MONTGOMERY, Ala. — The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit has reinstated the death sentence of Marcus Bernard Williams, who was convicted of capital murder in 1999 for the killing of Melanie Rowell, a 20-year-old single mother of two.
According to court records, Williams broke into Rowell’s home in the middle of the night, checked to make sure her children were sleeping, and then raped and strangled her at knifepoint for more than 15 minutes. Her toddlers discovered her body the next morning. Williams later confessed, and forensic evidence linked him to the scene. The jury convicted him of capital murder and recommended the death penalty by an 11-1 vote.
A federal court had previously ordered Williams’s sentence to be vacated, citing his defense attorneys’ failure to argue that his compulsive “hypersexuality” should reduce his culpability. The State argued that presenting such a defense would not have swayed a jury and could have introduced evidence of another sexual assault Williams committed weeks later…