Marcellus Williams’ life remains at risk for a crime he did not commit. Credit: Marcellus Williams’ legal team via The Innocence Project
On June 29, Missouri Gov. Mike Parson lifted the stay of 53-year-old Marcellus Williams’ execution. Williams has spent 24 years of his life on death row for a murder DNA evidence proves someone else committed. Parson terminated a board comprising five former judges appointed to examine the case of Williams, lifting the stay instituted by then-governor Eric Greitens minutes before Williams’ scheduled execution in 2017.
In 1998, Felicia Gayle, a former St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter in St. Louis, was stabbed to death 43 times in her own home.
Two years later, Williams was convicted of the first-degree murder, robbery and burglary of Gayle. His conviction primarily relied upon the inconsistent testimonies of two incentivized witnesses, with no concrete physical evidence linking him to the crime scene. Specifically, one of the witnesses, Henry Cole, told police on June 4, 1999, 10 months after the murder, that Williams had admitted to the crime while they were both in prison.
In 2016, testing of DNA samples retrieved from the crime scene entirely excluded Williams as a contributor, contradicting the testimony-based evidence used to convict him.
Though no new execution date has been set, one could be scheduled at any time, and Williams’ life remains at risk for a crime he did not commit.
Here’s what you need to know about his case:
1. Williams has been excluded as the source of the DNA found on the murder weapon.
On Aug. 11, 1998, Daniel Picus came home from work around 8 p.m. to find his wife, Gayle, dead at the bottom of the stairs. She had been stabbed 16 times, and one of their kitchen knives was protruding from her neck.
In 2016, post-conviction DNA testing conducted on the handle of that knife detected the presence of male DNA and excluded Williams as the source.
2. No court has reviewed the exculpatory DNA evidence.
In 2017, then Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens stayed Williams’ execution based on the DNA results from the knife handle. However, no court has been willing to hear this evidence, which has been reviewed and analyzed by three renowned DNA experts who have all concluded that Williams is not the source of the DNA on the knife handle.
3. The prosecution’s case against Williams was based entirely on the unreliable testimony of two incentivized witnesses.
The case against Williams relied heavily on testimony from two people: Cole, a prison informant, and Williams’ ex-girlfriend, Laura Asaro. However, the credibility of both these testimonies has significant grounds for skepticism.
Cole, known for his dishonesty by his family members, had a potential motive to fabricate or exaggerate his claim that Williams confessed to him while they were both incarcerated. Cole initially refused to participate as a witness in Gayle’s case until he was promised payment and then made it clear in the 2001 deposition that he would not have come forward if it hadn’t been for the $5,000 he was given by prosecutors. Notably, several details in his testimony were strikingly similar to the information that had been published in newspapers about the murder, suggesting he may have been fed this information directly or indirectly.
Prior to the deposition, Cole had pled guilty in 1996 to armed robbery of a bank and was sentenced to four years of probation with 10 years of prison suspended. Although he violated parole six times, the court never imposed the suspended prison sentence on him.
Asaro, too, had a history of deception and had faced solicitation charges when police initially approached her about the case in Nov. 1999.
She had worked with the police before and had testified against Williams in a previous trial. She even lied under oath in her recorded deposition regarding her arrest history. At some stage, police had considered charging her as an accomplice in the crime. Asaro also mentioned to her neighbor that she was receiving money for her testimony against Williams.
Further adding to the doubt, the narratives from Cole and Asaro were significantly different and didn’t match the crime scene evidence. For example, Asaro testified that Williams had scratch marks on him, but there was no foreign DNA present underneath Gayle’s fingernails.
The only evidence connecting Williams to Gayle’s murder was the testimony of Cole and Asaro. According to the National Registry of Exonerations, incentivized witness testimony has contributed to 14% of death penalty cases that later led to a DNA exoneration. The two incentivized witnesses in this case were motivated by the reward money and favorable treatment in their own criminal cases.
4. No scientific or eyewitness evidence, or motive, connects Williams to the murder.
Even though this murder occurred in the middle of the day and neighbors were out and about, no one saw Williams anywhere near Gayle’s house. Police found bloody shoe prints at the scene and concluded that they did not belong to Williams. They also collected and tested biological evidence from the scene and determined that none of this biological evidence belonged to Williams.
5. In 2017, then-governor Greitens stayed Williams’s execution because of the powerful exculpatory DNA results.
In August 2017, then-governor of Missouri, Eric Greitens, intervened just hours before Williams’ scheduled execution, signing an executive order postponing the date. This was not the first time Williams’ execution had been put on hold.
Gov. Greitens assembled a board of inquiry to thoroughly investigate the case and review all the evidence that had been presented at the trial. The board was also tasked with reviewing newly found DNA evidence and any other pertinent evidence to which the jury may not have had access. The order granted the board the authority to demand testimony and information, and required it to keep its proceedings and all collected information confidential. The executive order clarified that the execution would be postponed until the governor had decided whether Williams should be granted mercy, based on the board’s findings.
However, it is unclear if any report has ever been issued. William’s legal team never received a report, and Governor Parson dissolved the board without giving any indication that he had received a recommendation, and if so, what it was.
Williams’ case is riddled with unreliable incentivized testimonies and a complete absence of physical evidence linking him to the crime scene. The lack of consideration by any court of the exculpatory DNA evidence, which indisputably excluded Williams as a contributor, calls into question the validity of his conviction. Despite the evidence pointing to his innocence, Williams remains on death row more than two decades after his initial arrest.
With the weight of this new evidence and the unreliability of the witnesses who testified against Williams, his conviction must be reevaluated to ensure that justice is truly served. His legal team, comprised of dedicated professionals from the Innocence Project, Midwest Innocence Project, and Bryan Cave, and attorneys Larry Komp and Kent Gipson, continues to fight to stop his execution and for his exoneration, hoping that justice will eventually prevail.