Missouri Governor, State Supreme Court Refuse To Halt The Execution Of Man Convicted Of 1998 Killing

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — A Missouri man seeking to avoid execution suffered dual setbacks Monday as the state’s top court and governor each rejected requests to cancel his scheduled lethal injection.

Marcellus Williams is set to be executed at 6 p.m. Tuesday for the 1998 murder of Lisha Gayle, a social worker and former newspaper reporter who was repeatedly stabbed during a burglary of her suburban St. Louis home.

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson, a Republican, on Monday rejected Williams’ clemency request to spare him from the death penalty and instead sentence him to life in prison. Parson, a former sheriff, has been in office for 11 executions, and has never granted clemency.

The Missouri Supreme Court also on Monday rejected a request to cancel the execution so that a lower court could make a new determination about whether a trial prosecutor wrongly excluded a potential Black juror for racial reasons.

Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s office argued for the execution to proceed, telling the state Supreme Court that the trial prosecutor denied any racial motivations in removing potential Black jurors. Assistant Attorney General Michael Spillane also said officials in the prosecutor’s office did nothing improper — based on procedures at the time — by touching the murder weapon without gloves after it already had been tested by a crime lab.

Attorneys for Williams still have an appeal before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Williams, 55, has asserted his innocence. But his attorney did not pursue that claim Monday before the state’s highest court, instead focusing on alleged procedural errors in jury selection and the prosecution’s alleged mishandling of the murder weapon.

The state Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision,