Missouri Supreme Court, governor refuse to halt execution of man convicted in 1998 killing of social worker

The execution of a Missouri man convicted in a 1998 murder of a social worker is set to proceed as planned on Tuesday after the state’s Supreme Court and governor denied repeated requests to cancel the lethal injection.Marcellus Williams, 55, will be killed by lethal injection Tuesday at 6 p.m.for the fatal stabbing of Lisha Gayle, a social worker and former newspaper reporter, during a burglary at her St.

Louis home in 1998.Missouri’s Republican Gov.

Mike Parson, a former sheriff who has never granted clemency in a death penalty case, rejected Williams’ request to spare him and convert his sentence to life in prison.“Nothing from the real facts of this case have led me to believe in Mr.

Williams’ innocence,” Parson said in a statement.“As such, Mr.

Williams’ punishment will be carried out as ordered by the Supreme Court.”The Missouri Supreme Court also denied a request to outright cancel the execution to provide time for a lower court to make a new determination about whether a trial prosecutor excluded a potential Black juror for racial reasons during Williams’ 2001 conviction.“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,” Judge Zel Fischer wrote in the state Supreme Court ruling.The prosecutor for the original trial said at an evidentiary hearing on Aug.

28 that he did strike one potential Black juror from the group in part because he thought the man looked too much like Williams, which Williams’ attorneys asserted showed racial bias.Williams has insisted that he is innocent, but his attorneys did not try to prove his claim to the state’s Supreme Court on Monday.

Instead, they focused on the exclusion during the jury selection and the prosecution’s alleged mishandling of the murder weapon, a large butcher knife.His attorneys, alongside groups like the Mid...