Missouri Death Row

A date has been set for the third capital murder trial of Gary Black, who twice has been sentenced to death for stabbing a man to death in Joplin.  By the time the trial starts August 2nd, almsot 12 years have elapsed since the death of Jason Johnson.

Black is charged with stabbing Johnson to death as Johnson sat in his pickup truck at a Joplin stoplight.  Testimony at the two earlier trials indicated Johnson had brushed against Black’s girlfriend at a convenience store but had apologized.

Black’s previous convictions have been reversed on appeals. More on this story from the Joplin Globe.

The Missouri Supreme Court has ruled one convicted killer should die but another should live.

Condemned inmate Carmen Deck had claimed numerous mistakes were made during the sentencing phase of his trial for the murders of a couple from rural DeSoto, James and Zelma Long, in 19-96.. The court has unanimously refused to change his sentence from death to life without parole. The court says the judge did not abuse his discretion in handling of some parts of the trial and that Deck has failed to prove his punishment is unjust when compared to other murder cases. Deck still has other appeals. No execution date has been set.

In the second case, the court has blocked the execution of inmate Andrew Lyons, who killed three people in Cape Girardeau in 1992. The court, again in a unanimous opinion, says the evidence from a special master of the court supports claims that Lyons is mentally retarded, with an IQ of 61 to 70 and that his condition was documented before he achieved adulthood.

The United States Supreme Court has ruled that mentally retarded people cannot be executed if their condition was diagnosed while still a minor.

Lyons used a shotgun to kill his estranged girlfriend, their 11-month old son, and the girlfriend’s mother.  The court has not reduced his sentence. It has only issued a writ forbidding the Corrections Department from executing him. [Bob Priddy, The Missourinet]

The death sentence of convicted killer Travis E. Glass has been commuted to life in prison without parole. The decision avoids a jury trial over punishment that was to have started Monday in Callaway County. The Palmyra man was 21 when authorities said he confessed to strangling 13-year-old Steffini Wilkins of Hannibal on May 25, 2001. On Friday, Callaway County Judge Kevin M. Crane finalized the judgment of life in prison without probation or parole. Full story at Hannibal.net

From story by Tony Rizzo, BostonHerald.com:

“After a failed execution in September, the state of Ohio may have revolutionized capital punishment in America when it put a different inmate to death last month.

It executed Kenneth Biros on Dec. 8 with a single drug, marking the first time in the United States that a lethal injection was not done with a three-drug “cocktail” that has been the subject of numerous legal challenges in recent years. Death penalty experts think it’s highly likely that other states will follow Ohio’s lead.

Critics of the three-drug method repeatedly have suggested using just one strong sedative. That way, executioners would avoid the possibility of a condemned person suffering excruciating pain during the three-drug process, which is used in most capital punishment states and by the federal government.”

Full story »

We’re making some changes to the website and a lot of our content will be unavailable for the next few days. We hope to have everything back in order by the weekend but until then… you can find everything here. Thanks for your patience.

UPDATE: Yeah, stick with the link above for now. There’s been more link rot than I realized. A lot of our audio links (oral arguments before Missouri Supreme Court) aren’t working. Same for links to SC opinions. This will be a work in progress. Still hope to have the core content back up by Monday.

UPDATE: We’re finding most (all?) of our links to the MO Supreme Court documents are broken. Not sure if we’ll go back and try to re-create all of those. For now, just use the link in the sidebar to the court’s search page. Pretty fast.

Oh, and a word about comments. We long ago abandoned the idea of moderating comments. This is site is intended to be an archive and takes no position of capital punishment. Just ignore the comments link until we can remove it from this theme.

Gregory Bowman was sentenced to death today for the 1977 murder of Velda Joy Rumfelt in St. Louis County. According to a story at STLToday.com, Bowman served time for separate murders in Belleville in 1978 but won retrials, which are pending. It was after he was released on bond in 2007 in those cases that authorities matched his DNA with that taken from the clothing of Rumfelt who disappeared from the Brentwood area during a visit to family on June 5, 1977. The case will be appealed to the Missouri Supreme Court.

The state supreme court has let the murder conviction stand but has thrown out the death penalty for prison inmate Mark Gill. The court says Gill’s defense lawyer failed to question the character of the victim, which might have led the jury to recommend a life prison term.

Relatives of his victim, Ralph Lape of Cape Girardeau, had testified about his good character during the penalty phase of the trial. But Gill’s lawyer did not bring up evidence that Lape’s computer contained images of child pornography, bestiality, and other sexual content.

The Cape Girardeau County prosecutor says he’ll ask for the death penalty again.

The 8th Circuit Federal Court of Appeals rejected a suit brought by eight death row inmates to block Missouri’s executions because the execution team would not be trained medical professionals and would violate the 8th amendment to the United States Constitution that bans cruel and unusual punishment.

Attorney General Christ Koster’s office said they would soon be seeking execution warrants. [Full story at Columbia Missourian]

A federal appeals court has upheld the death sentence for Leon Taylor, who killed an Independence service station attendant 15 years ago. Taylor had claimed the prosecutors improperly removed African-Americans from the juries that convicted him and recommended his execution.

Taylor killed the attendant as his eight-year-old stepdaughter watched.  The prosecutor says Taylor also pointed a gun at the girl’s head but it didn’t go off. [Missourinet]

State Supreme Court Chief Justice Ray Price spoke on a wide range of issues with reporters in June of this year,  including executions. He said he doesn’t plan to schedule any until legal issues are resolved by the 8th Circuit of the United States Court of Appeals. The appellate court stopped the execution of Reginald Clemons last week after his defense team raised questions about Missouri’s use of lethal injection. Legal questions surrounding lethal injection halted executions in Missouri between October of 2005 and last month when the state put Dennis Skillicorn to death. [Missourinet.com story includes audio]