Both state and federal courts upheld his conviction in the face of multiple appeals, ultimately rejecting all his arguments on appeal, including his challenge to the composition of the jury. In 2015, however, the Missouri Supreme Court ordered additional DNA testing, and the results were startling — according to three experts who reviewed the results, Williams’s DNA is not on the murder weapon. Instead, there was a mixture of DNA from two other men.
In my opening paragraph, I described Williams as “most likely” innocent. It is still possible that he is guilty of the crime, but at this point his conviction strains credulity. There’s no physical evidence placing him at the scene of the crime. As his attorney, Tricia Rojo Bushnell of the Midwest Innocence Project, told me, “There is no eyewitness testimony saying they saw him” at the crime scene, and “there is nothing that puts him there” other than the “incentivized” testimony of Cole and Asaro, neither of whom claims they were with him at the Gayles’ house.
I suppose it is conceivable that Williams broke in and killed Gayle without leaving any trace evidence of his presence even as an unknown other person walked around the scene, leaving fingerprints and DNA on the knife. It is conceivable, but it is hardly likely. It is far more likely that Williams is the victim of two unreliable witnesses with other motives.
In spite of the new DNA evidence, on Jan. 31, 2017, the Missouri Supreme Court denied Williams’s habeas petition without briefing and without hearing oral arguments. Williams also petitioned the Republican governor of Missouri, Eric Greitens, for relief, and on Aug. 22, 2017 Greitens stayed Williams’s execution and convened a board of inquiry to take a closer look at the case.
But here’s where matters go from complicated to downright strange. The board moved at a glacial pace and never seemed to issue a final report. Bushnell told me that the board did send inquiries to the attorneys in the case, but its proceedings were under seal. On June 29, 2023, the current Republican governor of Missouri, Mike Parson, dissolved the panel. In his statement, the governor said, “We could stall and delay for another six years, deferring justice, leaving a victim’s family in limbo, and solving nothing.”
