The death penalty is a tense topic and there are strong opinions on both sides.

A recent Pew Research study confirmed that just under half of all Americans support the death penalty, which is the lowest support has been for the punishment in over four decades.

Some who support ending the death penalty do so because they believe that there are those who are put to death who did not commit crimes. However, with the evolution of DNA evidence, there seems to be a light at the end of the tunnel for many wrongfully accused convicted inmates.

In an unfortunate turn of events, it doesn’t appear that DNA evidence is enough to save one Missouri man, Marcellus Williams.

Convicted of killing Felicia “Lisha” Gayle in 2001, 48-year-old Williams has been serving his sentence on death row, awaiting execution by lethal injection, according to the Washington Post.

Recent DNA tests have shown that Williams may be innocent.

Williams had an original execution date in 2015, but his death was delayed in order for new DNA testing to be conducted. Now that the results are here, his attorneys claim they show “conclusive scientific evidence that another man committed this crime.”

“They’re never going to ever confront an actual innocence cause more persuading than this involving exonerating DNA evidence,” said Kent Gipson, an attorney of Williams’. “I’ve seen a lot of miscarriages of justice, but this one would take the cake.”

Sounds promising for Williams, right?

Well, there's good news, and bad news.

The bad news is some state officials aren’t yielding. They still believe he is guilty due to other “compelling non-DNA evidence,” including an alleged confession to the killing and some of Gayle’s household items being linked to Williams.

“Based on the other, non-DNA, evidence in this case, our office is confident in Marcellus Williams’ guilt and plans to move forward,” Loree Anne Paradise, the deputy chief of staff in Missouri’s attorney general office said. State officials believe that stand-alone DNA evidence doesn’t exonerate Williams and that the evidence would have to explain how Williams ended up in the possession of Gayle’s property.

Missouri officials have argued in court that in order to exonerate Williams, “DNA evidence would have to explain how Williams ended up with the victim’s property, and why two witnesses independently said he confessed to them, or at least provide a viable alternate suspect.”

They also said that just showing “unknown DNA” on the knife handle does not alone prove Williams’s innocence. Both arguments have been brought to Supreme Court Justice Neil M. Gorsuch.

Gorsuch could have stayed the execution, but did not.

Instead, in the good news for Williams, Missouri's governor, Eric Greitens, has halted today's killing of Williams, the AP reports.

Grietens told the press that he will create a special board to investigate the new DNA evidence, and that the board will also take another look at the "non-DNA evidence" the state attorney general's office mentioned.

Given the death penalty debates and the additional issue of the punishments black men accused of killing white women receive, the case has received a lot of attention, with civil rights group becoming involved as well.

“The Supreme Court has emphasized over and over that because death is a unique punishment there is need for heightened reliability before it’s imposed,” said Sam Spital, NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s director of litigation. “One of the really significant questions raised by Mr. Williams’s case is, what does it mean when you have issues of innocence?”

The public is weighing in on the matter as well. There is now a petition with over 200,000 signatures to cease the execution.

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