Search Results for: Herbert Smulls

One of those who watched the state execute prison inmate Herbert Smulls late last night calls the execution “a travesty of justice.” The person making that charge is not one of Smulls’ supporters. It’s one of his victims.

Herbert Smulls died 253 months aafter getting his death sentence for killing Chesterfield jeweler Stephen Honickman during a 1991 robbery. Although Honickman’s wife, Florence, was shot twice, she survived by playing dead. She says waiting more than twenty years to execute a murderer while the state spends millions of dolalrs on the inmate is a travesty of justice for her and her family. She says the state has not paid for any of her expenses to attend the execution.

She says there should be no reason, in a “just and a rational legal system” why appeals should continue longer than ten years. She says she and her family are the ones who have suffered cruel and unusal punishent; by having to wait so long for justice to be done. She says the system needs to spend more time thinking of the victims and less about the murderers.

AUDIO: post-execution news conference

The Missouri Supreme Court has decided it will not order more than one execution per month. A court source has told the Missourinet the policy has been enacted at the request of the Department of Corrections, which conducts executions at its prison in Bonne Terre.

The Department of Corrections has refused to explain why it asked the court to establish that practice or to make available any department officials to discuss the issue. A spokesman for Attorney General Chris Koster says he is aware of the policy but will not comment on it. About a year ago, Koster said that delays in setting execution dates threaten the state’s ability to administer capital punishment. He asked the court two years ago to set execution dates for nine inmates. One of them, Herbert Smulls, was executed in January. Another, Michael Worthington, is scheduled to die on August 6.

Executions have been held monthly since last November, except for May, when questions about Russell Bucklew’s physical fitness to be executed produced a court-ordered stay. The next execution scheduled is that of John Middleton next week. Another is set for August 6th.

But the Corrections Department has held multiple executions within single months seven times since the state legalized lethal injection. Three executions were done in August, 1997. Three inmates were executed within a three week period late in 1995. The most recent multiple-execution month is October, 2001. The most recent execution was that of John Winfield on June 15.

The legislature is being asked to set up a special commission to establish the right way to execute prisoners.

Senate Minority Leader Jolie Justus says, “If any governmental action other than the death penalty was carried out with this kind of secrecy, members of this General Assembly would be lining up to call for investigations and transparency; budgets would be hijacked and hearings would be held.” 

Justus says the Corrections Department’s secrecy about the execution drug it uses, the source of it, and the questionable legality of its use are behind her call for formation of an eleven-member Capital sentencing Procedures and Protocols Commission.

Her bill has been filed a few hours before the scheduled execution of Herbert Smulls.  “From the little information the public has gathered, the Department of  Corrections will execute Mr. Smulls using expired drugs that were illegally compunded out of state, paid for in  cash and transported to Missouri in violation of state and federal laws.  If there is more to this story, we will not know because state officials refuse to release this information to the public,” she says.

Justus says nobody, even death penalty supporters, should allow Missouri government to execute inmates on behalf of the people of the state through secret, cash transactions for illegal drugs. 

Her commission would be made up of the Attorney General, a current or retired public defender, a sitting or retired prosecutor, an active member of the Missouri Bar, two physicians, two pharmacists, two judges, and a person appointed by the governor.

The legislature has repeatedly refused to consider any legislation changing death penalty procedures.  Justus admits she does not know if her proposal stands a chance in this year’s session. 

AUDIO: Justus introduces bill 2:13

Two days before the state’s next scheduled execution, a call for an execution moratorium will be filed in the state senate.

Lawyers are hoping to get a stay of execution for Herbert Smulls, who is scheduled to die early Wednesday morning for murdering a man in 1991.  His lawyer has gone to federal court, asking for a sixty-day delay, arguing the drug used to kill Smulls could cause him to suffer. 

Controversy about the drug, the origin of it, and the safety of it leads Senator Jolie Justus to propose an indefinite moratorium while a commission studies the execution protocol. “I’m not saying this man should not be executed. I’m saying we need at least sixty days to get this sorted out so the people of the state of Missouri, the legislature, everybody involved in this process can fully understand how we are executing people…whether it is legal, moral and ethical because right now we don’t know the answers because they won’t even give us access to the information,” she says.

Although she says “sixty days,” her resolution has no definite date for completing the study.

Moratorium efforts have failed in the legislature in recent years and Justus says she has no assurances this proposal will succeed, either.  But she says the people of Missouri deserve to hear the conversation about the how the state extracts its ultimate penalty.

AUDIO: Justus & Sen. Schaaf in Senate (edited) 5:59

A state Senator is pushing the Corrections Department to reveal whether an Oklahoma pharmacy that reportedly makes Missouri’s execution drug is part of the company hired to keep other inmates healthy.

St. Joseph Senator Rob Schaaf is a doctor who supported executions until Governor Carnahan pardoned a condemned inmate because the Pope asked him to. Schaaf says that illustrates the arbitrariness of the death penalty.

He’s been told the company providing healthcare to prison inmates, Corizon Correctional Healthcare, owns the Oklahoma pharmacy that provided the drug that killed the last two inmates executed in Missouri. “I just don’t think the same company that takes care or prisoners ought to be engaged in any way helping execute any of ’em,” he says.

The  Corrections Department refuses to identify the pharmacy, saying state law protects the identity of the execution team. Schaaf calls that position “baloney,”  saying that it makes about as much sense as saying the company that provided the gurney or the company providing the light bulb in the execution chamber is part of the team. “It’s ridiculous,” he says.

When Schaaf quizzed the state budget director and a department official of the corrections department, they said they would consult with department officials and get back to him.  He says that’s a non-answer.

The next scheduled execution is less than a week away.  Inmate Herbert Smulls is to die by lethal injection next Tuesday night.,  He committed a murder in 1991.                                

Sen. Schaaf quizzes state budget director Linda Luebbering and a corrections official: AUDIO: 3:45

Interview with Sen. Schaaf: 1prisdrugB

 Interview with Sen. Schaaf: