Missouri governor says execution will go ahead after jurors vacillate over death sentence

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Missouri Gov. Mike Parson said Monday he would not intervene to stop the execution of Michael Tisius, a 42-year-old who murdered two prison guards in 2000.

In a leniency application sent to Mr Parson last month, several jurors who had voted to sentence Mr Tisius to death said they now believe life imprisonment was appropriate. Mr. Tisius’ lawyers had also argued that another juror on the criminal trial could not read, a requirement under Missouri law for jury duty.

“The Missouri judicial system afforded Mr. Tisius due process and due process for his brutal murders of two Randolph County prison guards,” Mr. Parson said in a statement, adding, “The state of Missouri will carry out Mr. Tisius’s sentences according to the order of the court and do justice.”

Mr Parson, a Republican, said Mr Tisius’s case “has been assessed fairly and carefully at every step of the judicial process”.

On Monday, the US Supreme Court denied a stay of execution for Mr Tisius, rejecting his lawyers’ argument that his age at the time of the crime, 19, should save him from the death penalty. Mr. Tisius’s legal appeals have been exhausted.

That left the possibility that Mr. Parson would step in and stop the execution. Mr. Parson, a former sheriff, was unlikely to commute the sentence. For weeks, organizations and institutions — including the American Bar Association, the Missouri State Public Defenders, the European Union and the Catholic Church — lobbied for clemency.

Of the jury that voted to sentence Mr. Tisius to death in 2010, six jurors, including two alternates, have said in affidavits accompanying the leniency application that they would support or not object if Mr. Parson would intervene to commute. life imprisonment instead of the death penalty.