Greitens stops execution after questions about DNA evidence

Gov. Eric Greitens has granted a stay of execution to Marcellus Williams, who was facing death by injection at 6 p.m.

He said he was appointing a board of inquiry to investigate the case.

“A sentence of death is the ultimate, permanent punishment," he said in a statement. "To carry out the death penalty, the people of Missouri must have confidence in the judgment of guilt. In light of new information, I am appointing a Board of Inquiry in this case.”

• Here's our updated story with more information and reactions

Our earlier story:

Is the state of Missouri about to execute an innocent man for murder?

Attorneys for Marcellus Williams, who is scheduled to die by injection at 6 p.m. Tuesday, insist it could be, after DNA found on the murder weapon did not match Williams’.

Williams, 48, was sentenced to death in 2001 for the fatal stabbing of former Post-Dispatch reporter Lisha Gayle, 42, at her home in University City on Aug. 11, 1998. The prosecution said Williams was burglarizing the home when Gayle, who had been taking a shower, surprised him. She fought for her life as she was stabbed repeatedly.

Williams’ attorneys have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stop his execution. They are seeking a new hearing or the commutation of his sentence to life in prison. And they are asking Gov. Eric Greitens to grant clemency.

The attorneys claim recent DNA tests could prove Williams’ innocence. Using technology that was not available at the time of the killing, those tests show that DNA found on the knife matched an unknown male, according to an analysis by Greg Hampikian, a biologist with Boise State University.

The Missouri Supreme Court in 2015 postponed Williams’ execution to allow time for the DNA tests, but last week after results of those tests were made available, the same court denied his petition to stop the execution and either appoint a special master to hear his innocence claim or vacate the death sentence and order his sentence commuted to life in prison.

Now the attorneys have taken the argument to Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, circuit justice for the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which includes Missouri and six other Midwestern states. Gorsuch had not ruled by Monday evening.

In its response to the U.S. Supreme Court, the state said it had a wealth of non-DNA evidence to convict Williams. The state could prove Williams had sold Gayle’s laptop to a third party after the killing, and had two witnesses who independently said he confessed to them. And, the state said, the lack of DNA evidence did not mean he was innocent.

A spokesman for Greitens said members of the governor’s staff “will not be able to comment” about the clemency request until Tuesday.

The case has attracted national attention because no forensic evidence has ever pointed to Williams, and now what has been tested points away from him.

“As a matter of fairness, what do you do when you’ve said somebody should get DNA testing, and they get the DNA testing, and the DNA testing suggests they didn’t commit the murder?” asked Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit clearinghouse for studies and reports related to capital punishment. “Missouri is trying to execute him without giving him an evidentiary hearing on what that DNA evidence means.”

He said DNA exonerations in the last two decades have “shown us that all the other evidence the jury relied on in those cases was wrong. And in case after case after case, prosecutors and judges had said it doesn’t matter because there is overwhelming evidence of guilt.”

Gayle was a Post-Dispatch reporter from 1981 to 1992. She left the paper to do volunteer social work with children and the poor.