A deal that would have spared the life of Marcellus Williams is temporarily on hold.
The Missouri Supreme Court late Wednesday night granted Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s request to temporarily halt the agreement reached between lawyers for Marcellus Williams and the St. Louis County prosecutor’s office. As part of the deal, Williams would plead no contest to first-degree murder for the 1998 stabbing death of a University City woman in exchange for a sentence of life without parole.
The deal came about because DNA on the murder weapon that St. Louis County prosecutors had been prepared to use to prove Williams’ innocence turned out to be consistent with a profile belonging to Ed Magee, an investigator in the office at the time of the murder. That meant the knife had been mishandled at some point, but it also undermined Williams’ claim of innocence.
Bailey has been aggressive in fighting motions to vacate. The law gives the attorney general the right to appear at the evidentiary hearings and question witnesses, but it does not contemplate a deal such as the one struck on Wednesday.
Bailey argued that as the attorney general, he represents the State of Missouri in civil matters, which is what a motion to vacate is considered. Because all three parties — the prosecutor, Williams and the attorney general — did not agree to the deal, he said, the judge overstepped when he accepted it.
Without the attorney general’s office having all of its powers outlined in state law, Bailey’s office wrote, “courts would be powerless before two litigants who have agreed to a stipulated result — just as happened here. That is irreconcilable with hundreds of years of our legal tradition.”
St. Louis County Circuit Judge Bruce Hilton, who authorized the consent order on Wednesday, now has two options. He can proceed with the previously scheduled evidentiary hearing on the motion to vacate Williams’ conviction by Sept. 13. Or, he can argue to the judges why he had the authority to accept the deal.
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