"State execution to resume after switch to other drug," is the AP report, via the Springfield News-Leader.
A Missouri execution postponed last month amid debate over the state’s choice of execution drug is set to take place Wednesday.
Allen Nicklasson was convicted in the 1994 slaying of Excelsior Springs businessman Richard Drummond, who stopped to help when a car used by Nicklasson and two others broke down on Interstate 70. Another man in the car, Dennis Skillicorn, was executed in 2009.
The execution is scheduled for 12:01 a.m. at the prison in Bonne Terre.
Nicklasson was supposed to be executed Oct. 23, when Missouri planned to use the anesthetic propofol for the first time. The plan drew concerns from the medical community because most of the drug is made in Europe, and the anti-death penalty European Union had threatened to limit export if propofol was used in an execution.
As a result, Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon halted the execution.
The article also notes a vigil that will be held tomorrow:
The Springfield chapter of Missourians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty will hold a vigil Tuesday to protest Wednesday’s scheduled execution of Missouri death row inmate Allen Nicklasson. The vigil will be from noon to 1 p.m. on Park Central Square in downtown Springfield.
The Columbia Daily Tribune publishes an OpEd, "Execution is never the answer," by Jeff Stack of the Mid-Missouri Fellowship of Reconciliation.
While millions of people around the world will celebrate Human Rights Day on Tuesday, Dec. 10, Missouri officials might be engaged in bloody activities ill-fitting the occasion. Workers at the Bonne Terre prison have been ordered to begin preparations that day to execute Allen Nicklasson, just after midnight Wednesday morning.
Perhaps state officials are oblivious both to the event and to the evolving global pattern toward repeal. It might be tempting to cast off human beings who have committed horrible crimes — such as Nicklasson — but with his lethal injection, Missouri would only be compounding the pattern of abuse and societal neglect he has endured since infancy. He would be the 70th person executed since 1989; Missouri is the fifth-most prolific serial-killing U.S. state. Officials would better serve our people by making Joseph Franklin's November execution — he was killed while legal appeals were still pending — the last in our state's history, leading Missouri upon a more enlightened path.
Sixty-five years ago on Dec. 10, the United States and 47 other nations in the United Nations' General Assembly unanimously adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the aftermath of World War II and its horrific atrocities. Among the declaration's planks, Article 3 says, "Everyone has the right to life."
Most nations seem intent on honoring that noble commitment. Globally, abolitionists by law or practice now outnumber executing ones by a 2-1 margin. Six U.S. states have abolished the death penalty in as many years, and both the number of death sentences and executions nationwide have declined almost every year since 1999.
Earlier coverage from Missouri begins at the link.
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