Testimony begins Wednesday in a hearing with life-or-death implications for Missouri inmate Marcellus Williams. The case before St. Louis County Circuit Judge Bruce Hilton is on a by Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell seeking to vacate Williams' 1998 murder conviction.
Time is of the essence: Williams is Sept. 24, and neither Missouri Gov. Mike Parson nor Attorney General Andrew Bailey has shown any inclination to delay the process.
Williams, 55, was convicted of first-degree murder in the 1998 stabbing death of Lisha Gayle. He was when then-Gov. Eric Greitens, a Republican, granted a stay after DNA testing unavailable at the time of the killing showed that DNA on the knife matched someone else, not Williams.
That evidence prompted Bell to reexamine the case. “This never-before-considered evidence, when paired with the relative paucity of other, credible evidence supporting guilt, as well as additional considerations of ineffective assistance of counsel and racial discrimination in jury selection, casts inexorable doubt on Mr. Williams’s conviction and sentence,” Bell's motion states.
Williams, who is Black, was convicted and sentenced to death by a jury consisting of 11 white people and one Black person. Bailey, a Republican, stated in a June court filing that “evidence supporting conviction at trial was overwhelming,” despite the new DNA claims. allows prosecuting attorneys to file a motion seeking to vacate a conviction they believe was unjust.
The law has resulted.