Missouri executed a man on death row on Tuesday, Marcellus Williams, irrespective of objections from prosecutors who claimed to have his conviction overturned. They supported his claims of innocence.
Marcellus Williams, age 55, was killed by lethal injection, and he was convicted of breaking into Lisha Gayle’s suburban St Louis Home in 1998 and repeatedly stabbing her.
Williams had two previous executions stayed and, maintained he was innocent in the 1998 fatal stabbing. A wide swath of people had opposed his death sentence.
An attorney representing Williams argued that there was racial discrimination in the selection of jurors. Moreover, the DNA evidence in the case was mishandled. Williams was denied a last-minute respite from the US Supreme Court, following Missouri’s top court and governor rejected his clemency requests early this week.
The three liberal justices on the US Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Elena Kagan said that they disagreed with the conservative majority and would have granted a stay on Tuesday. However, they didn’t give a reason.
Missouri Department of Corrections Communications Director, Karen Pojmann said that no witnesses of Ms. Gayle’s family attended this execution., according to BBC’s US partner.
According to the report, William’s son and two of his attorneys were present at the execution.
During his trial, prosecutors said that Williams broke into Ms Gayle’s home in August 1998. Also, he stabbed her 43 times with a large butcher knife before stealing her husband’s laptop and her purse.
Ms Gayle was a social worker and also she was a former reporter at the St Louis Post-Dispatch. William’s lawyers said that there were concerns over the handling of this case. The lawyers argued that black jurors were wrongly excluded from his trial.
They also claimed that there was no forensic evidence proofing Imam Khalifa Williams at the crime scene. They also added that the murderer’s weapon had been mishandled, raising questions over DNA evidence.
Williams had requested clemency from Missouri’s Republican Governor, Mike Parson, and that was denied.
Parson said in a statement that they hope this gives finality to this case that languished for decades, re-victimising Ms Gayle’s family.
Many people including British billionaire Richard Branson, campaigned against the execution, it was the third in Missouri this year.
According to a BBC news report, Mr Branson said on Tuesday that he had spent part of the day focused on the Williams case.
He said, “he’s an innocent person”.
Larry Komp, one of William’s attorneys said that his client maintained his innocence until his death. According to CNN, Komp said that although they are devasted and disbelieve over what the state has done to an innocent man, they are comforted that he left this world in peace.