Did Missouri Just Execute An Innocent Man?

Yesterday, the State of Missouri executed convicted murderer Marcellus Williams. Immediately prior to his impending execution, both the mainstream media and YouTube were awash with claims that he was innocent. Now, they are awash with the claim that an innocent man has been executed.  Perhaps his most unusual supporter was Richard Branson, who bought a full page advertisement in The Kansas City Star the previous day calling for the execution to be stayed.

The Daily Mail reported that his execution had been called shameful, and, of course, racist, which means nothing, these are epithets. What though of the claim that there was no trace of his DNA on the murder weapon? Arguments of that nature often sound convincing without the full context. So here it is.

Williams is pictured above with his victim. It is perhaps a little surprising that so many media talking heads were prepared to go out on a limb for this guy because Felicia Gayle was one of their own.

According to Deborah Peterson and Lance Williams writing in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on August 13, 1998 – two days after her murder - Felicia Anne Gayle Picus had written for the paper from 1981 to 1992. In spite of leaving her post six years previously, she was remembered with affection and was said to have led to the instigation of a paper recycling programme there in the late 1980s. The 42 year old was married to a doctor, and although childless, had a large family.

Marcellus Williams was arrested August 31 on unrelated robbery charges. The frenzied stabbing of Felicia Gayle was thought to have been the result of a botched home invasion robbery.  On November 24, 1999, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that charges were expected to be filed against Williams. This was due to compelling evidence of his involvement in her murder, in particular, the recent retrieval of a laptop that had belonged to her husband. Williams was said to have traded this with someone in exchange for crack cocaine. (At this time, laptops were far less powerful than today but a lot more expensive). A former girlfriend and a cousin of Williams were said to be cooperating. His last arrest had been for a hold-up at the Downtown Donut Shop the same day, ie August 31, so clearly this guy was no angel. As predicted by the paper, Williams was charged with murder shortly.

On January 29, 2000,  he was given three concurrent sentences of 20 years, 20 years and 7 years for the donut shop robbery. The following day, it was reported that he had been accused of assaulting a prison guard, and on April 5, 2001, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported again on his crimes, this time on his conviction for robbing a Burger King in July 1998. With two associates, he had attacked three staff members after hours, smashing the head of one of them on the floor and leaving the other two tied up in a cooler. His two co-conspirators escaped. The article reported that the State would seek the death penalty in the forthcoming murder trial.

Clearly, Richard Branson was unaware of this man’s appalling antecedents, which is hardly surprising, because there has been no mention of them this month in any media reports, including one that affirms his guilt.

Williams did not take the stand at his trial, and was duly convicted. As with so many of these capital cases, there was an extensive process of appeals, all of them totally spurious in his case. Here is the judgment in his 2003 appeal.

The reader will note there is no mention of DNA in this judgment. At that time, DNA testing was nowhere near as sophisticated as it is today. The fact that the killer’s DNA was not found on the knife means nothing. He could have been wearing gloves, he could have wiped it. DNA was found on it, but it belonged to the people who were investigating the crime. Today, this would not have happened, but in any case, DNA is only one piece of evidence.  If his DNA had been found on the knife, would that have been proof he was the murderer? In isolation, no, but as he had no business being in the victim’s home, it would have been difficult to explain away. In any case, there was a mountain of evidence against Williams, so there is no scandal in his execution.

If there is a scandal here, it is a common one in the United States, that is the fact that murderers convicted on overwhelming evidence often linger on death row for decades before dying a natural death. There is absolutely no reason a convicted murderer should not be executed within five years at the very most, and that allows for the first appeal (in effect a mandatory review by the appellate court) and perhaps another.

Furthermore, if the death penalty were reserved for the worst of the worst – serial killer, spree killers, and those convicted of particularly heinous crimes on absolutely overwhelming evidence - no reasonable person could argue against it. Bad as he was, Marcellus Williams was far from the worst of the worst, but that boat has now sailed.