On Tuesday evening, Marcellus Williams will be strapped to a gurney at the Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center in Bonne Terre, Missouri. He will be allowed to offer his last words. Barring a last-minute intervention by Missouri’s governor or the courts, he’ll then be injected with a lethal cocktail of drugs that will end his life. Williams, who was convicted in August 2001 for the brutal stabbing murder of Felicia Gayle Picus, may very well be innocent.
There is no physical or forensic evidence linking Williams to the crime scene. Fingerprints taken at the crime scene were inexplicably destroyed. Neither bloodied footprints nor hair at the crime scene could be linked to to Williams. The evidence against him is the testimony of two eyewitnesses — a jailhouse informant and Williams’ former girlfriend. His attorneys argue that both implicated Williams because they wanted to claim a $10,000 reward.
Even the office that prosecuted Williams, the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, has led the charge to free Williams from prison.
But perhaps the most unusual element of Williams’ situation is that, seemingly, no one with a stake in the outcome of the case wants him to die. Gayle Picus’ family, who believe that Williams is guilty, opposes the imposition of the death penalty. Members of the jury have expressed second thoughts about the verdict. And even the office that prosecuted Williams, the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, has led the charge to free Williams from prison.
Quite often, it is the prosecuting attorneys who work most feverishly to uphold a successful conviction, but last January, St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell filed a court motion to vacate Williams’ prosecution. (A 2021 state law allows Missouri prosecutors to ask a court to vacate a conviction they believe was unjust. Three other men already have been freed after decades in prison under that law.)
At the time, Bell’s office cited testing that found Williams’ DNA was not on the murder weapon. Subsequent tests, however, revealed that the knife had been mishandled by law enforcement, making a potentially exonerating DNA test impossible. Wiliams, who has long maintained his innocence, subsequently reached a painful agreement with prosecutors. In return for pleading no contest to first-degree murder, he would receive a new sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. Unless Williams could find another way to prove his innocence, he would likely live out his days under lock and key. But he would avoid execution.
Judge Bruce Hilton and Gayle Picus’ family agreed to the deal. However, after lobbying from Andrew Bailey, the state’s Republican attorney general, the Missouri Supreme Court scrapped the agreement and ordered Hilton to conduct an evidentiary hearing.
According to Williams’ attorney, Tricia Rojo Bushnell, a lawyer at the Midwest Innocence Project who has worked on Williams’ case for the past seven years, “it is very unusual” for a prosecutor to seek to vacate a murder conviction, “and more unusual for a court not to agree to the prosecutor’s motion.”
It’s hard to imagine the trauma of being so close to death’s door, but Williams has been down this road before.
But the latter is precisely what happened. On Sept. 12, Hilton ruled that “there is no basis for a court to find that Williams is innocent, and no Court has made such a finding.” Thus, Hilton concluded, the death sentence verdict must be carried out — even though he had agreed to the reduced sentence of life without parole just the month before.
“What we have here,” said Bushnell, “is a duly elected prosecutor from where this case happened who wants to overturn this conviction and an attorney general who was appointed [to the job], who doesn’t live in St. Louis County, trying to put him to death.” (Bailey was appointed as attorney general after his predecessor, Eric Schmitt, was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2022.)
Williams’ lawyers are continuing to try and save his life. They’ve filed a cert petition pending in the Supreme Court, a motion at the Eighth Circuit based on new facts that have emerged regarding the striking of Black jurors by the prosecution that might have violated his constitutional rights, and an appeal asking the Missouri Supreme Court to overturn Hilton’s ruling. But Williams’ likely last best hope is a grant of clemency from Missouri Gov. Mike Parson, who has never granted clemency in any of the previous 11 death penalty cases since he took office.
I asked Bushnell how Williams was holding up, knowing that he could die on Tuesday night — or could be granted a last-minute reprieve. “He’s trying to hold both thoughts at the same time,” she says. “He remains hopeful but understands the balance of preparing for the moment and is focused on his family and his Muslim faith.”
It’s hard to imagine the trauma of being so close to death’s door, but Williams has been down this road before. He received a reprieve in 2015 and then in August 2017, hours before he was scheduled to die, when then-Gov. Eric Greitens, a Republican, granted a stay of execution. Then there’s the impact on the victims, who have had to relive this agony over and over for years, and Williams’ family. His son has gone through this for years, says Bushnell, not knowing if his father will die.
The whole experience feels like cruel and unusual punishment for all concerned and reminds us that the American death penalty creates far more agony and trauma than it does relief.
Still, no matter one’s view on capital punishment, whether for or against it, all surely agree that no innocent man or woman should be sentenced to death. I don’t know if Marcellus Williams is innocent or guilty, but when the prosecuting attorney’s office, members of the jury, and even the victim’s families express doubt about the death penalty, shouldn’t that be enough to stop an execution from going forward? If those with the most at stake in the decision are opposed, what good reason is there to take the life of a man who could very well be innocent?
One can only hope that Gov. Parson makes the right decision and spares Marcellus Williams’ life.