AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

Unless the U.S. Supreme Court intervenes, the state of Missouri will kill Marcellus Williams at 6 p.m. Central Time today. On Monday, Republican Governor Mike Parson turned down Williams’ bid for clemency, followed a short time later by the Missouri Supreme Court rejecting his latest legal challenge.

Williams is African American. He was convicted in 2001 of killing a former St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter, Lisha Gayle, who is white, during a robbery. He was convicted by 11 white jurors and one Black juror after the prosecution was allowed to preemptively strike out six other prospective Black jurors. Williams always maintained his innocence. The jurors, the prosecutor and the murder victim’s family all oppose Williams’ execution.

For more, we’re joined in Kansas City, Missouri, by Tricia Rojo Bushnell, Marcellus Williams’ attorney, executive director of the Midwest Innocence Project.

Welcome to Democracy Now! We only have a few minutes, but it’s possible that Marcellus Williams only has a few hours. Can you explain what you are calling for and what this case, at the last minute, is all about?

TRICIA ROJO BUSHNELL: Yes. At this time, we’re asking for what Marcellus Williams has been asking for for 23 years, which is for a court to take a full and accurate review of the proceedings before it. Right now for the first time ever, a few weeks ago, the prosecutor had to take the stand and testify, under oath, about his strikes that he used during the jury selection process. And at that hearing, he testified that he, at least in part, struck a juror based on his race. Yet right now we have yet to have a court who will fully examine and review that evidence. We know that that’s a violation of the Constitution. The prosecutor agrees that violated Williams’ constitutional rights. But what we see is a system that’s looking at finality over fairness, rushing to get to an execution date instead of taking the time to stop this execution and look at the merits of what is being argued.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And what was the main evidence against him? And could you talk about the advanced DNA testing and what it’s revealed about the murder weapon?

TRICIA ROJO BUSHNELL: Yes. So, Mr. Williams was convicted based on what we know is a leading cause of wrongful conviction, which is essentially informant testimony. So, this is a murder where there were no leads for months and months, and then, at some point, the police suggested to the victim’s husband that he should offer a reward. And it was only then, after a $10,000 reward had been offered, that the first informant came forward, a jailhouse informant, who said also that he wouldn’t testify until he got the money. The information he provided was information that was essentially out in the public sphere from the newspaper, but he also provided information about another informant, a woman named Laura Asaro, who had had connections to Marcellus Williams in the past. She also not only had — incentivized by the reward money, but the police forced her to talk by picking her up on her own warrants and saying, you know, “We can arrest you and charge you with these crimes unless you help us here.”

But at that time of the crime, there was a number of pieces of forensic evidence, including bloody footprints and hairs found at the crime scene, all of which exclude Marcellus Williams. In 2015, however, Mr. Williams requested additional DNA testing of the murder weapon, which was a knife found still protruding from the victim’s body. That DNA testing was performed. Male DNA was found on that murder weapon, and it excludes Marcellus Williams. He is not the person who left that DNA on the knife.

Based on all of that evidence, the prosecutor reviewed the case, brought forward this motion to overturn Mr. Williams’ conviction on the basis of innocence, as well as on the basis of these constitutional violations, including racial discrimination. But on the day before the evidentiary hearing, new DNA testing came in that showed that the DNA on that knife could be consistent with the prosecutor’s, the trial prosecutor’s DNA and the trial prosecutor’s investigator. At the evidentiary hearing, we have now learned that they mishandled that knife. They touched it without gloves in 2001 repeatedly, essentially destroying any potential probative value this critical evidence would have, which is what the prosecutor now also concedes was a constitutional violation.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Tricia, who is in charge at the U.S. Supreme Court of this case? What has to happen today?

TRICIA ROJO BUSHNELL: So, the stay motions go to Justice Kavanaugh, but the courts are going to be reviewing all of the cert petitions, the requests that the Supreme Court take on the case, as well as the motions to stop the execution. There are three petitions pending before the U.S. Supreme Court right now. The first is regarding the governor, Parson, had dissolved what was called a board of inquiry that was created to review all of this evidence. He dissolved it, even though Governor Eric Greitens had appointed it. So the first is regards to whether or not he was able to do that. The second is whether the federal courts should reopen the case to allow this new evidence of racial discrimination in the jury selection to be heard. And the last one, filed last night, is about what weight should the prosecutor be given, his concessions be given? And we know that the U.S. Supreme Court has already granted review of a similar case, the case of Richard Glossip out of Oklahoma, where the attorney general there said —

AMY GOODMAN: We have five seconds.

TRICIA ROJO BUSHNELL: — said the same thing, that, you know, a constitutional error occurred here, and we shouldn’t execute him. And so, for those same reasons, the court should hear this case, as well.

AMY GOODMAN: Tricia Rojo Bushnell, executive director of the Midwest Innocence Project. The prosecutor, the jurors and the victim’s family have called for him not to be executed. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.