Missouri plans to execute Marcellus Williams on September 24th.

If this happens, he would be the 100th person executed in our state since 1989. This would be a shameful milestone and another case of the execution of a possibly innocent person.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, at least 200 death sentences have been wrongfully imposed in the United States since 1973. No one knows how many of the 1,595 people executed since then were innocent, but it is very likely that some of them were innocent.

Williams has always maintained his innocence in the 1998 murder of Felicia Gayle Picus.

The charges against him were based entirely on notoriously unreliable alleged informant testimony and circumstantial evidence. There was no physical evidence or eyewitnesses to incriminate him. Current St. Louis County District Attorney Wesley Bell attempted to have the conviction overturned, but after a hearing, he was unable to convince Judge Bruce Hinton that there was enough evidence to overturn the conviction.

However, there is ample evidence that the original charges were flawed and unfair.

Exonerated death row inmates call on Missouri Attorney General to investigate Marcellus Williams’ innocence

In a statement following Judge Hilton’s decision, Tricia Rojo Bushnell, executive director of the Midwest Innocence Project, stressed that Bell’s office sought to overturn the conviction because of “overwhelming evidence that his trial was unconstitutionally unfair.”

Keith Larner, a retired St. Louis County assistant district attorney who led the initial prosecution of Williams in 2001, testified at the Aug. 28 hearing that he handled the knife used to kill Gayle Picus at least five times without gloves. Tests conducted in mid-August found DNA on the knife handle belonging to Larner and Ed MaGee, an investigator with the district attorney’s office.

Attorneys for Williams and Bell argued that this improper handling contaminated the weapon, potentially obscuring the attacker’s DNA and destroying important evidence that could have helped exonerate Williams.

In addition to mishandling evidence, Williams’s lawyers argued that Larner’s testimony helped prove that he had eliminated six of seven African Americans from the original jury pool because of their race (leaving one black member on the otherwise all-white jury), thereby denying Williams the chance to be tried before a jury of his peers.

Race has always had a sordid history in the use of the death penalty in this country. Blacks are executed disproportionately often (38 of 99 in Missouri, more than three times the state’s total population), and while African Americans have made up about 60% of our state’s murder victims over the past five decades, 78 of the 99 (78%) executed were convicted of murdering white victims.

Any murder is reprehensible, and Gayle Picus’ death was particularly gruesome, as the perpetrator stabbed her more than 40 times. Police investigators found a wealth of evidence at the crime scene: fingerprints, bloody shoe prints, and hair. But none of it incriminated Williams. Ultimately, prosecutors unethically destroyed evidence, including fingerprints, before his trial lawyers had a chance to have them independently examined.

For ten months after the murder, St. Louis County police had no leads until Dr. Daniel Picus offered a $10,000 reward for evidence leading to the conviction of his wife’s killer. Then Henry Cole called the police and claimed that Williams had confessed to the murder while the two were in jail together.

A few months later, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported, Laura Asaro was arrested for sex work. She told officers she had information about Gayle Picus’ murder. However, when investigators tried to question her, she refused, admitting she was “just trying to avoid arrest.” However, when Asaro learned of the reward, she incriminated Williams.

Williams’ lawyers claim that the two witnesses’ statements changed over the course of the investigation and often contradicted their previous statements and the facts of the crime. Both died several years ago. Their relatives have testified under oath that the two – both with numerous criminal records and a drug past – were known to provide false information to police for personal gain.

Wrongful convictions can harm not only those wrongfully incarcerated, but also the public, as the actual perpetrator of such crimes may still be walking free and able to harm others. Nearly a month before Gayle Picus’ murder, Debra McClain was stabbed more than 20 times in her home in Pagedale, another St. Louis County suburb about three miles from Gayle Picus’ residence.

Dr. Mary Case, then the St. Louis County coroner, believed the murders were connected. Williams, who had previous convictions for burglary and robbery, was in prison when McClain was murdered, the same prison where he later allegedly confessed to Cole. No one was charged with McClain’s murder.

Regardless of whether Judge Hinton could be convinced that there was enough evidence to conclusively prove Williams’ innocence, there is so much circumstantial evidence pointing against him and to prosecutorial misconduct that if he were to go ahead with the execution, Missouri would be taking an enormous risk of executing an innocent man.

In addition, Dr. Daniel Picus, the victim’s husband, spoke out against the execution.

Unless the courts intervene, Missouri Governor Mike Parson will have to stop the execution of a man who was likely wrongfully convicted.