Exonerees call on Missouri Republican attorney general to stop fighting innocence claims

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Exonerees and advocates on Thursday called out Missouri’s Republican attorney general for pushing for a man’s impending execution despite efforts by the local prosecutor to overturn the man’s murder conviction.

Marcellus Williams is scheduled to die Sept. 24, roughly a month after a planned Aug. 21 hearing before a St. Louis County court judge to determine whether he’s innocent.

Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s office had asked judges to stop the hearing, arguing that the state Supreme Court had rejected Williams’ innocence claims twice.

“At bottom, the evidence supporting conviction at trial was overwhelming,” attorneys for the state wrote in a June motion that was denied.

Ray Krone, a co-founder of Witness to Innocence, a group that advocates for death row prisoners who might have been wrongfully convicted, called on Bailey to “reverse course” and “support people with serious innocence claims, like Mr. Williams.”

Krone and other advocates spoke to reporters in the state Capitol building flanked by signs that read, “You can release an innocent man from prison, but you can’t release him from the grave.”

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“A great leader, he or she will love to accept accountability and do the right thing,” said the group’s executive director, Herman Lindsey. “He or she will not take pride of killing an innocent person to gain votes.”

Both Krone and Lindsey are former death row inmates who were wrongfully convicted.

Bailey, who is seeking the Republican nomination to seek reelection in next week’s primary, said Thursday that the justice system “should respect and defer to the finality of the jury’s determination.”

“Too often, people forget about all of the evidence that was used to convict the defendant — the evidence that jury relied on — and the victims,” Bailey told reporters. “And I want to make sure that we always honor the victims’ voices, because they get forgotten.”

In January, St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell submitted a motion to vacate Williams’ 1998 murder conviction, citing DNA evidence. A 2021 Missouri law allows prosecuting attorneys to file a motion to vacate a conviction if they believe an inmate could be innocent or was otherwise erroneously convicted.

Williams, 55, was convicted of first-degree murder in the 1998 stabbing death of Lisha Gayle during a robbery of her suburban St. Louis home. He was hours from being executed in August 2017 when he was given a reprieve after testing that wasn’t available at the time of the killing showed that DNA on the knife matched someone else, not Williams.

Williams is one of several prisoners claiming innocence who have faced opposition from the attorney general’s office.

In 2023, Bailey opposed the release of Lamar Johnson, who spent 28 years in prison for murder. A St. Louis judge overturned Johnson’s conviction and he was freed.

Sandra Hemme, 64, was freed in July after a judge ruled in June that her attorneys had established clear and convincing evidence of “actual innocence” and overturned her conviction. Bailey fought her release.

Christopher Dunn, 52, walked free on Tuesday after 34 years behind bars. A judge overturned Dunn’s murder conviction on July 22 and ordered his immediate release, but Dunn remained imprisoned for several more days during a chaotic appeal process led by Bailey’s office.

Political scientists have said Bailey’s efforts are a way to appear tough on crime and shore up votes in advance of a tough primary race.