CBS News
Inmate tries to prove innocence as execution looms 26 years after murder of former St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter
Testimony begins Wednesday in a hearing with life-or-death implications for Missouri inmate Marcellus Williams.
The case before St. Louis County Circuit Judge Bruce Hilton is on a motion filed by Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell seeking to vacate Williams’ 1998 murder conviction. Time is of the essence: Williams is scheduled to be executed Sept. 24, and neither Missouri Gov. Mike Parson nor Attorney General Andrew Bailey has shown any inclination to delay the process.
Williams, 55, was convicted of first-degree murder in the 1998 stabbing death of Lisha Gayle. He was hours away from execution in August 2017 when then-Gov. Eric Greitens, a Republican, granted a stay after DNA testing unavailable at the time of the killing showed that DNA on the knife matched someone else, not Williams.
That evidence prompted Bell to reexamine the case.
“This never-before-considered evidence, when paired with the relative paucity of other, credible evidence supporting guilt, as well as additional considerations of ineffective assistance of counsel and racial discrimination in jury selection, casts inexorable doubt on Mr. Williams’s conviction and sentence,” Bell’s motion states.
Missouri Department of Corrections via AP, File
Williams, who is Black, was convicted and sentenced to death by a jury consisting of 11 white people and one Black person. In addition to first degree murder, Williams has been convicted of burglary, assault and attempted armed robbery.
Bailey, a Republican, stated in a June court filing that “evidence supporting conviction at trial was overwhelming,” despite the new DNA claims.
Innocence Project co-founder Barry Scheck said in 2018 that he believes there is “enough doubt in the case that his sentence should at least be commuted.”
A 2021 Missouri law allows prosecuting attorneys to file a motion seeking to vacate a conviction they believe was unjust. The law has resulted in exonerations of three men who spent decades in prison, including Christopher Dunn last month.
Typically, a judge hears a few days of testimony then takes up to two months to weigh the evidence. Hilton won’t have the luxury of time though: Williams’ execution is 34 days away.
The Missouri Supreme Court set the September execution date on June 4, hours after it ruled that Parson, a Republican, was within his rights when he dissolved a board of inquiry convened by Greitens after he stopped the 2017 execution.
The inquiry board, consisting of five retired judges, never issued a ruling or reached a conclusion on whether the new DNA evidence exonerated Williams. Parson dissolved the board in June 2023, saying it was time to “move forward.”
Johnathan Shiflett, spokesperson for Parson, said the governor “will give thoughtful consideration to the question of clemency for Mr. Williams, just as he has for all other capital punishment cases during his tenure, but no decision has been made at this time.” Parson, a former county sheriff, has been governor for 11 executions and never granted clemency.
Jeff Roberson / AP
In addition to Dunn, who spent 34 years behind bars for the death of a 15-year-old St. Louis boy, the Missouri law allowing prosecutors to challenge convictions led to freedom for two other men — Kevin Strickland and Lamar Johnson. Bailey was not attorney general when Strickland’s case went to a hearing, but his office opposed vacating the convictions of Dunn and Johnson.
Bailey also opposed efforts to overturn the conviction of Sandra Hemme, who spent 43 years in prison for murder, though that case was adjudicated through appeals, not a prosecutor’s motion. A judge ruled in June that Hemme should be freed. Bailey filed multiple appeals to try and keep her behind bars, but Hemme was released in July.
Strickland was freed in 2021 after serving more than 40 years for three killings in Kansas City after a judge ruled he had been wrongfully convicted in 1979. In 2023, a St. Louis judge overturned Johnson’s conviction. He served nearly 28 years for a killing he always said he didn’t commit.
Williams is the first death row inmate whose innocence claim will go before a judge since passage of the 2021 law. He’s getting support from another former condemned inmate. Joseph Amrine spent 17 years on death row before he was freed in 2003 after the Missouri Supreme Court ruled that no credible evidence linked him to the killing of another inmate.
“The state has nothing to gain by killing the wrong person,” Amrine said in a statement. “I hope the Attorney General’s office can change their approach and acknowledge there are human beings impacted by their actions.”
Prosecutors at Williams’ trial said he broke into Gayle’s suburban St. Louis home on Aug. 11, 1998, heard water running in the shower, and found a large butcher knife. When Gayle came downstairs, she was stabbed 43 times. Her purse and her husband’s laptop were stolen. Gayle, who was White, was a social worker who previously worked as a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Authorities said Williams stole a jacket to conceal blood on his shirt. Williams’ girlfriend asked him why he would wear a jacket on a hot day. The girlfriend said she later saw the laptop in the car and that Williams sold it a day or two later. CBS News previously reported that police found Gayle’s clothing and her husband’s computer in Williams’ car.
Prosecutors also cited testimony from Henry Cole, who shared a St. Louis cell with Williams in 1999 while Williams was jailed on unrelated charges. Cole told prosecutors Williams confessed to the killing and offered details about it.
Williams’ attorneys responded that the girlfriend and Cole were both convicted felons out for a $10,000 reward.
Those aren’t early Halloween decorations: giant Joro spiders, known for parachuting through the air, were spotted in Pennsylvania this month.
Six of the spiders were reported on Sept. 5, according to Joro Watch, an interactive monitoring program developed by the University of Georgia’s Center for Invasive Species and Ecosystem Health. An entomologist visited Pennsylvania’s Bucks County and verified there were adult Joro spiders there.
What are Joro spiders?
Joro spiders, which are an invasive species native to Asia, can shoot out long strands of silk that get caught by the wind, carrying them through the air. Some have called them parachuting spiders because of the way they move.
They create large webs that can be up to 10 feet wide, according to PennState Extension.
David Madison / Getty Images
Adult females are large and brightly colored, with legs up to 4 inches long, according to experts. Males are much smaller. While female Joro spiders are about an inch long, male Joro spiders have a body length of less than half an inch.
Female Joro spiders, known for their yellow and gray abdomens, will lay egg sacs holding 400 to 500 eggs.
The spread of Joro spiders — where are they headed?
Joro spiders were first found in the U.S. in Georgia in 2014, but experts believe that the invasive species may have arrived as early as 2010. Joro spiders have spread across the South in the years since. They’ve now been reported across more than half a dozen states.
In 2022, PennState Extension said that it was likely Joro spiders “will be able to spread throughout eastern North America at least as far north as Pennsylvania and possibly further in warmer, coastal areas.” Researchers there thought it may take 35 years for Joro spiders to reach southeastern Pennsylvania, but said there were two ways Joro spiders could reach Pennsylvania more quickly.
One was if young and small Joro spiders were transported tens to hundreds of miles through the air after being picked up by strong winds and storms. The other way would be if they were transported to new areas by humans.
José R. Ramírez-Garofalo, an ecologist at Rutgers University’s Lockwood Lab and the president of Protectors of Pine Oak Woods on Staten Island, in April told SI Live that “it is a matter of when, not if” the spiders arrive in New York and New Jersey.
Are Joro spiders dangerous?
While Joro spiders do have venom, their venom is weak. They also have small fangs, which makes it difficult to pierce human skin.
“We have no evidence that they’ve done any damage to a person or a pet,” Clemson University assistant professor Dave Coyle, who has a doctorate in entomology, previously said.
If a bite does happen, PennState Extension said that it’s less painful than a bee sting, and any localized pain and redness would quickly resolve.
More U.S. cities and states are starting to say “yes, in my backyard” as they struggle to meet the housing needs of growing populations.
The “YIMBY” movement is a political effort to tackle the country’s housing shortage by increasing the housing supply with strategies like changing zoning codes and other regulations that limit home density. The United States is millions of homes short of what’s needed to meet demand, according to the national nonprofit group “Up for Growth.”
Minneapolis resident Bernice Duncan has been searching for a new home with more space for more than five years. The telehealth professional works from home in a cramped two-bedroom apartment she shares with her two adult sons.
“Everybody is not able to move freely, like you would in a in a house or, you know, having your own office space,” said Duncan.
During the years she’s been looking, property values have soared. With a $1,600 monthly housing budget, she says she’s been priced out of the market.
“It’s been a struggle,” Duncan said. “As the economy continues to grow, your paycheck don’t,” she added. “You’re not going to pay less than $2,000.”
Saying “yes” to more housing
Twin-Cities YIMBY was formed in 2023 to advocate for policies that will generate more affordable housing options for people like Duncan. The group supports the elimination of zoning restrictions to allow for more home density across the Minneapolis area.
“In the past five years, our median housing price has increased by $100,000, which is a huge increase” said Paige Kahle, a realtor who founded Twin Cities YIMBY along with colleagues Nichole Hayden and Meghan Howard.
YIMBYs have been building a coalition of pro-housing advocates across the country to counter those who say “not in my back yard,” known as NIMBYs.
“I think it’s getting easier. But literally when you go to the local meetings, the city council meetings, planning commission meetings, there’s still NIMBYs that are very loud and very organized and often kind of angry because they don’t want this kind of housing near them,” said Kahle.
But without a plan to bring housing costs down, Kahle says the shortage is hurting home buyers and renters alike.
“They’re paying 50% of their income, 60% of their income on housing, which just isn’t sustainable,” she said. ”We need more housing and we need it quickly,” said Kahle. “Traditionally, how we’ve addressed the housing crisis is through subsidies, massive subsidies to bring down the cost of housing for folks. But there just aren’t enough subsidies in the world to do that. So, we really need to look at these other mechanisms to increase the density and lower the cost of housing.”
Minneapolis 2040: The city’s plan
Addressing these concerns is the goal of the Minneapolis 2040 Comprehensive Plan. Passed in 2018, the ambitious bipartisan bill implemented historic zoning reforms to increase the number of available housing units including:
- The elimination of single-family-only zoning to permit build duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes in all neighborhoods.
- Height minimums for new residential buildings in high-density zones.
- The elimination of minimum parking requirements for new housing developments.
The plan has faced opposition from some homeowners who argue that increased density could undermine the character and charm of single-family neighborhoods.
“The 2040 Plan will hurt the uniqueness and architectural heritage of many neighborhoods,” said one opponent during a 2018 City Planning Commission meeting.
Implementation of the plan was paused in 2022 after environmental groups filed a lawsuit arguing the plan may have severe unintended consequences to the environment. In May, a state appeals court ruled to lift an injunction on the plan, and just last month the Minnesota State Supreme Court denied a petition for further review of the objections, clearing the way for the plan to continue.
“People want a place that they can live, [where] they can afford to raise their family, that’s safe and affordable. So, it’s really been part of the … regional conversation as well as the national conversation,” said Alene Tchourumoff of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve.
Over the next decade, the Minneapolis Fed is using multiple data sources to track the economic impact of these changes made as part of the 2040 plan.
“We really wanted to have a deeper understanding of what the effects of the policy change would be, recognizing the fact that these important policy changes in housing often take a long time to actually manifest,” said Tchourumoff.
There is some promising early data. According to a report by the Pew Charitable Trust, between 2017 and 2022, nearly 21,000 new units were permitted in Minneapolis — most in buildings with 20 or more units. In that same time, rents in the city rose by just 1% — far less than the rest of Minnesota, which saw a 14% rent increase.
Deregulation across the country
As Minnesota lawmakers consider expanding these rezoning reforms statewide, other states such as California, Oregon, Massachusetts and Montana have already implemented similar YIMBY policies.
The changes in Minneapolis are already making a difference for residents like Rebecca Hemmans, who became a first-time homeowner at 67 after viewing nearly 100 listings.
“I had this dream about living in a single-family home and sitting on my porch with my table of lemonade and glasses for the neighbors to wave at,” Hemmans said.
To accommodate her budget, she chose to adjust her dream — instead of a single-family home, she purchased an attached townhome, and she’s happy with the compromise.
“I don’t have to check with the landlord to say, “Hey, can I do this or do that?” she said. “If I want to paint my walls orange, I can do that.”
CBS News
Iranian hackers attempted to interest Biden staffers with stolen Trump campaign info, FBI says
Iranian hackers sought to interest President Biden’s campaign in information stolen from the rival campaign of former President Donald Trump, sending unsolicited emails to people connected to the Democratic president in an effort to interfere in the 2024 election, the FBI and other federal agencies said Wednesday.
There’s no evidence that any of the recipients responded, officials said, preventing the hacked information from surfacing in the final months of the closely contested election.
The hackers sent emails in late June and early July to people who were associated with Mr. Biden’s campaign before he dropped out. The emails “contained an excerpt taken from stolen, non-public material from former President Trump’s campaign as text in the emails,” according to a U.S. government statement.
In late July, officials with the FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security said that Tehran had started a campaign that was working to weaken Trump’s candidacy, while Russia was attempting to do the opposite.
Last month, sources told CBS News that the FBI was investigating whether Iranian hackers had targeted people associated with both the Trump and Biden-Harris campaigns.
In response to the revelation, Harris campaign spokesperson Morgan Finkelstein told CBS News in a statement Wednesday evening that “we’re not aware of any material being sent directly to the campaign,” adding that “a few individuals were targeted on their personal emails with what looked like a spam or phishing attempt.”
Finkelstein said the campaign has “cooperated with the appropriate law enforcement authorities since we were made aware that individuals associated with the then-Biden campaign were among the intended victims of this foreign influence operation.”
Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told CBS News in a statement that “this is further proof the Iranians are actively interfering in the election to help Kamala Harris and Joe Biden because they know President Trump will restore his tough sanctions and stand against their reign of terror.”
The Trump campaign disclosed on Aug. 10 that it had been hacked and said Iranian actors had stolen and distributed sensitive internal documents. At least three news outlets — Politico, The New York Times and The Washington Post — were leaked confidential material from inside the Trump campaign. So far, each has refused to reveal any details about what it received.
Politico reported that it began receiving emails on July 22 from an anonymous account. The source —an AOL email account identified only as “Robert”— passed along what appeared to be a research dossier that the campaign had apparently done on the Republican vice presidential nominee, Ohio Sen. JD Vance. The document was dated Feb. 23, almost five months before Trump selected Vance as his running mate.
A Microsoft threat intelligence report last month provided examples about the actions of Iranian groups seeking to influence the 2024 election.
