������Ƶ

ST. LOUIS COUNTY — Marcellus “Khaliifah” Williams is now asking the U.S. Supreme Court to halt his execution and review a claim that his due process was violated when Gov. Mike Parson broke up a review board before it could reach a conclusion about his innocence.

The filings with the country’s highest court come six days before Williams is scheduled to die, and about a day after lawyers submitted two separate filings to Missouri’s supreme court and the Missouri Court of Appeals Eastern District.

Missouri U.S. Rep. Cori Bush on Wednesday said she sent a letter to Parson urging him to grant Williams clemency and halt the execution.

“Proceeding with the execution of Marcellus Williams would be a grave injustice and would do serious and lasting harm,” she wrote.

As of Wednesday, Williams was still set to die by lethal injection next week for the 1998 murder of former Post-Dispatch reporter Felicia “Lisha” Gayle in 1998 in her University City home.

Williams’ writ of certiorari asked the U.S. Supreme Court to revisit the question of whether a prisoner has due process rights in executive clemency proceedings.

The filing explains that in 2017, then-Gov. Eric Greitens granted a stay of execution for Williams and appointed a board of inquiry, made up of retired judges, to review Williams’ innocence claim. The board was supposed to issue an opinion on whether clemency should be granted.

But six years later, Parson dissolved it. It is unclear whether the board ever made a decision.

Williams filed a civil action challenging the dissolution and the trial court ruled that Parson’s action exceeded his authority under state law and deprived Williams of due process.

The Missouri Supreme Court disagreed and held that prisoners have no due process rights in clemency proceedings. Parson then scheduled the September execution date.

On Monday, St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell’s office asked the Missouri Supreme Court to review St. Louis County Judge Bruce Hilton’s ruling on Thursday that upheld Williams’ first-degree murder conviction.

The following day, Williams’ team of attorneys announced they had filed a motion asking the Missouri Court of Appeals Eastern District to reconsider its 2010 denial of Williams’ claim that a trial prosecutor unconstitutionally removed Black prospective jurors because of their race. The almost 400-page motion laid out new evidence from trial prosecutor Keith Larner’s testimony during a day-long Aug. 28 innocence hearing.

Any of the three courts could issue a stay on Williams’ execution to give the judges time to review the claims.

Williams was convicted in 2001 of brutally killing Gayle. She was found by her husband and had been stabbed 43 times.

He was sentenced to death by a jury made up of 11 white people and one Black person.

Williams, who is Black, has unsuccessfully appealed and challenged his first-degree murder conviction for more than two decades, ultimately taking the case to the Missouri Supreme Court.

In January, Bell’s office filed to vacate Williams’ conviction, arguing he was innocent.

Eight months later, in August, Hilton heard hours of testimony rehashing evidence that focused on contamination of DNA on the murder weapon, potential racial bias in the jury selection and, in Williams’ lawyer’s view, the unreliable witnesses on which much of his case hung.

Hilton said that Williams’ claim of innocence “unraveled” when an Aug. 19 DNA report showed the DNA profiles on the murder weapon were consistent with Larner and an investigator on the original case — which contradicted previous claims that the killer’s DNA was on the knife and would prove Williams was innocent.

“(Williams’) remaining evidence amounts to nothing more than re-packaged arguments about evidence that was available at trial and involved in Williams’ unsuccessful direct appeal and post-conviction challenges,” Hilton wrote in his ruling.

Williams and his defense team have maintained his innocence, and have repeatedly pointed out that no physical evidence connects him to the crime other than a stolen laptop he sold to a neighbor.

The prosecution’s two main trial witnesses — Williams’ former cellmate and an ex-girlfriend — have since died.