Missouri executions

The family of Marcellus Williams has reported receiving death threats since the state of Missouri executed him last week. A representative of his son said the threats were made via phone calls, emails and anonymous social media messages.

Without intervention from the U.S. Supreme Court, Marcellus Williams will be executed after 6 p.m. Tuesday. Gov. Mike Parson has said he will not grant clemency to Williams.

Williams is set to be executed Tuesday for the 1998 killing of Felicia Gayle, a crime that he has always denied any role in. His attorneys have launched multiple legal battles in an attempt to save his life.

"Taking the life of Marcellus Williams would be an unequivocal statement that when a white woman is killed, a Black man must die. And any Black man will do," wrote NAACP president Derrick Johnson.

Without intervention from Gov. Mike Parson or the U.S. Supreme Court, Marcellus Williams will be executed Sept. 24. Williams was nearly saved from death row after prosecutors and attorneys reached a plea deal for life in prison, but it was later withdrawn.

Without the ability to definitively link DNA found on the murder weapon to an alternate suspect, attorneys for Marcellus Williams relied on raising questions about the original conviction. Williams is scheduled to be executed on September 24.

Marcellus Williams remains on death row in Missouri after 20 years, despite evidence that he is innocent in the 1998 murder of a St. Louis woman. But a plea deal that would have saved him from the death penalty, in exchange for life in prison, was blocked by the Missouri Supreme Court.

For nearly 25 years, Marcellus Williams has maintained his innocence in the murder of a St. Louis woman named Felicia Gayle. A plea deal that would have saved him from execution in less than a month and changed his sentence to life in prison was recently pulled by a judge.

A St. Louis County circuit judge accepted a deal that will keep Marcellus Williams in prison for life without parole. But late Wednesday, the Missouri Supreme Court granted a request from Attorney General Andrew Bailey to temporarily block the agreement.

Marcellus Williams’ execution was put on hold in 2017 after new DNA evidence came to light. But Missouri Gov. Mike Parson says there’s not enough evidence to postpone it further.

A diverse group of people tried to stop Dorsey’s execution, but both the courts and Gov. Mike Parson declined to halt his death sentence.

More than 150 people have called for Gov. Mike Parson to grant Brian Dorsey clemency — including corrections officers, Republican state representatives, jurors, and the Missouri Supreme Court judge who upheld Dorsey’s conviction and death sentence in 2009.