Thank you for being one of more than 36,000 people supporting Law Dork with a free subscription! I am so grateful. There is a lot going on, and I’m covering so many key legal stories here. Please consider upgrading to a paid subscription now for as little at $6 a month. If you do that, you’ll receive bonus features available only to paid subscribers — and support this essential reporting. I know that not everyone can afford it or prioritize a paid subscription, and, if that’s you, I am so glad you are here! Thanks, Chris SCOTUS petitions, clemency campaign are aimed at keeping Marcellus Williams aliveMissouri is scheduled to execute Williams tonight despite a serious innocence claim.
Marcellus Williams, who Missouri is still scheduled to execute this evening, currently has three petitions pending at the U.S. Supreme Court and a clemency petition pending with the state’s governor. The execution is still set to go forward at 6:00 p.m. CT despite a serious claim that he is innocent and questions about how race figured into the capital trial of Williams, who is Black. Williams’s execution is one of two scheduled for Tuesday. In the other, Texas is scheduled to execute Travis Mullis for the murder of his infant son in 2011. Mullis has no petitions pending at the Supreme Court, but I will update this story if that changes. There have been 14 executions carried out in America thus far in 2024. There are four scheduled for this week. Multiple officials, of both parties, have worked to stop Williams’s execution because of serious concerns about his conviction for a 1998 murder that Williams says he didn’t commit. Missouri Gov. Mike Parson, a Republican, is facing a significant campaign — from the Innocence Project and others — urging him to stop Williams’s execution. Thus far, Attorney General Andrew Bailey, a Republican who used to be general counsel for the Missouri Department of Corrections and was appointed as attorney general by Parson, is defending the sentence and scheduled execution. At Law Dork, I am tracking Williams’s petitions for review pending at the Supreme Court, all of which have applications for a stay of execution associated with them, but I also will be watching for any other developments. The first case, an appeal from the Missouri Supreme Court, addresses the inquiry that then-Gov. Eric Greitens, another Republican, began into Williams’s guilt and that Parson ended — and whether Parson’s actions in doing so violated Williams’s due process rights.
The second case is a federal appeal and relates to new evidence of racial animus at issue in the jury selection during Williams’s trial.
The third case is an appeal from the Missouri Supreme Court and raises questions about the changed position of the prosecutor’s office — St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell, a Democrat, opposes Williams’s execution — and the jury selection question.
Law Dork will have more on this developing story throughout the day.
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