The Missouri Supreme Court blocks a deal that would have halted the inmate’s execution

CLAYTON, Mo. (AP) – The Missouri Supreme Court has blocked a deal that would have spared the life of a death row inmate Marcellus Williams and instead ordered a hearing to move forward with Williams’ innocence claim, with just over a month to go before his scheduled execution.

The ruling came late Wednesday, hours after St. Louis County Circuit Judge Bruce Hinton approved a plan that would allow Williams to enter a new no-contest plea to first-degree murder in the 1998 death of Lisha Gayle. While Williams’ attorneys said he still maintained his innocence, the plea agreement acknowledged evidence was sufficient for a conviction.

Williams was expected to have been sentenced to life in prison without parole on Thursday. Instead, the September 24 execution the date is still pending, pending a hearing before Hinton on Williams’ innocence claim.

That hearing was originally scheduled to begin Wednesday. St. Louis County Prosecutor Wesley Bell had asked the judge to vacate Williams’ murder conviction based on DNA testing that found other DNA – but not Williams’ – on the knife that killed Gayle.

But a new DNA testing report released this week found that the handling of the murder weapon decades ago by a former assistant prosecutor and a former investigator so severely contaminated the evidence that it was of no value to Williams’ case. That finding prompted prosecutors to reach an agreement with Williams that Hilton had signed up for.

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey immediately appealed, arguing that a court had no authority to overrule a death sentence.

The Missouri Supreme Court agreed and ordered that Hilton “set aside the said consent order and judgment and announce to this court that you will take action … including holding the previously scheduled and anticipated evidentiary hearing.”

Bailey said in a statement Thursday that too often people “forget all of the evidence used to convict the suspect — the evidence the jury relied on — and the victims. It is in the best interest of every Missourian that the rule of law is fought for and upheld.”

Messages were left with the St. Louis County Prosecutor’s Office and Williams’ attorneys.

The courtroom was packed Wednesday with people, including several others who have been acquitted of crimes. Lawyers met for hours behind closed doors. Finally, Matthew Jacober, a special prosecutor from the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, announced that the tainted evidence made it impossible to prove that anyone else might have been the killer.

“The murder weapon was handled without proper procedures in place,” Jacober said. The improper treatment occurred several years before Bell took office.

That finding prompted St. Louis County prosecutors to enter a consent judgment, allowing Williams to enter a plea before Alford. He also agreed not to appeal.

“Marcellus Williams is an innocent man, and nothing about today’s settlement changes that fact,” Williams’ attorney, Tricia Bushnell, said in a statement after the hearing. She noted that Gayle’s family supported the abolition of the death penalty, and that the plea brings “a degree of finality” to the family.

Bailey said in a statement Wednesday that “the defense has created a false narrative of innocence to get a convicted murderer off death row and further their political goals.” Bell defeated incumbent Cori Bush in Missouri’s first Congressional District Democratic primary on August 6 and will be a heavy favorite in the November general election.

Williams, who is black, was convicted and sentenced to death by a jury of eleven white people and one black person. That was him hours away from execution in August 2017 when then-Governor Eric Greitens, a Republican, granted a reprieve 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 re-examine the case.

A 2021 Missouri law allows prosecutors to file a motion to overturn a conviction they believe is unjust. Three other men — Christopher Dunn last month, Kevin Strickland And Lamar Johnson – have been released after decades in prison after prosecutors successfully challenged their convictions.

Prosecutors at Williams’ original trial said he broke into Gayle’s suburban St. Louis home on August 11, 1998, heard water running in the shower and found a large butcher knife. When Gayle came down, she was stabbed 43 times. Her handbag and her husband’s laptop were stolen. Gayle, who was white, was a social worker who previously worked as a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Authorities say Williams stole a jacket to hide the blood on his shirt. Williams’ girlfriend asked him why he would wear a jacket on a hot day. The girlfriend said she later saw the laptop in the car and that Williams sold it a day or two later.

Prosecutors also cited testimony from Henry Cole, who shared a St. Louis cell with Williams in 1999 while Williams was jailed on unrelated charges. Cole told prosecutors that Williams had confessed to the murder and provided details about it.

Williams’ attorneys responded that the girlfriend and Cole were both convicted for a $10,000 reward.