[1] On the morning of November 20, 1994, 22-year-old nurse technician Stacy Rae Errickson, who had a son and daughter, was on her way to work when she stopped at a gas station near Little Rock in Jacksonville, Arkansas.

[2] Born in North Little Rock, Arkansas on August 20, 1970, Marcel Wayne Williams, who never got to meet or know his biological father, grew up with three siblings.

[4][3] On January 6, 1997, Williams stood trial at the Pulaski County Circuit Court for the kidnapping, aggravated robbery, rape, and murder of Stacy Rae Errickson.

[2] After exhausting his appeals against his conviction and sentence, Williams filed a post-conviction application, alleging that he had been subjected to inadequate legal representation during his trial.

[5] In 2007, Williams made similar claims of ineffective legal representation and highlighted his former counsel's failure to present the mitigating circumstances of his troubled life when his case was brought before the federal courts.

On April 11, 2007, Chief U.S. District Judge Leon Holmes granted Williams a reprieve, finding there was sufficient weight in the mitigating evidence where the jury could have settled on a life sentence instead of death, and the trial lawyers had been constitutionally inadequate because of their failure to assist Williams in presenting these mitigating factors before the jury back in 1997.

[6][8] In 2010, Williams was a plaintiff in a lawsuit filed against the state pertaining to the lethal injection protocols of Arkansas's execution policies.

[12] In March 2017, Asa Hutchinson, the state governor of Arkansas, announced that a batch of eight death row prisoners in total would be executed in the following month of April.

Marcel Williams was one of the eight prisoners selected to be put to death during this time period, and his date of execution was scheduled for April 24, 2017, alongside serial killer Jack Harold Jones, who murdered at least three women in Florida and Arkansas between 1983 and 1995.

[13][14] This decision was particularly controversial throughout the U.S. when it was first announced, given that it was unprecedented for a state to conduct a large number of executions within a short time frame and there were concerns that the rush to carry out the eight condemned's death sentences would not lead to due legal process and amounted to cruel and unusual punishment.

[15] A contributing factor was that the state's supply of midazolam, one of the three lethal injection drugs used by Arkansas for executing prisoners, was about to expire by the end of April 2017.

[16][17] Subsequently, four of the inmates on the list were spared the possibility of execution: one of them, Jason McGehee, who was found guilty of murdering his friend in 1996, was granted clemency and had his death sentence commuted to life in prison without the possibility of parole,[18][19][20] while the other three – Don Williams Davis, Bruce Earl Ward, and Stacey Eugene Johnson – had their executions delayed due to pending lawsuits.

The lawyers representing Williams in his clemency hearing implored the panel to grant their client clemency and temper justice with mercy, stating that Williams had a troubled childhood and his life was full of unspeakable trauma and torture, as corroborated by his siblings (including those fathered from his mother's second marriage), and he also pleaded guilty to the abduction and killing of Errickson.

[23][24] On the other hand, the friends and family members of Errickson urged the parole board to not spare Williams's life and asked for his death sentence to be carried out.

[23] On March 30, 2017, by a majority decision of five to two, the parole board decided to not grant Williams clemency and confirmed his death sentence for murdering Errickson.

[39][40] Errickson's twin brother reportedly told the press in response to Williams's death sentence, "Justice has been served.

Hutchinson, who made the statement a day after the execution of Kenneth Williams, stated that he was obliged by the law to order the death sentences to be carried out and brought a conclusion to the men's respective cases.