Was Marcellus Williams innocent?

On the unavoidability of wrongful convictions

On September 24, 2024, the state of Missouri executed Marcellus Williams for the murder of Felicia Gayle. Williams always maintained his innocence. Shortly before Williams’ execution, the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney concluded that there were constitutional violations at Williams’ trial and asked the Missouri state courts to vacate his death sentence. But the Missouri courts refused to do so. The Prosecuting Attorney sought a stay of execution from the Supreme Court, but the Supreme Court denied a stay, with Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson dissenting.

Like many capital cases, Williams’ case has provoked much debate. Williams’ defenders insist that Missouri unconstitutionally executed an innocent man. Governor Mike Parson claims that there was “overwhelming evidence” of Williams’ guilt.

As I see it, the truth is in between. The evidence of Williams’ guilt was not overwhelming. The state’s case had serious weaknesses, and in my view, there is reasonable doubt as to whether Williams committed the murder. Nonetheless, lingering doubt about guilt isn’t a sufficient basis to overturn a conviction. Ultimately, Williams’ case illustrates that it is impossible to reduce the risk of wrongful convictions to zero, even in capital cases.

The trial

On August 11, 1998, Felicia Gayle, a journalist at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, was stabbed to death in her home. The murderer stole Gayle’s purse, as well as the laptop of her husband, Dr. Daniel Picus.

Gayle’s murder sparked significant publicity. But for ten months after the murder, the police had no leads. There was abundant physical evidence at the crime scene—a knife, bloody fingerprints, bloody shoeprints—but the police couldn’t get any useful information from it. Dr. Picus offered a $10,000 reward for information that would lead to the murderer’s capture.

Ten months later, on June 4, 1999, the police got its first real clue. A man named Henry Cole, who had just been released from jail, told the police that his cellmate, Marcellus Williams, had confessed the murder to him. Williams had been incarcerated since August 31, 1998, for an unrelated robbery—but on August 11, 1998, the date of the murder, Williams wasn’t in jail. Cole unapologetically told police that his motivation for coming forward was the reward money.

Cole told police that Williams had told one other person about the murder—Williams’ girlfriend, Laura Asaro. Detectives asked Cole to persuade Asaro to incriminate Williams. Cole tried his best, but Asaro refused. Two months later, on August 5, 1999, Asaro was arrested on unrelated charges. Detectives told Asaro that if she cooperated, the charges would be dropped and she might be eligible for the reward money. She still wouldn’t talk.

On November 17, 1999, the police visited Asaro again and threatened to arrest her on outstanding warrants. This time she broke. She told the police that Williams had confessed the crime to her.

The next day, the police searched Williams’ car, which had been parked on the street since his arrest 15 months earlier. A St. Louis Post-Dispatch ruler, calculator, and medical dictionary were found.

Asaro told police that Williams stole Dr. Picus’s laptop and pawned it to a man named Glenn Roberts. The police visited Roberts’ home and found Dr. Picus’s laptop.

Williams was charged with Gayle’s murder. At Williams’ trial, there was no physical evidence against Williams. The bloody shoeprints at the scene didn’t match Williams’ feet. Hairs on the carpet didn’t belong to Williams.

Instead, the case against Williams boiled down to the following evidence:

1. Cole testified that Williams confessed to him.

2. Asaro testified that Williams confessed to her. She also offered other, highly incriminating testimony, such as that she saw Gayle’s ID in Williams’ car after the murder.

3. Gayle’s ID was gone, but a ruler and calculator were found in Williams’ car, and the prosecutor argued that they belonged to Gayle. These items weren’t definitively linked to Gayle, but the ruler said “St. Louis Post-Dispatch” on it and there was evidence that Gayle carried a calculator in her purse. (Dr. Picus confirmed the medical dictionary in the car didn’t belong to him.)

4. Roberts testified that Williams had sold him Dr. Picus’ laptop shortly after the murder, and the police found the laptop in his house.

5. Williams had an extensive criminal history.

Based on this evidence, the jury convicted Williams and sentenced him to death.

At first glance, the prosecution’s case looks strong. But looks can be deceiving. In my view, there’s a reasonable case that Asaro and Cole framed Williams for Gayle’s murder.

Let’s take a closer look at each piece of the state’s case. (Caveat: I do not have the original trial transcript. I only have descriptions of the trial testimony from public filings. If I am wrong about any of this, I am happy to be corrected.)

Cole’s testimony

Cole testified that his cellmate, Williams, confessed to him. If Cole is telling the truth, then Williams is almost certainly guilty. But Cole could be lying.

There are several reasons to question Cole’s veracity.

1. Cole had an extensive criminal history, with felony convictions and prison sentences all over the country. He also was a crack cocaine addict with a history of mental illness.

2. Cole had a motive to lie—he repeatedly told the detectives that he wanted the reward money and even asked for an up-front payment.

3. Williams had no motive to confess to Cole. I realize prisoners confess all the time, but Williams seems like a careful guy—under the prosecutor’s theory of the case, he committed a murder while leaving no physical evidence whatsoever. Why spill his heart to Cole and also lead Cole to Asaro, the one person who had personal knowledge that could incriminate Williams?

4. While I lack personal experience of cellmates confessing brutal stabbings to me, Cole’s description of Williams’ confession does not ring true. It’s very detailed, with information that seems carefully curated to bolster the prosecution’s case. For instance, according to Cole’s testimony, Williams confessed that he took the following items from the scene of the crime: an Apple laptop computer and computer bag, cheap jewelry, a coin purse, an I.D., a wallet, and keys. Is it really plausible that Williams said this to Cole during his jailhouse confession?

That said, it’s clear that Cole wasn’t making this up out of whole cloth. Cole led the police to Asaro, who led the police to the laptop. Cole had no independent connection to Asaro, so he couldn’t have known about Asaro’s connection to the crime unless Williams told him. So Williams told Cole something about the crime. But Williams might have told Cole that someone else —say, an associate of Asaro—committed the crime, and Cole might have altered Williams’ story to incriminate Williams.

At trial, the prosecutor testified that Cole must be credible because, when he originally spoke to the police, he knew facts that weren’t public. This isn’t persuasive for a few reasons:

1. The supposedly non-public information is pretty weak. It’s stuff like “the murderer twisted the knife.” Cole could have guessed it.

2. The initial conversation between Cole and the police, which occurred in a police car, wasn’t recorded. The police could have fed him these details during that conversation.

3. Again, Williams clearly told Cole something about the murder, so the fact that Cole has non-public information about the murder doesn’t prove anything.

Why would Cole have framed Williams? Well, consider matters from Cole’s perspective. Suppose Williams told Cole that a third party committed the crime. Cole wants the $10,000 reward. But if the third party’s not in jail, he might take revenge on Cole if Cole rats on him. Why not alter the story to incriminate a man who is already in jail, and hence not a threat?

Or maybe Cole and Williams had a dispute in prison. There are innumerable reasons Cole might have wanted to frame his ex-cellmate.

Of course, Cole knew that he wouldn’t get the reward unless Asaro corroborated his story. But remember what Cole did right after talking to the police—he volunteered to reach out to Asaro to persuade her to provide information to the police! In a world where Cole is trying to frame Williams, this makes sense—Cole might have wanted to explain to Asaro what he told the police and why it would make sense for her to tell the same story.

Indeed, thinking about this more, the police’s reaction to Cole’s statement was very strange. There’s a high-profile murder. It’s all over the newspapers. For ten months, the police has been investigating, with no leads. Suddenly, Cole comes forward with a detailed confession and non-public information about the crime. Cole pinpoints Asaro as someone who could corroborate his story. Shouldn’t the police have interviewed Asaro immediately? Instead, they ask Cole to be an informant, even though Cole has never met Asaro in his life and is generally a highly sketchy individual. Detectives don’t talk to Asaro until two months go by and Cole has no luck contacting Asaro. What’s going on here? My guess is that Cole enthusiastically volunteered to be an informant and persuaded the police he could get Asaro to cooperate—because he wanted to get to Asaro first.

Asaro’s testimony

Asaro initially didn’t cooperate with police, either. But in November 1999, 15 months after the crime, when the police threatened to arrest her, Asaro finally talked, and later testified at trial.

Asaro testified that she had started dating Williams two or three months before the murder. The day after the murder, Asaro found a woman’s purse in Williams’ car and confronted him, alleging he was cheating. Williams responded that no, the purse belonged to a journalist he had murdered. According to Asaro, Williams also threatened to kill her and her family if she ever told anyone. Asaro gave the police other highly incriminating information, such as that she saw the victim’s ID card in the trunk of Williams’ car.

Like Cole’s testimony, Asaro’s testimony is devastating if you believe her. And Asaro clearly knew something about the murder, given that she directed the police to Glenn Roberts, who had Dr. Picus’s laptop.

But that doesn’t mean that Asaro is telling the truth. She might know the murderer’s identity—but the murderer might be someone else who she’s trying to protect. It’s plausible that Asaro was acquainted with a different violent felon who could have committed the murder. Asaro was a sex worker, addicted to crack cocaine, who was constantly being arrested. One would suspect that not every person in her LinkedIn network had an unblemished resume. So the question is: was Williams the murderer, or was Asaro trying to frame Williams for a murder committed by someone else she knew?

There are several reasons to question Asaro’s testimony.

1. Asaro was constantly being arrested and had a reputation for lying.

2. Asaro’s story is … unusual. She claimed that after she accused Williams of cheating, Williams, to appease her, said that he had actually committed an incredibly heinous stabbing. According to Asaro, Williams then threatened to kill her entire family if she told anyone. Maybe I’m just a naive guy, but is that really better than cheating? Like, did he really expect her to think, “well, if she thinks I’m a cheater she’ll dump me, but if I tell her I’m Jack the Ripper and also threaten to kill her entire family, our love will blossom?”

3. It apparently worked, though! According to the trial testimony, Asaro visited Williams six times in prison after Williams was arrested on August 31. Six times! To review the history of Asaro and Williams’ relationship (according to the prosecution): within two or three months of getting together, Williams (1) committed a brutal murder, (2) threatened to kill Asaro’s entire family, and (3) got arrested on an unrelated robbery charge. Also, (4) there was testimony that Williams had, separate from all of this, shot Asaro’s ex-boyfriend. While I get that the course of true love never did run smooth, shouldn’t Asaro have decided it was time for a new boyfriend? To me, Asaro’s loyalty to Williams implies that Williams was keeping Asaro’s secret—not the other way around.

The items in the car

After interviewing Asaro, the police searched Williams’ car, and discovered a calculator and a ruler that said “St. Louis Post-Dispatch” on it. The prosecution argued that Williams took these items from the crime scene. On the surface, this theory makes sense. Dr. Picus told police that Gayle kept a calculator in her purse; he didn’t report the ruler missing, but Gayle did work for the Post-Dispatch.

At trial, the defense suggested that Asaro might have planted the items in the car. She had the means of doing so—there was evidence that she had access to the car and had retrieved some items from it while Williams was in jail.

On this issue, I think the defense has a plausible argument. The prosecution’s version of events is questionable at best.

First, why would Williams have left these items in the car? According to the prosecution’s theory of the case, Williams fled the scene, disposed of his bloody clothes, disposed of the stolen purse, disposed of the stolen laptop, but left these worthless, yet incredibly incriminating, items in the glove compartment of his car. Why would he do this?

At trial the state theorized these items might have been “trophies,” as though Williams was a serial killer. I doubt that. And if he did take “trophies,” why would those “trophies” just happen to include a ruler with the name of the victim’s employer on it?

Also, even assuming Williams took trophies from the scene of the crime, wouldn’t he have asked Asaro to throw out the trophies after he went to jail? He must have known that his car was just sitting there, waiting to be towed and searched, with evidence in the glove compartment directly tying him to a brutal murder.

And even if he didn’t ask Asaro to throw out the trophies, wouldn’t Asaro have done that on her own? There was trial evidence that Asaro also had access to the car while Williams was in jail. And the trophies put her at risk, too. Why would she keep them in the car? It just doesn’t make sense that this incriminating evidence stays in the car for 15 months.

Finally … and most puzzlingly to me … a medical dictionary was found in the car too, but Dr. Picus confirmed that it wasn’t his. So why is it there? Williams doesn’t strike me as the type who would read medical dictionaries out of academic interest.

It’s plausible, to me at least, that Asaro (1) read in the newspaper that the victim worked for the Post-Dispatch and her husband was a doctor, and (2) put items in the car that, she thought, would look like they came from a Post-Dispatch journalist and a doctor: a ruler that said “Post-Dispatch” on it and a medical dictionary. Maybe she also read that a calculator was stolen from the crime scene and put a calculator in the car.

Where did she get the Post-Dispatch ruler? Who knows? Maybe she had a friend who was a janitor at the Post-Dispatch building. It’s speculative, I know. All I’m saying is that I have trouble believing that Williams took those items from the crime scene and put them in the car, and they stayed there for 15 months.

The laptop in Glenn Roberts’ house

Asaro told the police that Williams sold Dr. Picus’s laptop to Glenn Roberts. The laptop was found in Roberts’ house, and Roberts testified at trial that Williams pawned the laptop to him shortly after the murder.

OK, three possibilities here:

1. Roberts is lying: he got the laptop some other way (perhaps from Asaro later on).

2. Roberts is telling the truth, but Williams isn’t the murderer: Asaro gave Williams the laptop to give to Roberts.

3. Roberts is telling the truth, and Williams got the laptop from the crime scene.

To my eye, #1 and #2 are both plausible here.

Beginning with #1:

1. Roberts had an obvious incentive to lie. According to his testimony, he’s holding on to fenced property from the scene of a murder. He might have even opened the laptop and figured that out. If he doesn’t cooperate, he’s going to be charged with numerous felonies. He would have said that Mother Teresa sold him the laptop if that’s what the prosecutor asked him to do.

2. I do not understand why the laptop is still in Roberts’ house. It’s a stolen laptop. After Williams goes to jail, wouldn’t Roberts have resold it or stripped it for parts? Why is Roberts keeping this unbelievably incriminating piece of evidence in his house for 15 months? The state elicited testimony that Roberts was trying to keep the laptop “in good shape” in case Williams ever picked it up, but … really? Williams wasn’t leaving jail anytime soon. If he got out, he could always have gotten a new laptop.

3. I cannot help but raise my eyebrow that Asaro (1) remembered the specific person to whom Williams had given the laptop and (2) apparently had some reason to know that this person would still have the laptop in his house 15 months later.

As for #2: At the trial, on cross-examination, Williams’ lawyer asked Roberts what, if anything, Williams said when he gave Roberts the laptop. The state objected on hearsay grounds, and the court sustained the objection. After the trial, Roberts signed an affidavit saying that Williams told him that the laptop came from Asaro. There was also trial evidence that Asaro was seen carrying a laptop around the time of the murder, although who knows if it’s the same laptop.

The trial court might have been right that the statement was hearsay. But to me, the statement was both plausible and credible. It is plausible that Asaro would have asked Williams to do her a favor and dispose of the laptop—Williams was her boyfriend after all. And if Williams did her this favor, it makes sense that Asaro would, initially at least, have stayed loyal to Williams after he was arrested. The statement is credible too: what’s Roberts’ incentive to lie? He has every reason to cooperate with the police. Even without the hearsay statement, I don’t think we can assume that Williams’ possession of the laptop implies that he was at the crime scene.

Williams’ criminal history

Williams’ criminal history is bad: there’s a doughnut shop robbery, a residential robbery, and a Burger King robbery. In total, he had 15 felony convictions unrelated to Gayle’s murder. Also, while he was incarcerated, Williams tried to escape and struck a guard over the head with a metal bar. It’s easy to imagine him committing the murder.

And yet. Suppose you’re Cole or Asaro and you want to frame someone for the crime. Wouldn’t you choose a person with 15 felonies? Given that Williams was convicted over and over again for other crimes, who’s going to believe him when he says he’s innocent of the murder?

***

Maybe I’m overstating the strength of the “framing” case. To me, the best arguments in support of the prosecution are:

1. Occam’s Razor: the parsimonious explanation for the evidence is that Williams committed the murder.

2. It would be unusual for three witnesses to lie on the stand, and even more unusual for three witnesses to deliver the same lie.

3. I question whether Cole or Asaro had the executive functioning to pull this off.

If it’s a predominance-of-the-evidence standard, I’d probably find for the state. But guilty beyond a reasonable doubt? I dunno. There’s no physical evidence tying Williams to the crime. There are a lot of strange coincidences in the state’s case. And I’m still troubled by the bloody shoeprint at the scene that didn’t match the feet of Williams or any of the first responders. I think it’s at least possible that Missouri executed an innocent man.

Did Williams have a case?

Unfortunately, doubts about Williams’ guilt don’t translate into a strong legal argument to overturn his conviction.

There was sufficient evidence to convict Williams. If Cole and Asaro were telling the truth, then Williams is guilty. And the jury evidently found them credible. Credibility determinations can’t be overturned by judges.

There’s a famous debate, still unresolved, on whether the Constitution would permit the execution of a defendant who was convicted after a fair trial but who can prove that he’s innocent based on later-discovered evidence. But even if such executions would be unconstitutional, no later-discovered evidence exonerates Williams. After the trial, another person’s DNA was found on the murder weapon, but it turned out that the DNA belonged to an investigator and a prosecutor who handled the knife during the investigation.

In seeking to stop the execution, the Prosecuting Attorney didn’t argue that any later-discovered evidence proved Williams’ innocence. Instead, he made two arguments. First, he argued that state officials unconstitutionally destroyed evidence. He claimed that in handling the knife, the prosecutor and investigator might have wiped off the DNA of the real perpetrator. Also, the police wiped up some bloody fingerprints—the police said the fingerprints weren’t usable, but Williams’ investigators didn’t get a chance to check for themselves.

The Missouri Supreme Court rejected this theory because there was no evidence that any destruction of evidence was in bad faith. In Arizona v. Youngblood, 488 U.S. 51 (1988), the Supreme Court held that if a state fails to “preserve evidentiary material of which no more can be said than that it could have been subjected to tests, the results of which might have exonerated the defendant,” there’s no due process violation unless the state acted in bad faith. According to the Supreme Court, “requiring a defendant to show bad faith on the part of the police both limits the extent of the police’s obligation to preserve evidence to reasonable bounds and confines it to that class of cases where the interests of justice most clearly require it, i.e., those cases in which the police themselves, by their conduct, indicate that the evidence could form a basis for exonerating the defendant.” This decision makes sense. It’s often the case that the state destroys evidence that seemed useless at the time, but might, or might not, have been exculpatory if it had been tested with technology that hadn’t been invented yet. You wouldn’t want to reopen every conviction in America in which the police wiped up the evidence while failing to anticipate advances in DNA testing.

The Prosecuting Attorney argued that there was bad faith here, but that was a tough argument. There was testimony from the investigators that they honestly believed the fingerprints were useless and didn’t know that picking up the knife might destroy DNA remnants.

Crucially, there was no proof that another person’s DNA was on the knife (at trial, the state argued that the perpetrator was wearing gloves). Instead, the Prosecuting Attorney speculated that the investigators might have accidentally wiped off someone else’s DNA and that DNA might have belonged to someone else. But if that type of speculation is a sufficient basis to overturn a conviction many years after the fact, then a lot of guilty prisoners would go free.

To be sure, the Prosecuting Attorney didn’t argue that the Williams should go free. He argued that Williams should be permitted to enter an a plea without an admission of guilt (a so-called “Alford plea”), resulting in an agreed-upon sentence of life without parole. Still, the logical implication of the Prosecuting Attorney’s argument was that Williams’ conviction had to be thrown out, and you can see why the courts wouldn’t go along with that.

The Prosecuting Attorney also argued that there was new evidence that the prosecution had engaged in racially discriminatory peremptory strikes during jury selection (in legalese, a Batson violation). Whatever the merits of this argument, it has nothing to do with Williams’ guilt or innocence. Even defendants who are 100% guilty have a right to a jury selected in conformance with the Constitution. And evidence of a defendant’s innocence doesn’t strengthen the defendant’s Batson claim. The Missouri courts found that there were race-neutral reasons for the peremptory strikes, and it would be odd for the Supreme Court to overturn that determination based on concerns about Williams’ possible innocence.

In all likelihood, the Prosecuting Attorney sought to vacate the death sentence because there were lingering questions about Williams’ guilt. And intuitively, it seems awful to execute someone unless you’re really, really, really sure that he’s guilty. But, as applied to this case, it’s hard to encode that intuition into a legal rule.

For better or for worse, in our system of justice, juries determine historical facts. The jury gets to decide whether to believe witnesses, and in this case, the jury believed the witnesses. If new evidence of innocence turns up after the trial, that’s different. But convictions can’t be overturned in every case in which the witnesses might have been lying. Witnesses always might be lying.

Should there be a rule that a defendant shouldn’t be executed unless there’s physical evidence tying him to the crime? No. This rule overstates the reliability of physical evidence, which is often disputed too. It’s also ahistorical—scientific analysis of physical evidence didn’t exist for most of American history.

Also, I’m uncomfortable transforming a death sentence into a life-without-parole sentence based on concerns about reasonable doubt. A life-without-parole sentence is, in a sense, a version of a death sentence. Is “we’re not sure he’s guilty” a good basis for incarcerating a person for the rest of his life?

Ultimately, in the American justice system, lingering innocence concerns aren’t a basis to overturn a lawfully imposed conviction—including a conviction in a capital case.