The State Supreme Court said the trial had to hold a hearing before accepting a deal that would give the man a sentence of life without parole.
Hours later, the Missouri Supreme Court halted the deal over concerns that a judge had overstepped his authority in approving the new plea and sentence.
The late-night order was the latest twist in Mr. Williams’s long-running effort to prove that he is innocent and avoid being executed. And it was the latest skirmish in a power struggle between the state attorney general and local prosecutors over who speaks for the state in wrongful conviction cases.
Mr. Williams, who is scheduled to be executed on Sept. 24, was convicted of killing Felicia Gayle, a well-known newspaper reporter, in her suburban St. Louis home in 1998. Mr. Williams, 55, has always maintained his innocence, but his appeals and post-conviction pleadings were unsuccessful.
In 2021, the Missouri legislature passed a law allowing a prosecutor to challenge old convictions “if he or she has information that the convicted person may be innocent or may have been erroneously convicted.” The law, a response to advances in forensic science and a growing awareness of the factors that can contribute to wrongful convictions, says that a hearing must be held on such a motion, and it permits the attorney general to participate.
The St. Louis County prosecuting attorney, Wesley Bell, filed a 63-page motion to overturn Mr. Williams’s conviction, saying that the two main witnesses against him had not been credible and that the prosecutor had improperly excluded prospective jurors who were Black. Mr. Williams, the motion said, was not the source of bloody shoe prints, fingerprints and hair found at the crime scene, and a DNA analysis showed that DNA found on the murder weapon, a kitchen knife, was not his.
An evidentiary hearing was set for this past Wednesday. But two days earlier, a private lab engaged by the prosecutor issued a report based on additional analysis. The lab said it had found that DNA on the knife matched that of an investigator and a prosecutor involved in the original trial.
The finding suggested that the investigator and the prosecutor had mishandled what might have been the most important piece of evidence, leaving their own DNA and perhaps eliminating DNA that had been left by the perpetrator. The surprise finding dashed the defense team’s hope that the DNA would point to an unknown perpetrator, which would bolster Mr. Williams’s claim of innocence.
Instead, Mr. Bell’s office backed away from its motion that sought exoneration and proposed an agreement that would change Mr. Williams’s sentence from death to life without parole. The judge accepted the agreement, but the attorney general, Andrew Bailey, objected, insisting that Mr. Williams was guilty of murder in the death of Ms. Gayle.
Mr. Bailey, who has routinely tried to block exonerations, asked the State Supreme Court to intervene, saying that the judge had not held the required hearing and that he had exceeded his power in accepting the agreement without the attorney general’s assent.
Mr. Bailey has maintained that his office represents the state and that the State Supreme Court has “exclusive authority” to review death penalty cases, positions that appear to be in direct conflict with the new law.
“Because the St. Louis County prosecuting attorney has expressly challenged Mr. Williams’s conviction, he has an inherent conflict of interest that cannot be reconciled with the state’s competing interest in enforcing a lawful, repeatedly affirmed criminal judgment,” Mr. Bailey wrote in a filing to the court on Wednesday.
In its ruling, the court said that the judge, Bruce F. Hilton, had to either hold the evidentiary hearing or make an argument as to why he should not have to. On Thursday morning, Judge Hilton scheduled the hearing for Aug. 28.
In a statement on Thursday, Mr. Bell said, “We still have concerns about the integrity of the conviction of Marcellus Williams as expressed in our motion that requested this hearing, particularly given that his conviction led to the irrevocable punishment of death.”
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."
— Oscar Wilde
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