Missouri Man Executed After Long Fight for Exoneration

The state of Missouri executed Marcellus Williams on Tuesday evening by lethal injection, The Associated Press reported, over the objections of the local prosecutor whose office obtained Mr.Williams’s murder conviction in 2003.Mr.

Williams, who for decades maintained his innocence, had in recent days sought clemency from the governor and a stay of execution from the State Supreme Court.But on Monday, both the governor, Mike Parson, and the State Supreme Court turned him down, and on Tuesday the U.S.

Supreme Court, his last hope, declined to intervene.Mr.

Williams’s lawyer, Tricia Rojo Bushnell of the Midwest Innocence Project, said it was unjust to execute a man when the prosecutor’s office had admitted it was wrong and had fought to overturn the death sentence.“The execution of an innocent person is the most extreme manifestation of Missouri’s obsession with finality over truth, justice and humanity,” she said.Over the years Mr.

Williams, 55, had received stays of execution — one in 2015 and one in 2017 — but neither led to his conviction’s being thrown out.A law enacted in 2021 gave him another path to challenge his conviction in the 1998 killing of Felicia Gayle, a well-known newspaper reporter, in her suburban St.Louis home.

Under the law, prosecutors can bring a motion to overturn a conviction if they believe there has been a miscarriage of justice.Wesley Bell, the prosecuting attorney for St.

Louis County, reviewed Mr.Williams’s case and filed such a motion last January.The law has been used only a handful of times.

In the three cases that proceeded to the hearing stage, judges agreed to exonerate the defendants in question.But Mr.

Williams’s case turned out to be different.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Tim...