DNA found on the murder weapon. 

However, in 2017, after the testing was completed but without conducting a hearing or making any findings based on the outcome of the testing, the appointed special master sent Mr. Williams’s case back to the Missouri Supreme Court. That court, also without considering the DNA testing results, again scheduled Mr. Williams’s execution. On Aug. 22, 2017, mere hours before he was to be executed and after eating his last meal, Mr. Williams received a stay of execution from then-Governor Eric Greitens.

Governor Greitens recognized that the new DNA results raised serious doubts about Mr. Williams’s guilt, and he convened a Board of Inquiry to investigate the case. Under Missouri law, the stay was to remain in place until the Board of Inquiry concluded its review and issued a formal report. 

However, in June 2023, while the Board of Inquiry’s review remained ongoing, Governor Mike Parson without warning or notice dissolved the Board without a report or recommendation from the Board. Immediately after Governor Parson dissolved the Board of Inquiry, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey sought a new execution date. 

Mr. Williams filed a civil suit against Governor Parson because the dissolution of the Board without a report or recommendation violated Missouri law and Mr. Williams’s constitutional rights. After a Cole County judge denied the Governor’s motion to dismiss this lawsuit, the Governor persuaded the Missouri Supreme Court to intervene. 

On June 4, 2024, the Missouri Supreme Court dismissed Mr. Williams’s civil lawsuit and immediately scheduled his execution for Sept. 24.

4. Although the victim’s family opposes Mr. Williams’ execution, the Missouri Attorney General has continued to fight to execute him.

After the corruption of the key DNA evidence came to light, Mr. Williams and the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office reached an agreement to ensure Mr. Williams is not wrongfully executed. Mr. Williams agreed to enter an Alford plea, admitting that the State has sufficient evidence to support his conviction, in exchange for a sentence of life without parole. 

The victim’s family supported this resolution of Mr. Williams’ case and have said they do not want Mr. Williams to be executed. On Aug. 21 the circuit court entered the consent judgment based on the parties’ agreement.

Despite the closure this resolution would have brought to the case, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey sought a writ of prohibition from the Missouri Supreme Court, which that court granted, ordering the circuit court to hold the previously scheduled evidentiary hearing.

The circuit court held an evidentiary hearing on August 28 and subsequently ruled that it lacked sufficient evidence on which to find that Mr. Williams is innocent, and that his claims of racially biased jury selection and ineffective assistance of counsel had previously been raised and rejected. Accordingly, the court denied Prosecuting Attorney Bell’s motion to vacate Mr. Williams’ conviction.

The Prosecuting Attorney is appealing that ruling to the Missouri Supreme Court.

5. Incentivized informants are a leading cause of wrongful convictions.

 Jailhouse informant testimony, like that leading to Mr. Williams’ conviction, is one of the leading contributing factors of wrongful convictions nationally, playing a role in 15% of the 598 DNA-based exoneration cases. Eleven of the 54 individuals exonerated in Missouri were convicted with the use of informant testimony. 

In capital cases, false testimony from incentivized witnesses is the leading cause of wrongful convictions, with informant testimony present in 49.5% of wrongful convictions since the mid-1970s, according to the Center on Wrongful Convictions. 

6. Racial bias contributed to Mr. Williams’ wrongful conviction.

Mr. Williams, a Black man, was wrongfully convicted of murdering a white woman. His jury was comprised of 11 white people and only one Black person. The prosecutor, whose institutional practice of racially discriminatory jury selection has been widely documented, successfully removed six of seven qualified Black prospective jurors with peremptory challenges. A recent study of 400 death-eligible cases in St. Louis County over a 27-year period also revealed racial disparity in the use of the death penalty based upon the race of the victim. People who were convicted were 3.5 times more likely to receive the death penalty if the victim was white, as in this case, compared to if the victim was Black. 

7. Mr. Williams is devoutly religious and an accomplished poet.

During his 23 years in prison, Mr. Williams has devoted much of his time to studying Islam and writing poetry. He serves as the imam for Muslim prisoners at Potosi Correctional Center and is known as “Khaliifah,” meaning leader in Arabic. He has an exemplary prison record and is widely respected within the prison community and beyond.

8. You can help stop Mr. Williams’ unjust execution. 

We have until Sept. 24 at 6 p.m. to stop Mr. Williams’ execution. Here’s how you can help stop this irreversible injustice:

1. Call Gov. Parson at 417-373-3400
2. Sign the petition to stop Mr. Williams’ execution.
3. Share Mr. Williams’ case on all social media channels using our social media toolkit. 
4. Use your voice — create an Instagram post, reel, or TikTok to share the background of Mr. Williams’ case, the reasons he’s innocent, and all the missteps in this miscarriage of justice, and urge your followers to sign our petition.

With the weight of this new evidence and the unreliability of the witnesses who testified against Mr. Williams, his conviction must be reevaluated to ensure that justice is truly served. Dedicated professionals from the Innocence Project, Midwest Innocence Project, and Bryan Cave, along with attorneys Larry Komp of the Federal Public Defender, Western District of Missouri, and Kent Gipson, make up the team that continues to fight to stop his Sept. 24 execution. They hope that justice will eventually prevail by way of an exoneration.

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