Evidence of Marcellus Williams’s Potential Innocence Came to Light in 2017. He is Slated for Execution in 26 Days

A judge in St. Louis County, Mo., is now reviewing DNA evidence for the first time

• Marcellus Williams has been on Missouri’s death row since 2001 but his defense team and some prosecutors agree he's not guilty of Felicia Gayle’s 1998 stabbing murder

• Potentially exonerating DNA evidence – available for 7 years – has never been reviewed by a judge until now

• Both Gov. Mike Parson and Attorney General Andrew Bailey have worked to keep Williams’s execution date despite potential evidence of his innocence

The bloody fingerprints on the wall and footprints by her body weren’t his. The DNA found on the knife and inside the Missouri woman’s home did not match his. The hairs found clutched in her hands did not belong to him.

Both county prosecutors and his defense counsel agree that the man behind bars for more than two decades for the 1998 stabbing death of newspaper reporter Felicia Gayle likely had nothing to do with it, according to a motion to vacate his death sentence filed by prosecutors and reviewed by PEOPLE.

But Marcellus Williams is slated for execution on Sept. 24, 2024, at 6 p.m.

The potentially exonerating DNA evidence – reviewed by three prosecution experts who agree that it does not likely belong to Williams – first came to light seven years ago.

But a Missouri judge heard that evidence for the first time on August 28 in a last-ditch effort by William's lawyers to save him from execution next month.

St. Louis County prosecutors and defense lawyers each spoke for two hours, urging the judge to set aside Williams's execution, while the Missouri Attorney General's Office argued to move forward with it. The judge requested final filings by Sept. 4, per the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney's Office.

Gayle, a journalist at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, was found brutally murdered inside her gated community home in University City, Mo., on Aug. 11, 1998.

Her husband, Dr. Daniel Picus, found her with a knife lodged in her neck and wearing only a purple shirt, according to prosecutors’ 63-page motion filed in January under a new Missouri law allowing the state to intervene in a past conviction if the integrity of that conviction is questionable.

Investigators later determined that Gayle had been stabbed at least 43 times, dying from 16 wounds to her head, neck, chest and abdomen.

The killer – who took her purse and a laptop among other items but left her wedding ring and jewelry – had used one of her own kitchen knives during the assault.

Over the course of the investigation, police noted bloody shoe prints near the knife sheath in the kitchen and on the rug near her body. Bloody fingerprints ran along the wall and hairs were collected from her hands, t-shirt and the floor.

Two neighbors recalled that morning seeing a dark colored minivan driven by a White man. (Williams is Black.)

But despite media attention surrounding the woman’s death, police made little progress in the investigation – until two informants came forward, naming Williams.

Williams, who struggled with drug addiction, had been arrested on Aug. 31, 1998 for robbing a donut shop. His girlfriend around that time, as well as someone he had been incarcerated with, gave inconsistent stories to investigators who nevertheless used those narratives to arrest Williams in 1999 and put him on trial two years later.

A jury of 11 White people and 1 Black person convicted him in 2001 of first-degree murder, first-degree burglary, armed criminal action, and robbery.

The prosecutor had removed six qualified Black prospective jurors from the pool using peremptory challenges, according to the Innocence Project.

In his motion to vacate the sentence, current Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell referred to the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Office's “history of excluding” Black jurors as “no secret” and said the practice had violated Williams’s constitutional rights.

In 2015, the Missouri Supreme Court stayed an earlier execution date for Williams and appointed a special master to review DNA evidence that ultimately determined that the DNA on the murder weapon did not belong to Williams, according to prosecutors and the Innocence Project.

Two years later, that special master – who did not make any findings on the test results – sent the case back to the Missouri Supreme Court, which rescheduled Williams's execution for Aug. 22, 2017 – without considering the new evidence.

Just hours before his set execution, then-Governor Eric Greitens stayed the execution, appointing a Board of Inquiry – which in accordance with Missouri law was to issue a formal report following its review – to look further into the case.

Instead, in June 2023, Governor Mike Parson dissolved the board ahead of any report or recommendation.

Attorney General Andrew Bailey quickly called for a new execution date.

Williams sued the governor, claiming his constitutional rights had been violated with the dissolution of the board, according to the Innocence Project. The governor went to the state supreme court, which dismissed the lawsuit this June, and Williams’s execution date was set for Sept. 24.

Parson – who declined through his office to answer questions from PEOPLE, citing pending litigation – said in a recent statement that he was following “standard practice" and that his decisions were "not unique to Mr. Williams’ case."

Then on Aug. 21, Williams’s defense learned that prosecutors had inadvertently gotten their own fingerprints on the knife, both sides confirm to PEOPLE, with Chris King of the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Office acknowledging that it “reflected improper handling of evidence.”

The two sides agreed upon an Alford plea which allowed the state to keep its conviction while Williams, who was not admitting guilt, would be taken off death row.

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That same day, Attorney General Andrew Bailey filed a writ application, blocking the court’s ability to resentence Williams to life without parole and leading the circuit court judge to schedule the Aug. 28 evidentiary hearing.

“It is in the interest of every Missourian that the rule of law is fought for and upheld – every time, without fail,” Bailey said in a statement.

At the Aug. 28 hearing, Prosecuting Attorney Bell told the court that his office had mishandled the murder weapon and that the state had also destroyed bloody fingerprints at the crime scene and removed Black jurors based solely on race – all constitutional errors that Bell said undermined the conviction, according to a press release by the Innocence Project.

“Today, we saw two different approaches to prosecution, one committed to serving justice, the other intent on winning at any cost," the Innocence Project's Bushnell said in a statement after the hearing.

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