A St. Louis County District Court judge on Wednesday approved a plea agreement that spares Marcellus Williams the death penalty but sends him to prison for life.
Williams, who was scheduled to be executed next month for the murder of a University City woman, is scheduled to be convicted of first-degree murder on Thursday in exchange for a life sentence.
The St. Louis County District Attorney’s Office planned to enter a plea of innocence and eventually release him Wednesday morning, but the hearing was postponed while county and state attorneys met with the judge.
The evidence of Williams’ innocence was based on a DNA test taken from the handle of the murder weapon, which experts said ruled out Williams as the killer. But on Wednesday it was reported in court that the DNA matched that of one of the case’s investigators, Ed Magee, who had processed some of the evidence, so lawyers could not argue that this did not exonerate Williams.
The Missouri Attorney General’s office said it would fight the agreement and continue to seek the death penalty, questioning the court’s authority to enter into such a deal.
The verdict is scheduled for Thursday morning.
Williams was sentenced to death for the 1998 murder of former St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Felicia Gayle. His execution was scheduled for September 24.
There was no hair or DNA evidence linking Williams to the crime scene. His conviction was based primarily on the testimony of a former girlfriend, Laura Asaro, and a prison informant named Henry Cole. Police also found Gayle’s purse and some of her belongings in Williams’ car, and he pawned her husband’s laptop to an acquaintance.
In addition to the DNA evidence, the prosecution’s motion sought to cast doubt on Cole and Asaro because both had a long criminal history and symptoms of mental illness.
This is the third time Williams has been imminently executed. The state Supreme Court had initially set a date of January 28, 2015. However, on January 22, 2015, the court granted a request for a stay and later appointed a special prosecutor to examine DNA evidence on the murder weapon.
After the judges rejected Williams’ efforts to review the DNA evidence in 2017, they again set an execution date, this time for August 22 of that year. Just hours before Williams’ death, then-Governor Eric Greitens issued a stay and appointed a committee of inquiry to see if Williams deserves clemency.
The Board held a non-public hearing in 2018. A member to St. Louis Public Radio in 2022 that its members met for the last time on July 21, 2021 and made verbal recommendations to Governor Mike Parson.
Pastor the board dissolved on June 29, 2023, seemingly without responding to those recommendations. Williams’ lawyers sued, arguing that Parson did not have the authority to take that step. The Supreme Court disagreed in a unanimous decision issued on 4 June and immediately set a third execution date — September 24th.
On June 6, the motion for annulment, which had been dormant since February, was initiated and brought the parties to a hearing on Wednesday.
As Hilton considered the settlement, dozens of supporters gathered in a park just blocks from the courthouse.
This is a developing story that will be updated.
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