Inmate executed in Missouri after Supreme Court denies appeal News
Inmate executed in Missouri after Supreme Court denies appeal

[JURIST] Missouri executed its third inmate of 2015 Tuesday after the US Supreme Court [official website] denied [order, PDF] his final appeal, which claimed that mental illness made him unfit for execution. Missouri Governor Jay Nixon [official website] also denied [statement] Andrew Cole’s clemency petition, which had raised concerns that the black inmate was convicted by an all white jury. Mike O’Connell, spokesperson for the Missouri Department of Corrections, stated that Cole was given lethal injection at 10:15 PM after declining to give a final statement and was pronounced dead minutes later. Cole was convicted of his friend Anthony Curtis in a fit of rage, after finding out that part of his paycheck would be withheld for child support. Both the Missouri Supreme Court and US Supreme Court denied appeals based on Cole’s mental health. The US Supreme Court has also denied appeals based on jury instructions and the method in which Missouri obtains its execution drugs.

The death penalty has been a hotly debated topic as of late. Last week the Tennessee Supreme Court [official website] postponed [JURIST report] the execution of four inmates on death row as it decides whether current protocols are constitutional, effectively halting all executions in the state. Earlier in April the Delaware Senate voted to repeal [JURIST report] the death penalty, but the legislation includes an exemption for the 15 inmates currently on Delaware’s death row. In March Utah Governor Gary Herbert signed a bill to restore the firing squad [JURIST report] as a method of execution, making Utah one of the few states with that option. Like in Oklahoma, if drugs used for lethal injections are unavailable, a firing squad would be allowed. Also last month more than a dozen [JURIST report] former state attorneys general asked the US Supreme Court to rule Oklahoma’s use of the three-drug execution cocktail unconstitutional. Oklahoma became the face [JURIST report] of the legal injection drug debate last year after death row inmate Clayton Lockett died of an apparent heart attack shortly after doctors called off a failed attempt to execute him using a lethal injection drug called midazolam.

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