Marcellus Williams’ Final Words Before Missouri Execution
The state of Missouri has executed Marcellus Williams despite concerns that the convicted murderer might have been innocent.
Williams died by lethal injection shortly after 6 p.m. Tuesday at Missouri state prison in Bonne Terre. He was convicted and sentenced to death in 2001 for the 1998 murder of Felicia Gayle, a social worker and former St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter who was fatally stabbed during a daytime burglary.
Republican Missouri Governor Mike Parson, Missouri’s Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court all rejected last-minute attempts to halt the execution, ignoring clemency pleas from Williams’ lawyers, prosecutors and members of the victim’s family.
Missouri Department of Corrections Communications Director Karen Pojmann emailed Newsweek the following handwritten “final statement” from Williams: “All Praise Be to Allah in Every Situation!!!”
Marcellus Williams, 55, was executed in Missouri by lethal injection on Tuesday for a 1998 murder despite prosecutors and the victim’s family calling for clemency.
Courtesy of Marcellus Williams’ legal team
Williams submitted his final statement to prison officials in the days before his scheduled execution.
Officials said that Williams ate a last meal of chicken wings and Tater Tots shortly before 11 a.m. Tuesday and was visited in his final hours by Imam Jalahii Kacem, who accompanied him to the execution room.
The St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office urged officials and courts to call off the execution over concerns regarding the trial’s jury selection and potential racial bias—Williams was Black, while Gayle was white—alongside the fact that DNA evidence did not tie Williams to the murder.
“Even for those who disagree on the death penalty, when there is a shadow of a doubt of any defendant’s guilt, the irreversible punishment of execution should not be an option,” St. Louis Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell said in a statement.
Parson, a former sheriff, said in a statement that supporters of Williams were trying to “muddy the waters about DNA evidence,” while insisting that “nothing from the real facts of this case have led me to believe in Mr. Williams’ innocence.”
The governor also rejected calls for clemency from the family of Gayle, who opposed putting Williams to death despite believing that he was guilty of the murder.
Williams’ attorney Tricia Rojo Bushnell said that Missouri was set to “execute an innocent man” in a statement issued shortly before Williams’ death.
“That is not justice,” Bushnell said. “And we must all question any system that would allow this to occur. The execution of an innocent person is the most extreme manifestation of Missouri’s obsession with ‘finality’ over truth, justice, and humanity, at any cost.”
“Tonight, we all bear witness to Missouri’s grotesque exercise of state power,” she added. “Let it not be in vain. This should never happen, and we must not let it continue.”