Missouri executes man convicted of 1990 murder

[February 11, 2015]  By Carey Gillam
 
 (Reuters) - Missouri on Wednesday executed a man convicted of murdering a neighbor in 1990, officials said, amid scrutiny of the secrecy surrounding the state's lethal injection protocols.

Walter Storey, 47, was pronounced dead at 12:10 a.m. local time on Wednesday after receiving a lethal injection at a state prison in Bonne Terre, Missouri Department of Corrections spokesman Mike O'Connell said in a statement.

Storey, the first prisoner to be executed in the state this year, was convicted of beating and stabbing his neighbor, Jill Frey, to death in February 1990.

"Jill Frey's loved ones waited a quarter-century for the closure and finality of justice that came early this morning," said Attorney General Chris Koster in a statement.

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected a stay of execution appeal that questioned the constitutionality of Missouri's lethal injection practices and argued there were concerns similar to those raised by Oklahoma inmates for whom the justices recently issued stays of execution. Four of the nine justices dissented.

The appeal cited both the state's secrecy about its sourcing for compounded pentobarbital to be used in Storey's execution, and concerns about the state's practice of dosing inmates with the sedative midazolam before executions as reasons for the court's review.

"It makes me sad on many levels that he'll be executed under a protocol that so clearly violates the Eighth Amendment and the standards of morality and decency we should have in this country," said Jennifer Herndon, an attorney representing Storey.

Nine current and former Missouri state legislators filed a brief with the Supreme Court on Tuesday supporting a stay of execution for Storey because of what they said were "serious questions about the constitutionality" of the state's execution protocol.

But in opposing a stay of execution for Storey, Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster said in court filings the state had carried out 12 executions since November 2013 using pentobarbital, a fast-acting barbiturate, and that all those executions had been "rapid and painless."

Missouri's protocol is not comparable to Oklahoma's three-chemical execution procedure that the high court is reviewing, Koster said in the court filings.

Many states have been changing the drugs they use in executions in recent years. Compounded drugs are not subject to the usual oversight by the Food and Drug Administration and critics have speculated they may cause undue pain and suffering during an execution.

Storey was one of several Missouri death row inmates who filed a lawsuit against the state in 2012 alleging its lethal injection protocol violated a constitutional prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. That case is pending with the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

(Reporting by Carey Gillam in Kansas City and Curtis Skinner in San Francisco; Editing by Doina Chiacu, Bill Trott, Eric Walsh and Jeremy Laurence)

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