"As questions linger about Missouri's shadowy lethal-injection protocol, the state is days away from killing another inmate," is the lengthy report by Steve Vockrodt for the Pitch of Kansas City. Here's the beginning:
At 10:52 p.m. December 11, the Missouri Department of Corrections executed Allen Nicklasson with a single, lethal drug dripped into the convicted murderer's veins.
Just before the dose was administered, Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster issued a statement to the media saying that "the highest court in the nation has removed the last restriction to carrying out the lawfully imposed punishment of Allen Nicklasson."
Except, for the second time last year, that wasn't quite the case.
"Missouri put Nicklasson to death before the federal courts had a final say on whether doing so violated the federal constitution," said Judge Kermit Bye, of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a December 20 opinion.
Bye, a federal appellate-court judge since 1999, said the 11 judges on the 8th Circuit had not yet voted on Nicklasson's request for a stay of his execution.
Missouri put Nicklasson to death before his due process had been fully resolved.
Earlier coverage from Missouri begins at the link.
Comments