Wesley Bell Seeks to Overturn Marcellus Williams' 2001 Murder Conviction

St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell is seeking to overturn the conviction of death row inmate Marcellus Williams — using a relatively new state law that allows prosecutors to intervene in cases where they believe someone was wrongly convicted.

Williams was found guilty of the 1998 murder of former Post-Dispatch writer Felicia "Lisha" Gayle.  Bell filed a motion to vacate that conviction in St. Louis County late Friday.

As he writes, DNA evidence discovered in 2017 has cast serious doubt on the jury's conviction. The River City Journalism Fund reported on those doubts in a 2022 RFT cover story.

In his brief, Bell writes, "This never-before-considered evidence, when paired with the relative paucity of other, credible evidence supporting guilt, as well as additional considerations of ineffective assistance of counsel and racial discrimination in jury selection, casts inexorable doubt on Mr. Williams’s conviction and sentence."

That same DNA evidence led Governor Eric Greitens to convene a board of inquiry and halt Williams' scheduled execution just hours before he was slated to die. That inquiry later stalled, and Governor Mike Parson disbanded the board before it issued any findings (which led to a lawsuit by the Innocence Project, which still pending).

In a statement, Williams' attorneys wrote, "We are grateful to St. Louis County Prosecutor Wesley Bell and his office for reviewing the evidence and filing a motion asking the St. Louis County Circuit Court to overturn Mr. Williams’ conviction, providing a long awaited avenue for all of the evidence of Mr. Williams’ innocence to finally be heard. We encourage other prosecutors to follow this example and act to correct injustices that have occurred in their jurisdiction as required by their ethical duties.

"We are confident that any full and fair process will lead to the inevitable conclusion — that Mr. Williams is innocent and his conviction must be overturned."

Williams' lawyers include the Innocence Project, Midwest Innocence Project, Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner, the Federal Public Defender Capital Habeas Unit in Kansas City and attorney Kent Gipson.

The Missouri legislature passed a new law in 2021 allowing prosecutors to take action to vacate convictions in cases where they believe someone has been wrongfully convicted. The law was passed in part after St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner was stymied in her efforts to free Lamar Johnson, who she argued was innocent. The first case to successfully use the new law, however, came out of Kansas City, where Kevin Strickland was freed after 42 years in prison for a murder that prosecutors said he had not committed.

If Bell is successful, Williams would be the first death row inmate in Missouri to have his conviction struck down using the new law.



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