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 Allen Nicklasson, 41, was pronounced dead at 10:52 p.m. Central
Time at a state prison in Missouri, a spokesman for the Missouri
Department of Corrections said.
Nicklasson was found guilty of murdering motorist Richard Drummond,
an AT&T supervisor who stopped on a highway to help Nicklasson and
two others whose car had broken down.
The trio had stolen guns and ammunition from a home before their
vehicle broke down. When Drummond stopped to offer them a ride, they
abducted him, took him to a wooded area and shot him in the head,
according to court records.
Nicklasson, who made no final statement, prayed with a prison
chaplain for about two or three minutes before being given a lethal
injection at a jail in Bonne Terre, roughly 60 miles southwest of
St. Louis, said Missouri Department of Corrections spokesman Mike
O'Connell.
Nicklasson ate a final meal of pizza and orange juice on Tuesday at
about 4 p.m. He ate regular prison meals on Wednesday.
"He was calm, very collected throughout the process this evening,"
O'Connell said.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday evening lifted a last-minute
stay of execution for the Missouri man, clearing the way for the
state to put him to death.
Nicklasson was scheduled to be executed early on Wednesday, but an
Eighth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel issued a stay to hear
further arguments, including whether he had ineffective legal
counsel during his trial and earlier appeals.
Missouri's attorney general appealed that decision to the Supreme
Court, saying Nicklasson had numerous unsuccessful appeals over the
years. The nation's highest court ordered the stay vacated on
Wednesday night, according to a court official.
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One of the men in Nicklasson's trio, Dennis Skillicorn, was executed
in 2009. The third person, Tim DeGraffenreid, who was 17 at the
time, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and received a reduced
sentence.
Nicklasson and Skillicorn were also convicted of killing an Arizona
couple while on the run after Drummond's death.
Missouri Governor Jay Nixon had halted Nicklasson's Oct. 23
execution due to criticism over the U.S. state's planned use of propofol, an anesthetic widely used in medical procedures.
The case was one of many in a national debate over what drugs can or
should be used for executions, as opponents of capital punishment
pressure pharmaceutical companies to cut off supplies of drugs for
executions.
Missouri is one of many U.S. states that have been seeking out
execution drugs mixed in compounding pharmacies now that a growing
number of manufacturers refuse to allow their drugs to be used for
capital punishment.
The practice is controversial because compounded drugs are not
approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Missouri in November also used a compounded pentobarbital, a
short-acting barbiturate, to execute serial killer Joseph Paul
Franklin.
(Reporting by Mary Wisniewski and Carey Gillam and Eric M. Johnson;
editing by Paul Simao and Philip Barbara)
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