Missouri Supreme Court Blocks Deal to Halt Marcellus Williams Execution, Orders New Hearing

The Missouri Supreme Court has blocked a proposed agreement that would have spared the life of death row inmate Marcellus Williams, ordering instead a new hearing to examine his claim of innocence. Williams, who has consistently maintained that he did not murder St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Felicia Gayle in 1998, was on the verge of securing a deal that would have commuted his death sentence to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. As part of the agreement, Williams would have dropped his long-standing claim of innocence.

However. . .