ST. LOUIS (AP) — The attorney for Missouri death row inmate Herbert Smulls has asked a federal court for a 60-day stay of execution, citing concerns about whether the state’s execution drug could cause the inmate to suffer during the process.
Attorney Cheryl Pilate filed the stay motion Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Jefferson City. It wasn’t clear when the court would rule.
Smulls was sentenced to death for killing a St. Louis County jeweler in 1991. He would be the third Missouri death row inmate executed since November, and the third to die by an injection of a form of pentobarbital made by a compounding pharmacy. The Missouri Department of Corrections refuses to say where the drug is made, or by whom.
Pentobarbital was used in an execution on Jan. 9 in Oklahoma, where inmate Michael Lee Wilson’s final words were, “I feel my whole body burning.” Pilate said it is possible that the same pharmacy provides the lethal drug to both states
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Attorney Cheryl Pilate filed the stay motion Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Jefferson City. It wasn’t clear when the court would rule.
Smulls was sentenced to death for killing a St. Louis County jeweler in 1991. He would be the third Missouri death row inmate executed since November, and the third to die by an injection of a form of pentobarbital made by a compounding pharmacy. The Missouri Department of Corrections refuses to say where the drug is made, or by whom.
Pentobarbital was used in an execution on Jan. 9 in Oklahoma, where inmate Michael Lee Wilson’s final words were, “I feel my whole body burning.” Pilate said it is possible that the same pharmacy provides the lethal drug to both states
continue to read here