A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Missouri has executed a man whom prosecutors had come to believe was innocent.
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Marcellus Williams was put to death last night by lethal injection at around 6 p.m. Central time following several last-ditch legal efforts to save his life.
MARTÍNEZ: St. Louis Public Radio's Rachel Lippmann has been following the case. So, Rachel, the story about Marcellus Williams has brought a lot of attention to the use of the death penalty. First, though, if you could, give us some background about this case.
RACHEL LIPPMANN, BYLINE: Marcellus Williams was convicted of the 1998 murder of a former newspaper reporter. There was never any forensic evidence - things like DNA, fingerprints or hair - that connected him to the scene. Police were able to find some belongings of the victim in Williams' car, and he pawned a laptop that belonged to her husband. The conviction was based largely on the testimony of a former girlfriend and a jailhouse informant.
MARTÍNEZ: OK, so tell us then about the concerns that prosecutors wound up raising.
LIPPMANN: Democrat Wesley Bell, who's currently the St. Louis County prosecutor and the presumptive next congressman from Missouri's first district, used a 2021 state law, giving prosecutors a pathway to challenge what they think are wrongful convictions. Many of the concerns he raised had also been brought up in previous legal proceedings. These were things like the racial makeup of the jury, the unreliability of the two main witnesses and whether Williams' trial counsel had been ineffective. But Bell also said that he had new DNA evidence that would clearly show Williams could not be the killer.
MARTÍNEZ: In a lot of cases, DNA evidence is used to exonerate someone who's convicted of murder. So how did the results of DNA testing complicate efforts to free Marcellus Williams?
LIPPMANN: The tests on the DNA that they pulled from the murder weapon came back consistent with two former employees of the county prosecutor's office, an investigator and the attorney who took the case to trial. Both of them later admitted that they had touched the weapon without wearing gloves. That meant possible contamination of any DNA evidence that could exclude Williams as the killer, but it did also rule out that unknown killer, which was central to the claims of innocence. And that meant Bell's office had to pivot and focus on concerns about constitutional error. All of those claims had been rejected at the state and federal level.
Bell's office and attorneys for Williams tried to argue they had new evidence showing a juror had been struck specifically because of his race, but state and federal courts disagreed. They then also tried to argue that past prosecutors had deliberately destroyed the DNA evidence by touching the weapon without gloves. But it's important to remember that the trial took place in 2001, and the understanding of DNA and the sensitivity of tools to test for DNA were very different back then. Courts ruled that it was a reasonable policy in place at the time.
MARTÍNEZ: So as we mentioned, Marcellus Williams is gone now. What were the reactions to last night's execution?
LIPPMANN: The executive director of the Midwest Innocence Project said in a statement that Williams' death was a grotesque exercise of state power and that the world would be a lesser place without him in it. Republican Governor Mike Parson said it represented finality in a case that had languished for decades.
MARTÍNEZ: Rachel Lippmann is a justice reporter with St. Louis Public Radio. Rachel, thank you for bringing us this story.
LIPPMANN: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
