More than two decades after a killing in St. Clair County, a federal appeals court has reinstated the death sentence for Marcus Bernard Williams.
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall announced that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit reversed a prior decision that had thrown out Williams’s death sentence. Williams was convicted in 1999 for the rape and murder of 20-year-old Melanie Rowell, a single mother of two.
Prosecutors said the evidence at trial showed Williams broke into Rowell’s home in the middle of the night, made sure her young children were asleep, then raped and strangled her at knifepoint for more than 15 minutes. The next morning, Rowell’s toddlers found her body…