This photo obtained on 22 August 2017, courtesy of the Missouri Department of Corrections, shows death-row inmate Marcellus Williams. Williams was convicted of fatally stabbing a woman more than 40 times during a robbery at her home in the Midwestern state. (Handout / Missouri Department of Corrections / AFP)
- Marcellus Williams, despite maintaining his innocence and
support from civil rights groups, was executed in Missouri for the 1998 murder
of Felicia Gayle. - Despite public outcry and DNA evidence suggesting
Williams’s innocence, both the Missouri Supreme Court and the US Supreme Court
denied stays of execution. - Governor Michael Parson stated the sentence was upheld at
all judicial levels.
Two men on death row in the United States were executed
Tuesday, including a Black man convicted of murder who had maintained his
innocence and drawn support from civil rights groups.
Marcellus Williams, 55, was sentenced to death in the
midwestern state of Missouri for the 1998 killing of Felicia Gayle, a former
newspaper reporter.
He was pronounced dead at 18:10 local time Tuesday,
according to the Missouri Department of Corrections.
Travis Mullis, 38, was also put to death in Huntsville,
Texas, for stomping his three-month-old son, Alijah Mullis, to death in 2008.
“I do regret the decision to take the life of my son, I
apologise to the mother of my son, the victim’s family,” Mullis said in
his last statement.
Both men were executed by lethal injection, raising the
total number of US executions this year to 16.
Williams has insisted he is innocent, and the NAACP civil
rights group had urged Governor Michael Parson to stay his execution.
Parson on Tuesday said that Williams’s execution in Missouri
would go ahead despite protests.
“No jury nor court, including at the trial, appellate,
and Supreme Court levels, have ever found merit in Mr. Williams’s innocence
claim. At the end of the day, his guilty verdict and sentence of capital
punishment were upheld,” Parson said in a statement.
The US Supreme Court had also rejected a last-ditch request
to stay Williams’s execution on Tuesday.
British billionaire Richard Branson, who bought a full-page
advert in the Kansas City Star newspaper decrying a “devastating
miscarriage of justice,” mourned Williams’s execution on social media.
“It’s a shameful day for Missouri, and a shameful day
for Governor Mike Parson,” Branson wrote on X.
Marcellus Williams was killed today by the state of Missouri for a crime he didn’t commit. It’s a shameful day for Missouri, and a shameful day for Governor Mike Parson, who failed in his duty to protect an innocent man from injustice.
— Richard Branson (@richardbranson) September 24, 2024
Felicia Gayle was found dead at her St. Louis home in
Missouri, stabbed 43 times by a kitchen knife during what appeared to be a
burglary gone wrong.
Williams, who had previous convictions for burglary and
robbery, was convicted on the testimony of a former jail cellmate and an
ex-girlfriend, though his DNA was not found on the knife or at the crime scene.
His execution was stayed by the Missouri Supreme Court in
2015, and again by the state’s then-governor Eric Greitens in 2017, following
the discovery of male DNA on the knife that did not match Williams.
This year, local prosecutors initiated proceedings to
overturn his conviction. However, on Monday, the state Supreme Court ruled in a
unanimous decision that it would not stop Williams’s execution.
The death penalty has been abolished in 23 US states, while
six others – Arizona, California, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Tennessee –
have moratoriums in place.
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