Lawyers seek Supreme Court intervention hours before a Missouri inmate’s planned execution

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Lawyers for a Missouri man scheduled to be executed Tuesday evening have filed another appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court that alleges there were racial bias and constitutional errors at his trial.

Marcellus Williams, 55, has long maintained innocence in the 1998 death of Lisha Gayle, a social worker and former newspaper reporter who was repeatedly stabbed during a burglary of her suburban St. Louis home. The execution is opposed both by Gayle’s family and the prosecutor’s office that put Williams on death row — an unprecedented combination.

“The family defines closure as Marcellus being allowed to live,” the clemency petition stated. “Marcellus’ execution is not necessary.”

Williams is among inmates in five states who are scheduled to be executed in the span of a week — an unusually high number that defies a yearslong decline in the use and support of the death penalty in the U.S. The first was carried out Friday in South Carolina. The others are scheduled to take place in Texas on Tuesday, and in Oklahoma and Alabama on Thursday.

Williams’ hopes of having his sentence commuted to life in prison suffered dual setbacks Monday when, almost simultaneously, Republican Gov. Mike Parson denied clemency and the Missouri Supreme Court declined to grant a stay of execution.

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