The drug that’s given to inmates to put them out before they’re put to death has likely been used for the last time. Like Missouri, Texas uses sodium thiopental in executions. Timothy Wayne Adams died by lethal injection last night in Huntsville, Texas. He was executed for shooting his toddler point blank, for which he said he did to get back at his wife, who was leaving him. He says his intention was to shoot himself next.

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.”

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Martin Link died at the Bonne Terre prison at 12:15 a.m.

“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.”

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A key drug used by the state of Missouri in executions will no longer be made by its only domestic manufacturer.

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.

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.