“The Missouri death penalty protocol has been tangled up in the federal courts on and off for more than two years now. The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision should clear the final hurdles and legitimize the constitutionality of Missouri’s death penalty protocol and we can now go forward with these death penalty cases,” Koster said.

Executions in Missouri had been put on hold by the Eighth Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals while the case was reviewed. That Court’s ruling led to the petition to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“The basic argument that was put forth in the Clemons v. Crawford case was that the three drug protocol caused paralysis but then one of the drugs that was injected into the defendant’s body would cause excruciating internal suffering prior to death. That case the federal courts decided was no proven, and the U.S. Supreme Court said that the Missouri three-drug protocol, the same standard that is used in most of the 50 state that have the death penalty, is constitutional,” Koster said.

He is wasting no time getting the process started again.

“We will now go back to the Missouri Supreme Court and in appropriate cases where all the federal appeals have been run, we will go ahead and ask the Missouri Supreme Court to set execution dates,” Koster said.

Koster says he’s already asked the Missouri Supreme Court to set an execution date for Joseph Franklin, a ‘neo-Nazi murderer’ who shot three people outside a St. Louis synagogue, killing one of them. Franklin also killed four other people in incidents in Utah and Wisconsin and bombed a synagogue in Tennessee.

Story by Ryan Famuliner, Missourinet.com [AUDIO :60]

Courts seemingly had resolved issues about the constitutionality of the three-drug system used to execute prisoners in Missouri and in other states. But Clemons' lawyers have found a new angle and Attorney General Chris Koster does not expect the appeals court to rule until mid to late summer.

He says the stay has nothing to do with the facts in the case. Instead, he says, the questions are about the qualifications of the people who perform lethal injections at the Bonne Terre prison.

Missouri has executed one inmate, Dennis Skillicorn, since the courts found the system constitutional. Skillicorn was executed May 20th. Koster says Skillicorn raised the issue in his last hours but he and his lawyers did not have an appeal on this issue before the federal appeals court.

Clemons is under a death sentence for his part in the rapes and murders of two St. Louis sisters on a Mississippi River Bridge in 1991. One accomplice has been executed. Another is awaiting an execution date. The fourth man involved is serving life. [Missourinet.com/Bob Priddy]

AUDIO: Interview with AG Chris Koster

Koster says Franklin carefully planned the murder in Richmond Heights. He confessed to the murder in 1994. By then Franklin was serving six consecutive life sentences at a federal prison in Illinois. Franklin, who joined the neo-Nazi movement and the Ku Klux Klan, also has been convicted of murdering two African-American men in Utah, of killing an interracial couple in Wisconsin, and of bombing a synagogue in Tennessee. He also claims he is the one whose gunshots left Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt paralyzed.

He’s under a Missouri death sentence for murdering Gerald Gordon, and of wounding two other men in a synagogue parking lot after a Bar Mitzvah.

The state Attorney General’s Office has filed a motion to lift the stay stating that the issues brought up have been addressed before or should have been addressed before now. (More at STLToday.com)

UPDATE (5:25pm): The Missourinet reports Governor Nixon has denied clemency petition for Dennis Skillicorn.

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Roy Michael Roberts was executed on March 10, 1999

Roberts, RoyCase Facts: On July 3, 1983 at approximately 9:45 p.m. Correctional Officer Thomas Jackson, assigned to the Moberly Correctional Center, entered the B wing of Housing Unit 2 in order to remove an unruly inmate named Jimmy Jenkins. Jenkins refused to come out of the area upon Officer Jackson’s order. Officer Jackson went to the control center within the housing unit to obtain backup support.

About 30 inmates gathered in B wing as Officer Jackson and two other officers returned to the wing to escort Jenkins out. As the two officers escorted Jenkins, Officer Jackson was following about ten feet behind. It was at this time that Roy Roberts challenged the rest of the inmates to keep the officers from taking Jenkins from B wing. About 20 to 30 inmates, including Roberts, rushed the officers. The two officers and Jenkins made it safely to the rotunda area of the control center where four or five other officers awaited. Some of the inmates also made it into the rotunda while a group of about ten inmates surrounded Officer Jackson who was still in B wing.

As Officer Jackson attempted to make it out the door and back to the control center, Roberts grabbed him by the head and hair and pinned him against the door casing. Another inmate, Robert Driscoll, stabbed Officer Jackson three times in the chest, twice penetrating his heart. As officers on the other side of the door attempted to pull Officer Jackson to safety Roberts struck the officers, grabbed Officer Jackson and pulled him back into the wing where he was stabbed in the abdomen by inmate Rodney Carr. The officers were then able to pull Officer Jackson into the rotunda of control center area. Officer Jackson died from the stab wounds inflicted by the inmates.

Legal Chronology

1970
10/16 — Roberts was arrested for Tampering in St. Louis City. He was fined and placed on probation.
12/18 — Roberts was arrested for Stealing Over Fifty Dollars. He was placed on probation, but that period of supervision was later revoked and Roberts was sentenced to 60 days in the St. Louis Medium Security Institution.

1973
09/28 — Roberts was arrested in St. Louis City on the charge of Possession of a Controlled Substance and was sentenced to six months in the St. Louis Medium Security Institution.

1979
08/14 — Roberts was sentenced to 1 2 and 18 years on two charges of Robbery First Degree and two years on a charge of Stealing Over $1 50 by Deceit in the City of St. Louis to run concurrently.

1983
7/3-Correctional Officer Thomas Jackson is killed by inmates at the Moberly Correctional Center in Moberly, Missouri.

1984
1/30-Roberts is charged by information with capital murder in Randolph County.

1985
2/1-After a three day trial in Marion County on a change of venue from Randolph County, a jury finds Roberts guilty of Capital Murder and recommends a sentence of death.
3/15-A motion for a new trial is denied and Roberts is sentenced to death. Roberts files a notice of appeal.

1986
5/7-The Missouri Supreme Court affirms Roberts’ conviction and sentence.
11/3-The United States Supreme Court denies certiorari review.
11/24-Roberts files a motion for post conviction relief in the Circuit Court.

1988
1/13-The Circuit Court denies post conception relief.
1/14-Roberts files a notice of appeal.
7/5-Roberts case is remanded to the Circuit Court for a new evidentiary hearing.
10/21-The Circuit Court denies post conviction relief.
11/1-Roberts files a notice of appeal.

1989
8/1-The Missouri Supreme Court affirms the denial of relief.

1990
3/19-The United States Supreme Court denies review.
3/29-Roberts files a petition for writ of habeas corpus in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri.

1995
8/3-The District court denies the petition for writ of habeas corpus.

1996
9/27-The District Court denies the Motion to Reconsider.
10/25-Roberts appeals the denial of habeas relief.

1998
3/3-The United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirms the denial of relief.

1999
1/11-The United States Supreme Court declines the review.
2/4-The Missouri Supreme Court sets March 1O, 1999 as Roberts’ execution date.