U.S. state executes man despite conviction doubts

Two men on death row in the United States were executed Tuesday, including a Black man convicted of murder who had maintained his innocence and drawn support from civil rights groups.

Marcellus Williams, 55, was sentenced to death in the midwestern state of Missouri for the 1998 killing of Felicia Gayle, a former newspaper reporter.

He was pronounced dead at 6:10 pm local time Tuesday, according to the Missouri Department of Corrections.

Travis Mullis, 38, was also put to death in Huntsville, Texas for stomping his three-month-old son, Alijah Mullis, to death in 2008.

"I do regret the decision to take the life of my son, I apologize to the mother of my son, the victim's family," Mullis said in his last statement.

Both men were executed by lethal injection, raising the total number of US executions this year to 16.

Williams has insisted he is innocent and the NAACP civil rights group had urged Governor Michael Parson to stay his execution.

Parson on Tuesday said that Williams's execution in Missouri would go ahead despite protests.

"No jury nor court, including at the trial, appellate, and Supreme Court levels, have ever found merit in Mr. Williams's innocence claim. At the end of the day, his guilty verdict and sentence of capital punishment were upheld," Parson said in a statement.

The US Supreme Court had also rejected a last-ditch request to stay Williams's execution on Tuesday.

British billionaire Richard Branson, who bought a full-page advert in the Kansas City Star newspaper decrying a "devastating miscarriage of justice," mourned Williams's execution on social media.

"It's a shameful day for Missouri, and a shameful day for Governor Mike Parson," Branson wrote on X.

Felicia Gayle was found dead at her St. Louis home in Missouri, stabbed 43 times by a kitchen knife during what appeared to be a burglary gone wrong.

Williams, who had previous convictions for burglary and robbery, was convicted on the testimony of a former jail cellmate and an ex-girlfriend, though his DNA was not found on the knife or at the crime scene.

His execution was stayed by the Missouri Supreme Court in 2015, and again by the state's then-governor Eric Greitens in 2017, following the discovery of male DNA on the knife that did not match Williams.

This year, local prosecutors initiated proceedings to overturn his conviction. However, on Monday, the state Supreme Court ruled in a unanimous decision that it would not stop Williams's execution.

The death penalty has been abolished in 23 US states, while six others -- Arizona, California, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Tennessee -- have moratoriums in place.