Richard Clay, 45, is set to be executed for his part in a murder-for-hire plot in Southeast Missouri 16 years ago. His attorney and his family say he’s innocent.

Jennifer Herndon, Clay's attorney, explains the facts of the case. A photo of Clay sits in front of her on the dais.

Jennifer Herndon is a criminal defense attorney who has been fighting the courts for death-row inmate Richard Clay’s release for 12 years. She says it’s a case of Clay being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Clay was convicted in the shooting death of Randy Martindale in New Madrid County. Witnesses said Clay was hired by his estranged wife — Stacy Martindale — who served 15 years for her part in the crime. She is now free — Herndon says she has not been able to get any comment from her on the killing since her release, but that she’s trying.

Clay’s 22-year-old son, Kiefer, pleads for Governor Nixon to stop the execution. He says his father is a good, Christian man, and he didn’t commit the crime.

Clay is scheduled to die by lethal injection January 12th.

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The state supreme court has ordered the execution of prison inmate Richard Clay for January 12. Clay was convicted in 1995 of murdering the husband of his friend’s married girlfriend.

Clay was convicted of shooting Randy Martindale of New Madrid four times with a shotgun.

Court records show Martindale’s wife, Stacey, was having an affair with another man and offered him money to kill her husband so she could collect on the husband’s life insurance. But when her lover refused to do it, she persuaded Clay to do it. Stacey Martindale was sentenced to fifteen years in prison.

Clay’s lawyer still has avenues of appeal to stop the execution.

Missouri’s last execution was that of Dennis Skillicorn in May, 2009. Skillicorn is the only inmate executed between October, 2005 and now.

October’s scheduled execution of Roderick Nunley was called off because last-day court appeals remained unresolved.

Death-row inmate Roderick Nunley has been spared lethal injection on a Supreme Court decision at the eleventh hour, but the Attorney General says he’ll continue to pursue the case until justice is carried out.

Roderick Nunley abducted, raped and stabbed 15-year-old Ann Harris to death while she waited for a school bus in 1989. He confessed to the crime. For that, Attorney General Chris Koster says he should be put to death. Nunley asked for a judge to sentence him instead of a jury. The judge handed down the death sentence in 1991. Koster says the U.S. Supreme Court said only a jury could hand down a death sentence … but that was after Nunley got exactly what he asked for.

Koster says the Missouri Supreme Court agreed with him, but the problem is that it didn’t say in detail why it agreed with him.

The Missouri Surpreme court has decided to take up the case again through January.

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The execution of prison inmate Roderick Nunley has been cancelled.

The state supreme court has not withdrawn its execution warrant for Nunley, who was to be executed early this morning. But it is acknowledging that a federal judge’s stay of execution will hold. The United States Supreme Court refused to lift the stay last night.

The state supreme court has decided to hear arguments in January on claims by Nunley’s lawyer that Nunley should not be under a death sentence because a jury did not recommend it. Nunley pleaded guilty and accepted sentencing without a jury in 19=91 for the kidnap, rape, and murder of a Kansas City girl two years earlier.

Since then, rulings in other states have held that judges cannot sentence people to death without a jury recommendation.