Murderer executed after 20 years on death row despite doubts over his guilt

A prisoner who spent 20 years on death row in the US has been executed even though prosecutors and the victim's family say he should not lose his life.

Marcellus Williams, 55, was put to death by lethal injection at a prison in Bonne Terre, in northern Missouri, shortly after 6pm local time on Tuesday, according to state officials.

Hours earlier, the US Supreme Court declined to intervene in the case, just as the state's governor and its highest court had done the day before.

Williams, whose son watched him die from another room, was found guilty in 2003 of killing Felicia "Lisha" Gayle, who was stabbed to death during a burglary at her home in St Louis five years earlier.

There were too many doubts about the case to put him to death, according to Wesley Bell, of the St Louis County Prosecutors office that handled the original conviction.

Among Mr Bell's concerns were the reliability of the two main trial witnesses, the exclusion of black jurors because of their race [Williams was also black], and the absence of the prisoner's DNA on the murder weapon, after new testing.

Further tests showed it did have traces of the DNA of a prosecutor and an investigator who worked on the case as both had handled the knife without gloves.

In a written statement, Mr Bell said that "if there is even the shadow of a doubt of innocence, the death penalty should never be an option".

Last month, prosecutors and Williams' legal team agreed a plea deal to change his sentence to life imprisonment, but it was blocked by the Missouri Supreme Court at the request of state attorney general Andrew Bailey.

Earlier this month a state judge upheld the conviction, concluding the lack of evidence on the knife was not enough to establish his innocence.

The ruling was confirmed by the state supreme court on Monday, the day Missouri governor Mike Parson, a Republican, also turned down a request for clemency.

Mr Parson said in a statement after Williams' execution that he hoped it gave "finality" to a case "that has languished for decades, revictimising Ms Gayle's family over and over again".

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It was the third time Williams had faced execution after winning reprieves in 2015 and 2017.

In their petition for clemency, Williams' lawyers told the US Supreme Court Ms Gayle's own family thought that he should not be executed, given doubts about his guilt, and that they had approved the plea deal made in August.

Williams' public defenders said they couldn't understand why the "admitted racial discrimination" in his trial was left unaddressed.

Williams, who converted to Islam, said: "All praise be to Allah in every situation!!!", in his handwritten final statement.