The state of Missouri’s impending execution of Marcellus Williams has raised strong concerns from Catholic voices in and out of the state, as authorities push ahead with his death by lethal injection—scheduled for Sept. 24—in the face of persistent doubts surrounding Mr. Williams’s guilt.
Mr. Williams, 55, spent 23 years on death row after being convicted of first-degree murder in 2001. He was found guilty of the killing of Felicia Gayle, a former reporter for The St. Louis Post-Dispatch who had been stabbed to death in her St. Louis home in 1998.
The Missouri Catholic Conference has expressed serious reservations about the execution. Jamie Morris, a spokesperson from the conference, said in an email to America that “Mr. Williams’ case has been fraught with concerns over the reliability of key witnesses who refused to testify until after they received financial compensation for doing so. There is also a complete lack of DNA evidence linking Mr. Williams to the murder. Even the trial’s prosecutor himself has issued a statement that Williams should be granted clemency.”
Mr. Morris added that “whether a death row inmate is innocent or guilty does not affect our stance on the acceptability of capital punishment. Beyond this specific case, the church is concerned that the use of the death penalty promotes revenge as a principle of criminal justice and does not allow for the possibility of redemption.”
The case has also attracted significant national attention. The Catholic Mobilizing Network, a national campaign to end the death penalty and support restorative justice initiatives, has been particularly involved in advocacy on Mr. Williams’s behalf. In a statement provided to America, executive director Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy said that “the Catholic position of ‘inadmissibility in all cases’ on capital punishment is crystal clear—no exclusions or exceptions. In the particular case of Mr. Williams, his strong claim of innocence only underscores the depths to which the death penalty is contrary to human dignity.”
“The Missouri governor has a chance to do the right thing and stop this execution,” Ms. Vaillancourt Murphy said. “It’s deeply troubling that in a one-week span this month, five executions are scheduled, including Mr. Williams on Sept. 24.” The Death Penalty Information Center reports that between Sept. 20 and Sept. 26, executions have also been scheduled in Alabama, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas.
Mr. Williams has consistently professed his innocence, and his attorneys point out that his DNA was not found on the murder weapon. Indeed, there is to date no physical evidence connecting Mr. Williams to the crime, a fact recognized even by current St. Louis County prosecutor Wesley Bell, who had moved in Jan. 2024 to overturn the conviction.
Mr. Williams was originally scheduled to be executed during the summer of 2017 but was granted an emergency stay by then-governor Eric Greitens, who ordered that a review board be established to reexamine the DNA evidence.
In June 2023, however, current governor Michael Parson ordered that the review board’s work be halted and that the execution of Mr. Williams proceed. “This Board was established nearly six years ago, and it is time to move forward,” the governor said at the time. “We could stall and delay for another six years, deferring justice, leaving a victim’s family in limbo, and solving nothing. This administration won’t do that.”
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, on Aug. 21 of this year, the state supreme court barred Mr. Williams from entering a new plea that would have reduced his capital sentence to life without the possibility of parole, clearing the way for his execution to proceed. On Sept. 18, Mr. Williams filed a last-ditch appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court, alleging that Mr. Parson’s order to break up the review board violated his right to due process.
Ms. Murphy connected Mr. Williams’s case to the upcoming Jubilee Year designated by Pope Francis. A central theme is amnesty for prisoners. “The Holy Father called on all Catholics to demand ‘dignified conditions for those in prison, respect for their human rights and above all the abolition of the death penalty, a provision at odds with Christian faith and one that eliminates all hope of forgiveness and rehabilitation,’” she said. “Pope Francis reiterated this commitment recently in an article published in Vatican News. In it he says, ‘Capital executions, far from bringing justice, fuel a sense of revenge that becomes a dangerous poison for the body of our civil societies.’”
Missouri authorities have so far remained unmoved by clemency appeals. Mr. Williams’s fate is now in the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court.
