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U.S. | I'm a Death Row Pastor. They're Just Ordinary Folks

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In the early 1970s I was a North Carolinian, white boy from the South attending Union Theological Seminary in New York City, and working in East Harlem as part of a program. In my senior year, I visited men at the Bronx House of Detention. I had never been in a prison or jail, but people in East Harlem were dealing with these places and the police all the time. This experience truly turned my life around.

Missouri prepares for 2nd execution of 2017; requests to halt it still pending

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Marcellus Williams
Marcellus Williams
Unless the last-minute requests for a reprieve are granted, a Missouri death-row inmate will be put to death Tuesday evening.

Marcellus Williams, 48, was convicted in the 1998 fatal stabbing of former St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Felicia Gayle at her University City home. In 2003, the state Supreme Court upheld Williams' conviction, saying there was sufficient evidence to support the jury's conclusion.

His initial execution date was set for January 2015, but the state Supreme Court postponed it for DNA testing.

Those tests were submitted to the court again last week as part of a request for a stay of execution. One of Williams' attorney, Kent Gipson, said it showed the DNA on the murder weapon wasn't from Williams. But the court rejected the request; the U.S. Supreme Court hadn't weighed in as of 6 a.m. Tuesday.

At the same time, the Midwest Innocence Project, which seeks to overturn wrongful convictions, has asked Republican Gov. Eric Greitens to step in and have a state board review the DNA evidence. The nonprofit's director, Tricia Bushnell, said the case "has so many questions" and "a number of the hallmarks that we see in wrongful convictions."

But St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch lambasted the request to the governor, saying it is filled with statements that are "flat-out wrong." When it comes to the DNA evidence, he told St. Louis Public Radio in an interview Monday, what was "extracted, or located on the knife was not of sufficient quantity or quality to identify or exclude anyone."

"This motion is just another last-ditch effort to somehow muddy the water and try to claim that some innocent man might be executed," McCulloch said. "Marcellus Williams killed her. It was a vicious assault. He laid in wait for her."

Greitens spokesman Parker Briden declined to comment on the request for a board of inquiry on Monday, adding there would be a statement Tuesday.

Anti-death penalty rallies are planned in Jefferson City, Columbia, Springfield, Kansas City and St. Louis on Tuesday, as well as a vigil outside of the Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center in Bonne Terre, where Williams will be executed.

The state Department of Corrections has said it is "prepared to carry out" Williams' execution. It will use 2 of its 34 vials of the sedative pentobarbital. Missouri is 1 of 4 states that uses that method of lethal injection.

The state protects the source of its pentobarbital, despite lawsuits from inmates and media outlets to force the state to reveal that information. 

Pentobarbital is made by 1 of 2 sources: A compounding pharmacy or an FDA-approved manufacturer. The manufacturer will not sell directly to any state for use in an execution and has made it clear it doesn't want 3rd-party distributors to do so.

Williams would be the 2nd person Missouri has executed in 2017; Mark Christeson was put to death on Jan. 30.

Source: KCUR News, August 22, 2017


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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
Location: Missouri, USA
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