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Justices Tuesday night authorized the execution of Marcellus Williams in Missouri, despite evidence that he may have been innocent. (Thomas Hawk via Flickr)

The Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to block the execution of Marcellus Williams, who was convicted in 2001 and sentenced to death for the 1998 stabbing death of Felicia Gayle. None of the forensic evidence found in Gayle’s home linked Williams to the crime scene, and his attorneys argued there was reason to believe he was innocent. The attorney prosecuting Williams also testified that he excluded at least one potential juror because of that juror’s race.

Williams was executed by lethal injection Tuesday night in Bonne Terre, Missouri. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson indicated they would stay his execution. Gayle’s family and the prosecution had publicly objected to Williams’ execution.

The brief, unsigned orders came a day after the Missouri Supreme Court and the state’s governor, Mike Parson, rejected requests to halt the execution. Prosecutors in St. Louis, where Williams was convicted, had asked the courts to overturn his conviction, but the state’s attorney general, Andrew Bailey, opposed those efforts.

The only evidence linking Williams to the murder was a laptop stolen from Gayle’s husband. The St. Louis County District Attorney’s Office has acknowledged that there is evidence that Williams was innocent: His DNA was not on the knife used to kill Gayle, and prosecutors contaminated that evidence by touching it without gloves before and during the trial.

There was also evidence that prosecutors dismissed at least one juror based on race. The jury that convicted Williams, who was black, ultimately included 11 white jurors and only one black juror.

Williams, who has maintained his innocence, agreed last month to take a Alford petition, which acknowledges that the state has sufficient evidence to prosecute him for murder, in exchange for a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Both Williams and the St. Louis District Attorney came to the Supreme Court Monday to ask the justices to stay the execution, scheduled for Tuesday night, and take up his case. “The conviction of Marcellus Williams is a grave miscarriage of justice and to execute him would be an unthinkable, irreversible disgrace,” Williams’ attorneys wrote in one of their filings.

In October, the justices will hear oral arguments in the case of Richard Glossip, an Oklahoma man sentenced to death for the 1997 murder of the owner of the motel where he worked. In that case, the state Attorney General has supported Glossip in his efforts to overturn his conviction and death sentence.

This article was originally published on Howe on the Court.