The Missouri Supreme Court on Friday upheld an execution warrant for Marcellus Williams even though a prosecutor filed a pending motion beforehand to vacate Williams’s 2003 first-degree murder conviction and death sentence.

The court initially issued a warrant of execution set for January 28, 2015. It later vacated the execution date after Williams petitioned for a writ of habeas corpus claiming he was entitled to further DNA testing to prove his innocence. The court denied his petition after finding that further DNA testing did not prove his innocence. However, the prosecutor filed a motion to vacate Williams’s conviction and sentence in January 2024 based on DNA tests from the murder weapon, which did not confirm the presence of Williams’ DNA. The court on June 4, 2024, issued Williams’s current warrant of execution set for September 24, 2024.

The court’s Rule 30.30(c) provides that no motion to set a new execution date “shall be considered prior to exhaustion of the defendant’s right to seek relief in the Supreme Court of the United States following review of the defendant’s direct appeal, state post-conviction motion, and federal habeas corpus decision unless the defendant fails to pursue such remedy.” The court found the rule’s plain meaning is that the prosecutor’s state post-conviction motion to vacate Williams’s conviction and sentence is not a defendant’s state post-conviction motion. It also found contextual support from its Rule 29.15, which gives the “exclusive procedure” for post-conviction relief.

The court also instructed that the only method for Williams to change the execution date would be to file a motion to stay the execution instead of withdraw it.