Marcellus Williams' Final Words Before Missouri Execution

By Free Republic | Created at 2024-09-26 04:26:47 | Updated at 2024-10-01 04:11:40 4 days ago

Marcellus Williams' Final Words Before Missouri Execution
Newsweek ^ | Sep 25, 2024 | Aila Slisco

Posted on 09/25/2024 9:19:54 PM PDT by nickcarraway

The state of Missouri has executed Marcellus Williams despite concerns that the convicted murderer might have been innocent.

Williams died by lethal injection shortly after 6 p.m. Tuesday at Missouri state prison in Bonne Terre. He was convicted and sentenced to death in 2001 for the 1998 murder of Felicia Gayle, a social worker and former St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter who was fatally stabbed during a daytime burglary.

Republican Missouri Governor Mike Parson, Missouri's Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court all rejected last-minute attempts to halt the execution, ignoring clemency pleas from Williams' lawyers, prosecutors and members of the victim's family.

Missouri Department of Corrections Communications Director Karen Pojmann emailed Newsweek the following handwritten "final statement" from Williams: "All Praise Be to Allah in Every Situation!!!"

Marcellus Williams, 55, was executed in Missouri by lethal injection on Tuesday for a 1998 murder despite prosecutors and the victim's family calling for clemency. Courtesy of Marcellus Williams’ legal team Williams submitted his final statement to prison officials in the days before his scheduled execution.

Officials said that Williams ate a last meal of chicken wings and Tater Tots shortly before 11 a.m. Tuesday and was visited in his final hours by Imam Jalahii Kacem, who accompanied him to the execution room.

The St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney's Office urged officials and courts to call off the execution over concerns regarding the trial's jury selection and potential racial bias—Williams was Black, while Gayle was white—alongside the fact that DNA evidence did not tie Williams to the murder.

"Even for those who disagree on the death penalty, when there is a shadow of a doubt of any defendant's guilt, the irreversible punishment of execution should not be an option," St. Louis Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell said in a statement.

(Excerpt) Read more at newsweek.com ...

TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; News/Current Events; US: Missouri
KEYWORDS: crime; deathpenalty; execution; lastwords; missouri; murder

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1 posted on 09/25/2024 9:19:54 PM PDT by nickcarraway

To: nickcarraway

despite concerns that the convicted murderer might have been innocent.

Despite his life of crime, confessing to his girlfriend and threatening to kill her, getting found with the victims purse, knowing details about the murder the police kept secret, selling the laptop stolen at the murder scene, despite witnesses seeing him in a blood soaked shirt immediately afterwards, and more. Despite all that, there are concerns he might be innocent. /s

2 posted on 09/25/2024 9:25:40 PM PDT by DesertRhino (2016 Star Wars, 2020 The Empire Strikes Back, 2024... RETURN OF THE JEDI. )

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