Missouri officials executed death row inmate Marcellus Williams on Tuesday, Sept. 24, at the Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center in Bonne Terre. Williams was put to death hours after the U.S. Supreme Court denied his latest appeal. The inmate’s last words were, “All praise to Allah in every situation.”

Williams was sentenced to death for the 1998 murder of Felicia Gayle, a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Gayle was stabbed more than 40 times with a butcher knife she had taken from her kitchen in her gated community in University City, Missouri, during a daytime burglary of her home in August.

Williams, 55, died after 6 p.m. by lethal injection. He was supported in his requests for clemency by St. Louis County District Attorney Wesley Bell. In fact, the victim’s family reportedly also asked that Williams be spared death.

Who was Marcellus Williams?

Williams was convicted of Gayle’s murder in 2001. Physical evidence at the crime scene, including fingerprints, bloody shoe prints and hair, reportedly could not be linked to Williams. He was arrested based on the testimony of a jailhouse informant, who said Williams had confessed to the killing. During testimony at Williams’ murder trial, his then-girlfriend also claimed he had confessed to the killing.

Meanwhile, Bell released a statement saying: “Marcellus Williams should have been alive today. There were multiple points in the timeline where decisions could have been made that would have spared him the death penalty. When there is even a shadow of a doubt of innocence, the death penalty should never be an option. This outcome did not serve the interests of justice.”

Bell made a last-ditch effort to diminish Williams’ testimony by filing a case under a 2021 state law that allows prosecutors to introduce new evidence into court, the first time it has been used in a death penalty case.

However, on Monday, September 23, Governor Mike Parson said he would not stop the execution because the appeals failed to convince him. “No jury or court, including at the trial, appellate and Supreme Court levels, has ever upheld Mr. Williams’ claims of innocence,” Parson said. “Ultimately, his conviction and death sentence were upheld. Nothing in the actual facts of this case has led me to believe in Mr. Williams’ innocence, and as such, Mr. Williams’ sentence will be carried out as ordered by the Supreme Court.”

Williams became the 100th person executed in Missouri since 1989, when executions resumed in the state after a 20-year hiatus.

Larry Komp, one of Williams’ attorneys, maintained that his client maintained his innocence until his death. “While he would admit to the mistakes he made in his life, he never doubted his innocence of the crime for which he was put to death tonight,” Komp said, according to CNN. “While we are devastated and cannot believe what the state did to an innocent man, we are comforted that he left this world in peace.”