Gov. Eric Greitens plans to convene the rare 5-member board in an executive order to stay the execution of Marcellus Williams, citing new DNA evidence in the case.
Greitens, a Republican, invoked a little-used Missouri law that allows governors to convene a review panel to examine all the evidence presented to a jury as well as new nuggets that might've emerged.
"It's not common," Tricia Bushnell, executive director of the Midwest Innocence Project, a Missouri-based non-profit that pushed for the inquiry, said of calling such a panel.
It's unclear, however, who will be on the committee and when it will report back to the governor.
He was sentenced to death in 2001 for the killing of Felicia Gayle, a St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter whose home Williams was accused of burglarizing.
A DNA test conducted last December couldn't say with certainty that the knife used had Williams' prints on it, however. Footprints at the scene didn't match his either, his legal team argued.
Bushnell said advocates pushed for a board of inquiry because the DNA testing had already been conducted and it was the only way for the evidence to be heard.
The panel will review the case's original evidence, the DNA test and "any other relevant evidence not available to the jury," according to the executive order.
From there they'll make a recommendation to Greitens on whether Williams should be executed or have his sentence commuted.
But that won't happen in the near future. The panel's members still have to be appointed.
Once they are, they'll have subpoena power over anyone involved in the case, and the proceedings will not be public, the executive order states.
A timetable hasn't been set on when the panel must report its findings. Like any other legal probe, Bushnell said, it can take as long as the board deems necessary.
Greitens will make a decision based on the board's findings.
Given the subpoena powers the panel has, she added, the timeframe can also be "dependent on what it is the board wants to look at."
The board of inquiry has hardly been used in the state since it reintroduced the death penalty in 1989.
Gov. Mel Carnahan, a Democrat, formed 2 such panels in the 1990s.
The 1st one came after he stayed the November 1993 execution of Lloyd Schlup, an inmate sentenced to death for the 1984 fatally stabbing of a black inmate.
Schlup argued his 1st attorney did a poor job and failed to present evidence that would've exonerated him, according to a 1993 New York Times report.
In that board, Carnahan appointed 1 member, letting Schlup's team and the prosecution each appoint 2 members, according to the Midwest Innocence Project.
Greitens is likely to name all 5 board members himself.
Schlup's case made its way to U.S. Supreme Court where his conviction was overturned in 1995. He pleaded guilty in a retrial to avoid the death penalty.
These recommendations can take years, and in 1 unique case might never have an answer.
Take the death sentence for William Theodore Boliek Jr., who was convicted for the 1983 shooting death of a Kansas City, Mo., woman.
Carnahan convened a board of inquiry over Boliek's sentence in August 1997 - 2 days before he was slated to be put to death - over claims his lawyers didn't properly represent him in both the trial and appeal.
The board submitted a confidential recommendation to Carnahan, but he died during his Senate campaign in October 2000 when his plane crashed.
Source: New York Daily News, August 24, 2017
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