Who was Marcellus Williams? Missouri executes 55-year-old man for murder of reporter Felicia Gayle in 1998

On Tuesday, September 24, Missouri state officials executed death row inmate Marcellus Williams at the Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center in Bonne Terre. Williams was executed hours after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his final appeal. The inmate's final words were, “All praise be to Allah in every situation.”

Williams was sentenced to death for the 1998 murder of Felicia Gayle, a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Gayle was stabbed more than 40 times with a butcher knife stolen from her kitchen in her University City, Missouri, apartment complex during a daylight break-in at her home in August.

Williams, 55, died by lethal injection after 6 p.m. His plea for clemency was supported by St. Louis County District Attorney Wesley Bell. In fact, the victim's family had reportedly also asked that Williams' death be spared.

Who was Marcellus Williams?

Williams was convicted of Gayle's murder in 2001. Evidence at the crime scene, including fingerprints, bloody shoe prints and hair, reportedly could not be linked to Williams. He was arrested based on the testimony of a jailhouse informant who said Williams confessed to the murder. During testimony at Williams' murder trial, his then-girlfriend also claimed he confessed to the murder.

Bell, meanwhile, issued a statement saying: “Marcellus Williams should be alive today. There were several points in his life when decisions could have been made that would have spared him the death penalty. If there is even the slightest doubt about his innocence, the death penalty should never be an option. This outcome did not serve the interests of justice.”

Bell made a final attempt to weaken Williams' testimony by filing suit under a 2021 state law that allows prosecutors to present new evidence to the courts, the first time the law has been used in a death penalty case.

However, on Monday, September 23, Governor Mike Parson said he would not stop the execution because he was not convinced by the appeals. “No jury or court, at the trial, appellate, or Supreme Court levels, has ever found Mr. Williams' claims of innocence to be justified,” Parson said. “Ultimately, his conviction and death sentence were upheld. None of the true facts of this case led me to believe in Mr. Williams' innocence, so Mr. Williams' punishment will be carried out as ordered by the Supreme Court.”

Williams was the 100th person executed in Missouri since 1989, the year the state resumed executions after a two-decade hiatus.

Larry Komp, one of Williams' attorneys, claimed his client maintained his innocence until his death. “Although he readily admitted the mistakes he made throughout his life, he never maintained his innocence of the crime for which he was executed tonight,” Komp said, according to CNN. “While we are devastated and in disbelief at what the state did to an innocent man, we take comfort in the fact that he left this world in peace.”