Early this morning, Stanley Hall was executed for killing Barbara Jo Wood. Appeal after appeal came and went. Finally, with all appeals exhausted, Hall was executed early this morning and pronounced dead at 12:06. In Hall’s final statement, he apologized to the Wood family for what he had done. Wood’s relatives, who witnessed the execution, made it clear they were not ready to accept the apology and expressed satisfaction that justice had been carried out. The execution ends an unofficial moratorium on the death penalty in Missouri. There hadn’t been an execution in the state since John C. Smith was put to death in October of 2003.
Missouri has executed convicted killer Stanley Hall for the 1994 murder of a St. Louis woman. On the evening of January 15, 1994, Stanley Hall and an accomplice searched the South County Shopping Center in St. Louis for a car to steal. They came across Barbara Jo Wood, who was pulling into the parking lot, and kidnapped her at gunpoint – taking her to the McKinley Bridge, which crosses the Mississippi River at St. Louis. Wood was forced out of the car, a struggle ensued, and she was shot. Hall then threw his victim over the guardrail into the water 90 feet below. Hall was quickly arrested, admitted the crime, and was sentenced to death.
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