ST. LOUIS — A Missouri judge on Tuesday set a date for an Aug. 21 hearing to determine whether Marcellus Williams is innocent of the murder that left him dead — a hearing that comes just over a month before Williams’ death. Williams will die.
Williams, 55, was convicted of first-degree murder in the 1998 stabbing death of Lisha Gayle during a robbery at her suburban St. Louis home. He was hours away from execution in August 2017 when he was granted a reprieve after tests showed that there was no DNA on the knife at the time of the murder, which matched that of someone else, not Williams.
Questions about DNA evidence led St. Louis County District Attorney Wesley Bell to submit a motion in January to vacate the murder conviction. The new hearing date is in response to Bell’s motion. In the meantime, Williams is scheduled to be executed on September 24 at the state prison in Bonne Terre, Missouri.
A 2021 Missouri law allows prosecutors to file a motion to vacate a conviction if they believe an inmate may be innocent or has otherwise been wrongfully convicted.
Normally, the judge takes several weeks to weigh the evidence after the hearing is over. In this case, it is not certain that St. Louis County Judge Bruce Hilton will rule on the innocence claim before the execution date, raising the possibility that Missouri could execute a man who is later found innocent by a judge.
The office of Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey is opposing the effort to throw out the murder conviction. Bailey’s office did not immediately respond to an email seeking a stay of execution pending a ruling on the innocence claim.
Tricia Rojo Bushnell, an attorney for the Midwest Innocence Project, urged the state to stay the execution.
“The Attorney General should not attempt to block the court’s investigation and the Missouri Supreme Court should stay Mr. Williams’ execution,” Bushnell said in an email.
The Missouri Supreme Court set the execution date for June 4, hours after it ruled that Republican Gov. Mike Parson was within his rights when he dissolved a commission of inquiry convened six years earlier by Parsons’ predecessor.
Governor Eric Greitens, also a Republican, halted the execution in 2017 with just hours to go, citing DNA evidence. The investigating commission he appointed included five retired judges.
The board never made a statement or reached a conclusion, nor did it issue a report. Parson dissolved the board in June 2023, saying it was time to “move forward.”
Since the law took effect in 2021, two men who both spent decades in prison have had their murder convictions overturned. A third case is still pending, weeks after a hearing.
In 2021, Kevin Strickland was released after more than 40 years for three murders in Kansas City after a judge ruled that he was wrongly convicted in 1979In 2023, a St. Louis judge overturned the conviction of Lamar Johnsonwho served almost 28 years for a murder he committed always said he was not guilty.
A St. Louis judge is still deciding the fate of Christopher Dunn after a hearing in May. Dunn served 33 years in prison for the shooting death of a 15-year-old boy in 1990.
Williams is the first death row inmate to have his claim of innocence heard by a Missouri judge — an “unprecedented situation,” Bell said in a statement. But another death row inmate was released two decades ago.
Joseph Amrine spent 17 years on death row before being released in 2003 after the Missouri Supreme Court ruled that there was no credible evidence linking him to the murder of another inmate. Key testimony against Amrine came from three former inmates, all of whom later recanted their statements. Prosecutors then decided not to retry him.
Prosecutors at the time of the crime said that on Aug. 11, 1998, Williams broke a window to enter Gayle’s home, heard water running in the shower and found a large butcher knife. When Gayle came downstairs, she was stabbed 43 times. Her purse and her husband’s laptop were stolen. Gayle was a social worker who previously worked as a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Authorities say Williams stole a jacket to cover up the blood on his shirt. Williams’ girlfriend asked him why he would be wearing 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 incarcerated on unrelated charges. Cole told prosecutors that Williams confessed to the killing and provided details about the killing.
Williams’ attorneys responded that both the girlfriend and Cole were convicted felons who wanted a $10,000 reward.
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Heather Hollingsworth in Mission, Kansas, contributed to this report.