The Supreme Court refused to block Missouri from executing Marcellus Williams amid questions about the jury selection process and key evidence used in convicting him of murder in 2001.
Williams, 55, who maintains his innocence, is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on Tuesday at 6 p.m. CDT.
Moments before, the Supreme Court denied his emergency requests to halt the execution. The three justices appointed by Democratic presidents, Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, voted to block it.
But now, the St. Louis County prosecuting attorney, who brought the case, no longer stands behind the conviction over concerns Williams’s constitutional rights were violated and he may be innocent. Court records show that the victim’s widower also does not want the death penalty used.
Williams latched onto revelations that the murder weapon was mishandled ahead of trial. Last month, new test results indicated that the knife had DNA on it belonging to two people involved in prosecuting the case; a trial attorney has also admitted to repeatedly touching the knife without gloves.
Then-Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens (R) paused Williams’s execution in 2017 and charged a board with collecting evidence about whether he was innocent. Gov. Mike Parson (R), who succeeded Greitens, later disbanded the board and last year began a push to set an execution date.
Posted by John3262005
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> But now, the St. Louis County prosecuting attorney, who brought the case, no longer stands behind the conviction over concerns Williams’s constitutional rights were violated and he may be innocent.
MO Governor Mike Parson doesn’t have a good track record when it comes to black Missourians convicted of murder under questionable circumstances:
> In June 2021, Parson declined to pardon Kevin Strickland, an African-American man imprisoned for triple murder since 1978, saying it was not a “priority”. Strickland, who had been convicted by an all-white jury, had maintained his innocence, and the case’s prosecutor said she believes him to be innocent. He had become the subject of a bipartisan clemency petition by state lawmakers, and several judges and other politicians had called for his release. In November 2021, a judge set aside the conviction and Strickland was released.
> Parson also refused to pardon Lamar Johnson, an African-American man convicted for murder on the basis of one eyewitness’s testimony; a conviction integrity unit later found that there was overwhelming evidence of his innocence. Critics contrasted Parson’s decision to decline to pardon Strickland with his decision to pardon the [McCloskeys](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Louis_gun-toting_incident).
!ping BROKEN-WINDOWS
>Williams’s legal team also claimed that attorney recently admitted he struck a potential juror in the case in part because they were Black, which would run afoul of Supreme Court precedent.
>The state contests that interpretation. The attorney moments later said, “No, absolutely not,” when asked if the person was struck because of their race, saying that it was because he and Williams both wore glasses and had similar piercing eyes.
>“He struck this potential juror in part because he thought Williams and this potential juror looked similar, but not because he was black,” the state wrote in court filings.
Jesus fucking Christ