Marcellus Williams, 55, was convicted of the 1998 killing of Lisha Gayle (Picture: Courtesy Marcellus Williams legal team)
A death row inmate has been executed for the murder of a woman during a home invasion – despite the prosecutor and victim’s family calling for his life to be spared.
Marcellus Williams, 55, was convicted of the 1998 killing of Lisha Gayle, who was stabbed more than 40 times during a burglary at her home in St Louis, Missouri.
In a petition for clemency, Ms Gayle’s relatives said Williams’s execution ‘is not necessary’, adding: ‘The family defines closure as Marcellus being allowed to live.’
Williams’s execution was one of five taking place in the US in the space of just a week – the highest number in two decades.
His final words were ‘All praise be to Allah in every situation’ and his last meal included chicken wings and tater tots.
As Williams lay awaiting execution, he appeared to chat with a spiritual advisor seated next to him.
His chest heaved about a half dozen times after the lethal injection was administered, and he showed no further movement.
Williams’ son and two lawyers watched from another room. No one was present on behalf of the victim’s family.
Williams stabbed Ms Gayle more than 40 times (Picture: Missouri Department of Corrections/AFP via Getty Images)
‘Tonight, we all bear witness to Missouri’s grotesque exercise of state power,’ one of his attorneys, Tricia Rojo Bushnell, said in a statement.
‘Let it not be in vain. This should never happen, and we must not let it continue.’
Williams’s legal team had argued there were concerns over the handling of his case, with black jurors wrongly excluded from his trial.
They also said there was no forensic evidence linking him to the scene and that the murder weapon had been mishandled, raising questions over DNA evidence.
More than a million petitions requesting a stay of execution were delivered to the office of Missouri’s Republican Governor Mike Parson.
High-profile figures including British entrepreneur Richard Branson was among those calling for a reprieve.
Speaking to the BBC earlier on Tuesday, Branson revealed he had spent part of the day focused on the Williams case.
‘He’s an innocent person,’ he said.
‘Even the prosecuting council have told the governor they should not, this man is innocent.’
The NAACP had been among those urging Parson to cancel the execution.
‘Tonight, Missouri lynched another innocent Black man,’ NAACP President Derrick Johnson said in a statement.
Williams was among death row inmates in five states who were scheduled to be put to death in the span of a week — an unusually high number that defies a yearslong decline in the use and support of the death penalty in the US.
The first was carried out Friday in South Carolina. Texas was also slated to execute a prisoner on Tuesday evening.
Williams was killed by lethal injection (Picture: Courtesy of Marcellus Williams’s legal team)
It was the third time Williams faced execution.
He got reprieves in 2015 and 2017, but his last-ditch efforts this time were futile.
Parson and the state Supreme Court rejected his appeals in quick succession Monday, and the US Supreme Court declined to intervene hours before he was put to death.
The governor said he hoped the execution brings finality to a case that ‘languished for decades, revictimising Ms Gayle’s family over and over again’.
‘No juror nor judge has ever found Williams’ innocence claim to be credible,’ Parson said in a statement.
Williams was the third Missouri inmate put to death this year and the 100th since the state resumed use of the death penalty in 1989.
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