SCOTUS conservatives let Missouri kill Marcellus Williams

UPDATE: Missouri executed Williams Tuesday despite a serious innocence claim. The three liberal justices would grant him a stay of execution.

[UPDATE, 7:30 p.m. ET: Missouri has killed Marcellus Williams.]

[UPDATE, 5:50 p.m. ET: The U.S. Supreme Court, over the objection of the three Democratic appointees, refused to stop Missouri’s scheduled execution of Marcellus Williams on Tuesday.]

[UPDATE, 7:00 p.m. ET: The order cleared the path to let Missouri kill Marcellus Williams tonight, despite the local prosecutor’s opposition and a serious claim of innocence.

Williams’s lawyer, Tricia Rojo Bushnell, questioned the legal system that is letting this happen:

Tonight, Missouri will execute an innocent man, Marcellus ‘Khaliifah’ Williams. The victim’s family opposes his execution. Jurors, who originally sentenced him to death, now oppose his execution. The prosecutor’s office that convicted and sentenced him to death has now admitted they were wrong and zealously fought to undo the conviction and save Mr. Williams’ life. More than one million concerned citizens and faith leaders implored Governor Parson to commute Marcellus’s death sentence. Missouri will kill him anyway.

That is not justice. And we must all question any system that would allow this to occur.

Sister Helen Prejean, the anti-death penalty advocate, echoed that:

The execution would be Missouri’s third execution this year.]

Marcellus Williams, who Missouri is still scheduled to execute this evening, currently has three petitions pending at the U.S. Supreme Court seeking to keep him alive.

The execution is currently set to go forward at 6:00 p.m. CT despite a serious claim that he is innocent and questions about how race figured into the capital trial of Williams, who is Black.

Williams’s execution is one of two scheduled for Tuesday. In the other, Texas is scheduled to execute Travis Mullis for the murder of his infant son in 2011. Mullis has no petitions pending at the Supreme Court, but I will update this story if that changes.

There have been 14 executions carried out in America thus far in 2024. There are four scheduled for this week.

Multiple officials, of both parties, have worked to stop Williams’s execution because of serious concerns about his conviction for a 1998 murder that Williams says he didn’t commit.

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson, a Republican, is facing a significant campaign — from the Innocence Project and others — urging him to stop Williams’s execution. Thus far, however, Parson and Attorney General Andrew Bailey, a Republican who used to be general counsel for the Missouri Department of Corrections and was appointed as attorney general by Parson, are defending the sentence and scheduled execution.

“The Governor should exercise his authority to grant clemency and commute Mr. Williams’ sentence to life without parole, or, at a minimum, stay the execution to allow the resolution of further appeals,” the Innocence Project petition states.

Parson denied Williams’s clemency petition on Monday, however, and has said in a statement on Tuesday that the execution will proceed.

At Law Dork, I am tracking Williams’s petitions for review pending at the Supreme Court, all of which have applications for a stay of execution associated with them, but I also will be watching for any other developments.

The first case, an appeal from the Missouri Supreme Court, addresses the inquiry that then-Gov. Eric Greitens, another Republican, began into Williams’s guilt and that Parson ended¹ — and whether Parson’s actions in doing so violated Williams’s due process rights.

UPDATE, 5:50 p.m. ET: The court rejected this request with no noted dissents:

The second case is a federal appeal and relates to new evidence of racial animus at issue in the jury selection during Williams’s trial.

UPDATE, 5:50 p.m. ET: That petition also was rejected with no noted dissents:

The third case is an appeal from the Missouri Supreme Court and raises questions about the changed position of the prosecutor’s office — St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell, a Democrat, opposes Williams’s execution — and the jury selection question.

UPDATE, 5:50 p.m. ET: The court also rejected this petition, but the three Democratic appointees would have granted Williams a stay of execution regarding this case.

Law Dork will have more on this developing story throughout the day.

1. Parson initially became governor when Greitens had to resign from the position. Parson was the lieutenant governor at the time. He was then elected governor in 2020.