JEFFERSON CITY, Missouri – On Monday, the Missouri Supreme Court will hear arguments as Marcellus Williams’ lawyers seek to save him, just one day before his scheduled execution.

Oral arguments were scheduled for Monday morning in the state Supreme Court hearing. Williams, 55, is scheduled to be put to death by injection Tuesday night for the 1998 murder of Lisha Gayle in University City, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis.

Williams has long maintained his innocence. DNA evidence raised so many questions that a former governor stopped an execution in 2017, and the current St. Louis County prosecutor denied Williams’ guilt in a court hearing last month.

Williams’ lawyers have also filed an appeal with the US Supreme Court. Meanwhile, a request for clemency to Governor Mike Parson is mainly about Gayle’s own relatives calling for the sentence to be commuted to life imprisonment without parole. The national NAACP is also calling on Republican Parson to prevent the execution of Williams, who is black.

The execution would be the third in Missouri this year and the 15th nationwide.

In August 2017, Williams was about to be executed when then-Republican Governor Eric Greitens granted a stay after reviewing DNA evidence. There was no trace of Williams’ DNA on the knife used in the killing. Greitens appointed a panel of retired judges to investigate the case, but that panel never reached a conclusion.

The same DNA evidence prompted Democratic St. Louis County Prosecutor Wesley Bell to request a hearing contesting Williams’ guilt. But days before the Aug. 21 hearing, new tests showed that the DNA evidence was tainted because prosecutors’ staff had handled the knife without gloves before the original trial.

In the absence of DNA evidence, attorneys with the Midwest Innocence Project reached a compromise with prosecutors: in exchange for a new life sentence without parole, Williams would enter a new plea of ​​first-degree murder.

Judge Bruce Hilton and Gayle’s family signed the agreement, but at the urging of Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey, the Missouri Supreme Court blocked the agreement and ordered Hilton to face an evidentiary hearing, which took place on August 28.

Hilton ruled on September 12 that the conviction for premeditated murder and the death sentence would stand.

“Every error raised by Williams on appeal, post-conviction review, and habeas corpus review has been rejected by the Missouri courts,” Hilton wrote. “There is no basis for a court to find Williams innocent, and no court has made such a finding.”

The Midwest Innocence Project’s clemency petition focuses heavily on how Gayle’s relatives want the sentence commuted to life without parole. “The family defines closure as allowing Marcellus to live,” the petition states.

Parson, a former county sheriff, was in office for 11 executions and never granted clemency.

Questions of racial bias have also been raised in connection with Williams’ conviction.

The prosecutor in the 2001 first-degree murder trial, Keith Larner, testified at the August hearing that the jury was fair, even though it included only one black member.

Larner said he rejected only three black potential jurors, including one man because he looked too much like Williams. He did not say why he thought that was important.

Executing Williams would continue a history of racial injustice in the use of the death penalty in Missouri and elsewhere, NAACP President Derrick Johnson wrote to Parson last week. The NAACP opposes the death penalty.

“Taking Marcellus Williams’ life would be a clear statement that when a white woman is killed, a black man must die. And any black man would do the job,” Johnson wrote.

Prosecutors in Williams’ original case said he broke into Gayle’s home on August 11, 1998, heard water running in the shower and found a large butcher knife. As Gayle came down the stairs, she was stabbed 43 times. Her purse and her husband’s laptop were stolen.

Authorities said Williams stole a jacket to hide blood on his shirt. Williams’ girlfriend asked him why he would wear a jacket on a hot day. The girlfriend said she later saw the laptop in the car and Williams sold it a day or two later.

Prosecutors also relied on testimony from Henry Cole, who was in a cell with Williams in 1999 when Williams was incarcerated on other charges. Cole told prosecutors that Williams confessed to the murder and provided details about it.

Williams’ lawyers responded that both the girlfriend and Cole had been convicted of serious crimes and were asking for a $10,000 reward.

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Salter reported from O’Fallon, Missouri.