MaghrebGator
Kraken
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A man named Marcellus Williams was charged with murder based on the testimonies of two witnesses after a reward of 10.000$ was issued, claiming that Williams had confessed to the crime privately on two heavily inconsistent testimonies. Williams was sentenced to death in August 2001. During his stay on death row, it was noted by anti-death penalty activists that the DNA found at the scene did not match that of Williams, leading to calls for his execution to be stopped. Additionally, Gayle's family had repeatedly stated that they did not want Williams to be executed. He was executed by the state of Missouri on September 24, 2024.
Although no physical evidence or crime scene evidence connected him to the crime and the state presented no motive, his conviction primarily relied upon the inconsistent testimonies of two incentivized witnesses, whose statements were inconsistent with the crime scene evidence, with their own prior statements, and with each other. In 2016, testing of DNA samples retrieved from the crime scene entirely excluded Mr. Williams as a contributor, contradicting the testimony-based evidence used to convict him.
Although no physical evidence or crime scene evidence connected him to the crime and the state presented no motive, his conviction primarily relied upon the inconsistent testimonies of two incentivized witnesses, whose statements were inconsistent with the crime scene evidence, with their own prior statements, and with each other. In 2016, testing of DNA samples retrieved from the crime scene entirely excluded Mr. Williams as a contributor, contradicting the testimony-based evidence used to convict him.
Marcellus Williams - Midwest Innocence Project
09/12/2024 BREAKING NEWS UPDATE: Today, the Circuit Court for St. Louis County, Missouri denied Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell’s motion to vacate Marcellus Williams’ conviction and death sentence. Read the update and court’s ruling here. For more than 20 years, Marcellus Williams has lived...
themip.org