State prison inmate Roderick Nunley has been granted a stay from his midnight execution that was scheduled for Tuesday night.

The Kansas City Star reports that Chief U.S. District Judge Fernando Gaitan granted the stay, as Nunley’s lawyers asked for consideration as to whether Nunley is entitled to by sentenced by a jury rather than a judge.

Nunley was to be executed tomorrow night for kidnapping, raping, and killing a 15-year-old Kansas City girl more than 21 years ago. Nunley does not deny kidnapping Ann Harrison but he does deny raping her. He tells the Kansas City Star his accomplice, Michael A. Taylor, raped her. Both later stabbed her multiple times.

Taylor also escaped execution more than four years ago when last-minute court appeals produced stays. He is still under a death sentence, but no execution date has been set. [Story by Missourinet]

From story by Monica Davey, New York Times:

When judges in St. Louis sentence criminals, a new and unusual variable is available for them to consider: what a given punishment will cost the state of Missouri.

For someone convicted of endangering the welfare of a child, for instance, a judge might learn that a three-year prison sentence would run more than $37,000 while probation would cost $6,770. A second-degree robber, a judge could be told, would carry a price tag of less than $9,000 for five years of intensive probation, but more than $50,000 for a comparable prison sentence. The bill for a murderer’s 30-year prison term: $504,690.

Months ago, members of the Missouri Sentencing Advisory Commission, a group of lawyers, judges and others established by state lawmakers years ago, voted to begin providing judges with the cost information on individual cases.

The concept is simple: Fill in an offender’s conviction code, criminal history and other background, and the program spits out a range of possible sentences, statistical information about the likelihood of Missouri criminals with similar profiles to commit more crimes, and, most controversially, the various options’ price tags.

The slaying of two Randolph County jailers a decade ago was again detailed this morning in Boone County Circuit Court, during a penalty phase retrial for convicted murderer Michael Tisius.

The defendant, 29, was sentenced to death after a jury convicted him on two counts of first-degree murder in 2001 in Boone County Circuit Court. The retrial concerns only Tisius’ sentence, not the conviction.

Story by Brennan David, Columbia Tribune »

The state Supreme Court has upheld the conviction and death sentence of a man involved in one of the Kansas City area’s most sensational recent murder cases.

Richard Davis was convicted of murdering a woman he and his girlfriend, Dena Riley, had sexually abused and killed. Jurors saw a videotape that showed Davis and Riley suffocating Independence resident Marsha Spicer.

All seven judges agree the trial court made none of the mistakes Davis claims it made. The court split on two other points in the case but upheld the trial court’s decision on each issue.

Riley, the girlfriend, is in prison for life without parole.

Story by Bob Priddy, Missourinet

Briefs, summaries of the written arguments and link to the audio of the oral arguments »