A little over a month before he was scheduled to be executed, Marcellus Williams dropped his innocence claim and pled no contest in an agreement. The deal calls for a new sentence of life in prison without parole.
The complicated turn of events happened on the day that St. Louis County Circuit Judge Bruce Hinton was supposed to oversee a hearing requested by Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell aimed at vacating Williams’ first-degree murder conviction in the 1998 stabbing death of Lisha Gayle. Bell had cited DNA testing unavailable at the time of the crime that found someone else’s DNA — but not that of Williams — on the murder weapon.
After a lengthy delay with lawyers meeting behind closed doors, Matthew Jacober, a lawyer for the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, announced that even newer DNA testing released on Monday found contamination due to handling of the weapon by a former assistant prosecutor and investigator. The contaminated evidence made it impossible to show that someone else may have been the killer.
“The murder weapon was handled without proper procedures in place,” Jacober said.
The improper handling occurred several years before Bell took office.
Williams agreed to an Alford plea, which is not an admission of guilt but acknowledges that evidence is sufficient to convict him. He also agreed not to appeal. Williams will be sentenced Thursday.
“Marcellus Williams is an innocent man, and nothing about today’s plea agreement changes that fact,” Williams’ attorney, Tricia Bushnell, said in a statement. She noted that Gayle’s family supports setting aside the death penalty, and the plea “brings a measure of finality” to the family.”
But the plea doesn’t guarantee Williams won’t be executed. Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey is appealing to the Missouri Supreme Court, arguing that a circuit court doesn’t have authority to overrule the state Supreme Court that set the execution date.
“Throughout all the legal games, the defense created a false narrative of innocence in order to get a convicted murderer off of death row and fulfill their political ends,” Bailey said in a statement. “Because of the defense’s failure to do their due diligence by testing the evidence that supposedly proved their point, the victims have been forced to relive their horrific loss for the last six years.”
A 2021 Missouri law allows prosecuting attorneys to file a motion seeking to vacate a conviction they believe was unjust. The law has resulted in exonerations of three prisoners who spent decades in prison, including Christopher Dunn last month.
By Sean Malone of KMOX Radio in St. Louis