Missouri governor stays execution of Marcellus Williams, says officials will probe DNA evidence in the case – Washington Post

Hours before convicted killer Marcellus Williams was scheduled to die by lethal injection, Missouri's governor has halted his execution. His attorneys argued that recent DNA evidence shows he is innocent in the killing of a former newspaper reporter. (Reuters)

Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens (R) on Tuesday stayed the scheduled execution ofMarcellus Williams, just hours before the death-row inmate was set to be put to death for the 1998 killing of a former newspaper reporter.

Williamss looming lethal injection prompted scrutiny and a last-ditch appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court from his attorneys, who pointed to new DNA evidence in arguing that Missouri may have been on the verge of executingthe wrong person.

Greitens said he would appoint a board to look into the new DNA evidence and other factors before issuing a report about whether or not Williams should be granted clemency.

A sentence of death is the ultimate, permanent punishment, Greitens said in a statement. To carry out the death penalty, the people of Missouri must have confidence in the judgment of guilt.

[Earlier this year, Arkansas executed four inmates in eight days]

Williams, 48, was convicted in 2001 of brutally killing Felicia Lisha Gayle, who had been a reporter with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Gayle was in her home when she was stabbed 43 times with a butcher knife, according to court records.

Williams was scheduled to be executed in 2015 for the high-profile killing, but the state Supreme Court stayed his lethal injection, allowing him time to obtain the new DNA testing.

Attorneys for Williams have arguedhe is innocent, pointing to DNA tests they say producedconclusive scientific evidence that another man committed this crime. They say this evidence shows that DNA belonging to someone else was found on the murder weapon, exonerating Williams.

Theyre never going to ever confront an actual innocence cause more persuading than this involving exonerating DNA evidence, said Kent Gipson, one of Williamss attorneys. Ive seen a lot of miscarriages of justice, but this one would take the cake.

State officials, though, said they still believed Williams is guilty because ofother compelling non-DNA evidence.

[Johnson & Johnson says its drug shouldnt be used in executions]

In court filings, the office of Joshua D. Hawley, Missouris attorney general, listed some of these other factors, describing two people a man who served time with Williams and Williamss girlfriend who both told police that he confessed to the killing. Williams had also sold a laptop stolen from Gayles home, Hawleys office wrote in the filings, and items belonging to Gayle were found in a car Williams drove the day she was killed.

Based on the other, non-DNA, evidence in this case, our office is confident in Marcellus Williams guilt and plans to move forward, Loree Anne Paradise, Hawleys deputy chief of staff, wrote in an email Tuesday.

After Williamss execution was stayed, Paradise said her office was still confident in what the jury determined in 2001.

We remain confident in the judgment of the jury and the many courts that have carefully reviewed Mr. Williams case over sixteen years, she wrote Tuesday afternoon. We applaud the work of the numerous law enforcement officers who have dedicated their time and effort to pursuing justice in this case.

Attorneys for Williams and state officials had both made their arguments to Supreme Court Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, who is assigned cases from the federal circuit covering Missouri. Neither Gorsuch nor the full court had publicly weighed in before Greitens halted the scheduled execution.

[Pfizer tightens restrictions to keep drugs from being used in executions]

Alittle more than four hours before Williams was set to be executed,Greitens signed an executive orderhalting the lethal injection. Greitens alsoappointed a board of inquiry to further consider Williamss clemency request and issue a report about whether he should be executed or have his sentence commuted.

In his statement,Greitens said he was appointing the board in light of new information.According to Greitenss executive order, the board will consider newly discovered DNA evidence as well as any other relevant evidence not available to the jury.

The controversy surrounding Williamss scheduled lethal injection had drawn unusual attention to what would be a relatively rare execution in the United States, where the death penalty has been declining for years.

There have been 16 people executed so far this year in the United States, one of them in Missouri, which is among a handful of states still regularly executing inmates. Last year, there were 20 executions in the United States, the fewest in 25 years. That number is expected to increase slightly this year, but 2017 will still see one of the lowest annual number of executions than most years since 1990.

[Why the U.S. could see more executions this year]

Death sentences have become less common nationwide, dropping from 315 such sentences in 1996 to 31 last year, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a Washington-based group that tracks capital punishment. Public support for the death penalty has also fallen over the same period. In a Pew Research Center survey last year, American support for capital punishment fell below 50 percent for the first time since Richard Nixon was president. A Gallup poll, also conducted last year, found support remained at 60 percent. In both cases, the numbers represented a sharp drop from the mid-1990s, when 4 in 5 Americans backed the death penalty.

While some states have abandoned capital punishment or been unable to carry out executions amid an ongoing drug shortage, Missouri has been an outlier. Missouri is one of three states, along with Texas and Georgia, to execute at least one inmate each year since 2013.

In 2015, when Missouri last intended to execute Williams, the states Supreme Court stayed the lethal injection. A laboratory tested evidence from the scene of Gayles killing and a DNA expert determined that Williams could not have contributed to the DNA found on the knife that killed the former reporter, Williamss attorneys said.Last week, theMissouri Supreme Courtrejected a request to stay Williamss execution without explanation.

Missouri officials had argued in court that in order to exonerate Williams, DNA evidence would have to explain how Williams ended up with the victims property, and why two witnesses independently said he confessed to them, or at least provide a viable alternate suspect. They also said that just showing unknown DNA on the knife handle does not alone prove Williamss innocence.

The item was a kitchen knife with both male and female DNA on the handle, Hawleys office wrote in a filing to the Supreme Court. It is reasonable to assume people not involved in the murder handled the knife in the kitchen. And there is no reason to believe Williams would not have worn gloves during a burglary and murder, as he wore a jacket to conceal his bloody shirt after he left the murder scene.

[Ohio executes Ronald Phillips, resuming lethal injections after three-year break]

Gipson argued that the case against Williams was always weak, consisting primarily of the statements of two jailhouse informants who claimed Williams had confessed to the crime. Gipson also said that bloody footprints at the scene did not match Williamss shoe size and added that bloody fingerprints were never tested or compared to Williamss fingerprints because they were lost by police.

The DNA testing, which Williamss attorneys said was enabled by advances in technology, formed the main argument they made in appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court.

A DNA profile was developed from the handle of the knife that was found in the victims body and that does not match the DNA of Marcellus, Gipson said Tuesday, adding that three separate experts have concluded that the DNA left on the knife and at the scene was a match for another man and not Williams. Its clear that the DNA on the knife is the DNA of the killer. Each expert has concluded that you can scientifically exclude Marcellus as the contributor of the DNA on the knife.

Civil rights groups also weighed in on the case, both due to Williamss claims ofinnocence as well as racial undertones in the prosecution of a black man charged with killing a white woman.

The Supreme Court has emphasized over and over that because death is a unique punishment there is need for heightened reliability before its imposed, said Sam Spital, director of litigation for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, which is not directly involved in Williamss case. One of the really significant questions raised by Mr. Williamss case is, what does it mean when you have issues of innocence?

Like Williamss attorneys, Spital noted the lack of forensic evidence linking Williams to the crime as well as the new DNA evidence. Spital also pointed to another concern, echoing attorneys for Williams, who described the case as racially charged. Spital said six of the seven potential black jurors in the case were struck from the jury pool in one case because the potential juror looked like Williams.

This execution has to be stayed so these substantial questions of innocence can be considered, in addition to some real concerns about race discrimination, Spital said before the governor had issued the stay.

This story has been updated since it was first published.

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An Arkansas death row inmate took their fathers life. Heres why they dont want the killer executed.

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Ohios youngest death row inmate never touched the murder weapon. Why was he sentenced to death?

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Missouri governor stays execution of Marcellus Williams, says officials will probe DNA evidence in the case - Washington Post