Wesley Bell, the St. Louis prosecuting attorney, filed a motion earlier this year to take Marcellus Williams off of death row and planned to oversee a new hearing to vacate his first-degree murder conviction last week. Williams’ plea deal was set aside after the trial.
Sean O’Brien is a professor at UMKC and a former public defender. He says there’s enough physical evidence to prove Williams’ innocence.
“There's DNA on the handle of the knife that was the murder weapon of two different males, neither of them are Marcellus,” O’Brien said.
After the knife was examined, experts found DNA of one of Williams’ original prosecutors, showing that prosecutors mishandled the evidence. There were also bloody footprints at the scene that point away from Williams.
O’Brien says the conviction of Williams was largely based on the incentivized testimonies of two individuals: Laura Asaro, Williams’ former girlfriend, and Henry Cole, a jailhouse informant. They each say Williams confessed to them that he murdered Gayle. But O’Brien says their accounts reflect newspaper articles that were published before they testified, and they contradict each other.
Williams’ next hearing is scheduled for Wednesday, where new DNA evidence will be presented.
- Sean O'Brien, UMKC Law Professor
