The Missouri Supreme Court has denied a stay of execution to convicted murderer Allen L. Nicklasson, who is scheduled to be put to death at 12:01 Wednesday morning.
Allen Nicklasson (courtesy; Missouri Department of Corrections)
The 41-year-old Nicklasson was convicted in the 1994 killing of Richard Drummond of Excelsior Springs after Drummond stopped to help Nicklasson and two others whose car hd broken own on Interstate 70 in Callaway County.
The Columbia Tribune reports Missouri Chief Justice Mary R. Russell’s order overruled the motion for a stay filed by Nicklasson’s attorney Jennifer Herndon.
Nicklasson had been scheduled to be executed on the morning of October 23 in what was to have been the state’s first use of the anesthetic propofol as an execution drug. His execution was delayed amid controversy about the use of that drug.
The state has since announced a protocol utilizing pentobarbital provided by an unnamed compounding pharmacy, and the first execution using that method was conducted November 20 on convicted murderer Joseph Paul Franklin.
Nicklasson, Dennis Skillicorn and Tim DeGraffenreid were the three men in the car that Drummond stopped to help on August 24, 1994. Skillicorn and Nicklasson forced Drummond at gunpoint to drive to a county road in Lafayette County where Nicklasson walked him to a wooded area and shot him twice in the head. His body was found eight days later.
Skillicorn was executed for his role in the crime in 2009. DeGraffenreid is serving a life sentence for second-degree murder.
