One of those who watched the state execute prison inmate Herbert Smulls late last night (January 29) calls the execution “a travesty of justice.” The person making that charge is not one of Smulls’ supporters. It’s one of his victims.

Herbert Smulls died 253 months after getting his death sentence for killing Chesterfield jeweler Stephen Honickman during a 1991 robbery. Although Honickman’s wife, Florence, was shot twice, she survived by playing dead. She says waiting more than twenty years to execute a murderer while the state spends millions of dollars on the inmate is a travesty of justice for her and her family. She says the state has not paid for any of her expenses to attend the execution.

She says there should be no reason, in a “just and a rational legal system” why appeals should continue longer than ten years. She says she and her family are the ones who have suffered cruel and unusual punishment; by having to wait so long for justice to be done. She says the system needs to spend more time thinking of the victims and less about the murderers.

Audio: Post-execution news conference

Story by Bob Priddy, The Missourient. More stories »