(Washington) The state of Missouri is preparing to execute Tuesday a man sentenced to death three times for a double murder committed more than a quarter century ago.
Posted at 4:18 p.m.
Carman Deck, 56, is due to receive a lethal injection around 6 p.m. (9 p.m. EDT) in Bonne Terre Penitentiary in the central United States.
On Monday, Missouri Governor Mike Parson refused to grant him clemency and commute his sentence to life imprisonment, as demanded by local activists.
“Mr. Deck was able to assert his rights and three separate juries recommended death sentences for the brutal murders he committed,” the Republican elected official said in a statement.
The United States Supreme Court also denied a final appeal by his lawyers on Monday and it is expected to be the 5and convict executed in the United States since 1er january.
In 1996, Carman Deck killed an elderly couple, James and Zelda Long, in suburban St. Louis. He always admitted his responsibility for the crime.
According to the Kansas City Star newspaper, whose editorial writers pleaded for his sentence to be commuted, the Missouri Supreme Court in 2002 overturned the verdict of a first trial, on the grounds that his lawyers had poorly defended him. In particular, they had failed to expose his difficult childhood in foster families.
The Supreme Court of the United States had invalidated in 2005 a second trial, where he had been presented with restraints on the feet, wrists and abdomen likely to influence the perception of jurors.
In 2008, he received the death penalty in a third trial, but the sentence was overturned in 2017 by a federal judge, on the grounds that all available evidence had not been presented to jurors. An appeals court, however, restored the ruling in 2020, a ruling later upheld by the state Supreme Court.