It’s likely the last time in the United States the drug will be used an any executions.

Sodium thiopental renders the inmate unconcious as the first phase in the lethal injection process. Two subsequent injections stop the breathing and then the heart. However, Illinois-based drug company Hospira stopped marketing sodium thiopental and current supplies expire in March, leaving prison systems in a bind.

Jason Clark with the Department of Criminal Justice in Texas he’s confident his state will continue to carry out executions.

“At this time, we’re exploring all of our options including finding an alternate source for sodium thiopental, as well as finding an alternate drug to use.”

Clark says says their next execution is scheduled for April 5th, contributing to the sense of immediacy. Another one is set for May. On the average, Texas executes four times the amount of death-row inmates than any other state. More than 300 people are on death row in Texas, compared to Missouri’s 46.

Missouri used sodium thiopental in the execution of Martin Link earlier this month … it’s remaining three doses will go unused.

Attorney General Chris Koster has asked the federal government to help fill the demand for the drug. He’s joined by 12 other states in his request. Read the letter sent to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. Joining Koster in the request are attorneys general from Oregon, Alabama, Colorado, Florida, Mississippi, Nevada, Shurtleff, Bruce Salzburg, Delaware, Idaho, Tennessee, and Washington.

Kentucky has reportedly gotten a supply of the drug from a company in Georgia, but won’t be using it because the state has halted all executions pending a decision by the Kentucky Supreme Court.

It’s believed Kentucky’s supply came from Sandoz International GmbH in Germany, which markets generics company. It expires in May 2014.

Sandoz has indicated that it does not market sodium thiopental in the United States, nor does it plan to.

South Dakota and Nebraska corrections officials say they are working on acquiring sodium thiopental from a company in India. Nebraska now has enough of the drug for 166 executions because Kayem Pharmaceutical will only sell only in bulk.

The lethal injection protocol in Missouri, Texas, Kentucky and several other states — 36 in all — specifies that the inmate be injected with 3 grams of sodium thiopental, and once the inmate is found to be unsconcious,  injected with 50 mg of pancuronium bromide, which causes paralysis and stops the breathing, followed by 240 milliequivalents of potassium chloride, which causes cardiac arrest.

“The state says killing is wrong,” he said in his final statement. “So why do they do it? For revenge. Where is the closure? There is none. The death penalty is a act of revenge. Many men sit on death row. Some innocent and some not. So what happens when a man is executed and it’s later learned he was in fact innocent. He can’t be brought back.”

Before the execution, three reporters, the man who prosecuted Link for the crimes against Elissa Self-Braun in 1991, the detectives, sheriff and officer who handled the case waited to be taken to the execution chamber.

Detective Mike Flaherty talks about how it all started: “When the car was recovered, it was impounded by Kirkwood Police, for whatever reason, they removed a jar of vaseline from his car and put it in a ziploc bag. There was this 11-year-old girl, the implications were pretty obvious. We were looking at them right after the incident with the little girl. He had checked into a hotel at DeLoge, got his muffler fixed the next day. We were talking to his dad and he said they used to put in (on family float trips) right where we found her body.”

Detective Jim Roach says  it’s common criminal behavior to do that — take the bodies to their comfort zone. “They’re scared and panicked, they rely on muscle memory and things and places that comfort them.”

The officers talk about Ted Bundy, and how he dumped his bodies where he used to camp as a boy near Seattle. He was charismatic, intelligent.

Is Link charismatic and intelligent, I ask. No, they say. Talk shifts to his physical discription, how he’s tall, thin, and has been referred to both as a dark skinned white man and a light-skinned black man.

Henry “Bud” Snyder was the Sheriff of Wayne County, where Self-Braun was found, for 16 years.

“She would have ended up in Wappapello if he’d put her in the channel,” he said. ”I think about it every time I cross the Black Bridge.”

“It wasn’t the biggest shake up, no, but it was one of the worst,” he says. “Tonight I got to see a photo of her. That’s the first time I saw what she looked like alive. It still bears in my mind, I told the prosecutor at the time, when this guy’s put to death, I’d like to be there. And aside from the family, I think tonight will provide some closure for me too.”

The victim’s family, the investigators, and perhaps Link, waited 20 years for the execution. In the end, it took less than 15 minutes for his to die.

Just after midnight, it began — “We’re beginning Phase One. The offender is being administered pentophol, which renders him unconcious,” Corrections staff announces. At 12:18, we get the statement: Execution complete. Close outside curtain. W-2 closed.”

Statement from Pamela Braun, Elissa’s mother:

Elissa’s family and I would like to thank everyone who has loved us and supported us throughout the past 20 years as we have waited for the final piece of this tragedy to occur.

We want to thank all the law enforcement officers who worked on this case, specifically Detectives Miek Flaherty and Bill Roach who worked diligently to solve the case and gather the necessary evidence to convict him; the labs for all the work that they did in processing the evidence, particularly Harold Messler; the courts and attorneys who handled the legal aspects of prosecuting him; particulary Joe Warzycki adn Jeff Hillard.

We have been truly blessed that the justice system has worked for Elissa, whereas there are still many homicide survivors and victims still waiting for justice.

I’m looking forward to being reunited with Elissa when this time on earth is through.

Hospira has announced it will no longer make sodium thiopental, an anesthetic used in Missouri as one of three drugs administered as the deadly cocktail in lethal injections. Hospira had considered moving production of the drug to Italy, which outlaws capital punishment. Italy has suggested it might sue the company if the drug is used in executions. The Wall Street Journal reports the action comes as anti-death penalty activists ratchet up pressure on pharmaceutical companies which make drugs used in lethal injections.

But he says the role of his former assistant attorney general, Kenny Hulshof, in the case had nothing to do with his decision. Clay’s supporters say Hulshof’s involvement makes the case suspect because a court has ruled he he withheld evidence in a separate case. They’ve offered no proof of that and Hulshof does not comment.

Nixon denies his commutation of a death sentence earlier this week means he’s getting soft on the death penalty. Nixon wiped out Clay’s death sentence hours before Clay was to be executed. Clay will serve life without parole now.

Nixon notes 50 men were executed while he was Attorney General and one has been executed since he became Governor. Another execution is scheduled for next month. Nixon says he’ll evaluate that case on its merits.

Clay was to have been executed just after midnight Tuesday at the prison in Bonne Terre. It would have been the first execution in Missouri in 20 months. The last person to be executed in Missouri was Dennis Skillikorn in May of 2009.

Nixon issued a statement:

“After an exhaustive review, I am convinced of Richard Clay’s involvement in the senseless murder of Randy Martindale and find that the evidence clearly supports the jury’s verdict of murder in the first degree.

Having looked at this matter in its entirety and after significant thought and counsel, I have concluded, however, to exercise my constitutional authority and commute Richard Clay’s sentence to life without the possibility of parole. Richard Clay’s involvement in this crime is clear, and he must, and will, serve the remainder of his life behind bars for his role in this heinous act.”

Jennifer Herndon, Clay’s attorney, says Clay and his family were at first in disbelief once they heard the news and are now relieved with “an overwhelming sense of being grateful and happy.”

“I was concerned about our ability to get a fair hearing in front of them, and then I met with his office on Friday and I felt al ot better after that because it was clear to me that his office had read the case,” she told the Missourinet. “They asked questions that made me know that they had read this. With Rick’s case, it’s so factually complex that you have to – I think to make an informed decision – you have to be willing to put a lot of time into it and I think clearly they did put a lot of time into it.”

Herndon says she’ll push forward to reduce and even exonerate Clay since it’s obvious to her he did not commit the crime. She says she’ll again ask the Supreme Court to take up the case and grant him a new trial.

Attorney General Chris Koster issued this statement:

“These are difficult decisions constitutionally vested with the Governor of our state. I am confident that Governor Nixon gave this case careful consideration and I respect his decision.”

Jessica Machetta interviews Clay’s attorney, Jennifer Herndon [Click to listen, Mp3, 3:54 min.]

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.

Clay’s attorney and family say evidence was railroaded by then Prosecutor Kenny Hulshoff, who aided Southeast Missouri Prosecutor Riley Bock in the case.

Kiefer Clay says his father is innocent.

Herndon and other opponents of the death penalty point to two cases where the men convicted of killings have been exonerated because a judge found their cases were misrepresented under the prosecution of Kenny Hulshof.

Hulshof did not return a call for comment.

A federal judge threw out Clay’s 1995 conviction in 2001 and ordered a new trial, but an appeals court upheld the original conviction, which held the death sentence in place.

Dale Helmig and Josh Kezer were both set free after a judge ruled that evidence was kept from attorneys by Hulshof.

Herndon says her next step is to file for an emergency stay of execution with the Missouri Supreme Court later this week.

Jessica Machetta reports [Listen, Mp3, 1:11 min.]

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.

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.

Koster’s been studying other cases, and says there are some cases, such as the 2002 Ring versus Arizona case, that have been retroactive, but says, “We do not believe this is one of them, we think we stand on pretty solid ground on this.”

“In fact, not 24 hours ago, the Missouri Supreme Court agreed with us,” he told the Missourinet Wednesday. “The problem in the case is that the Missouri Supreme Court didn’t flesh out in great detail why it was agreeing with us, so the Federal Courts were concerned as to whether or not the Missouri Supreme Court had thoroughly thought its way through the process, that complication is what has stopped and stayed this execution.”

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.