JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. _ Hours before Marcellus Williams was to be put to death for the 1998 murder of a former newspaper reporter, Gov. Eric Greitens issued a stay of execution and appointed a board to look into the case.
"A sentence of death is the ultimate, permanent punishment," Greitens said in a statement Tuesday afternoon. "To carry out the death penalty, the people of Missouri must have confidence in the judgment of guilt. In light of new information, I am appointing a Board of Inquiry in this case."
Williams' attorneys have been pleading for a stay, arguing that Missouri was on the verge of executing the wrong person.
Williams, 48, was convicted in 2001 for the killing Felicia Gayle, who had been a reporter with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. In 1998, Gayle was in her home when she was stabbed 43 times with a butcher knife. Williams was scheduled to be executed in 2015 but the state Supreme Court stayed his lethal injection, allowing him time to obtain new DNA testing.
DNA testing of the murder weapon, conducted in 2016, shows Williams is not a match for the male DNA found on the knife that was the murder weapon.
Williams' attorneys had asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stop his execution and are seeking a new hearing or the commutation of his sentence to life in prison. He has always maintained his innocence.
The ACLU of Missouri, which has argued that Williams received inadequate counsel from a public defender during his original trial, expressed relief at the governor's call for a review of the case.
"We hope that Mr. Williams' case will show Missouri's elected officials where our justice system is broken and needs to be fixed," said Jeffrey Mittman, executive director of the ACLU of Missouri. "By starting with adequate funding for the Missouri State Public Defender."
A spokeswoman for Attorney General Josh Hawley told the Washington Post this week that based on "non-DNA evidence in this case our office is confident in Marcellus Williams' guilt and plans to move forward."
Among the other evidence cited by Hawley's office is testimony by Williams' former cellmate and an ex-girlfriend both saying he confessed to the killing. Some of the victim's belongings were also found in a car Williams drove the day she was killed.
"Based on the other, non-DNA, evidence in this case, our," Loree Anne Paradise, Hawley's deputy chief of staff, wrote in an email Tuesday.
The governor will appoint five members to a board to look into the case and make a recommendation to the governor as to whether Williams should be executed or his sentence of death commuted.
