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Thread: Roderick Nunley - Missouri Execution - September 1, 2015

  1. #11
    Moderator MRBAM's Avatar
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    Can anyone tell how long after Jan 10th the MSC could issue a ruling or the dates? Then are there any requirements as to how far out the dates must be set?

  2. #12
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    Almost 25 years later, murder victim Ann Harrison is a lasting memory

    By TONY RIZZO
    The Kansas City Star

    It’s been nearly 25 years since Amy Barrett saw the picture of her shy, sweet friend flash on the television screen.

    The breaking news bulletin said Ann Harrison, a girl Barrett had known since sixth grade, was missing. A few days later, the 15-year-old freshman at Raytown South High School was found stabbed to death in the trunk of an abandoned car.

    The memories of those confusing and frightening days never have left Barrett.

    “I can’t let go of that fear,” she said. “It’s always there.”

    Saturday would have been Ann’s 40th birthday.

    The rest of the city may remember her as the girl kidnapped from in front of her house while waiting for the school bus.

    But to her friends, who have grown into women with careers and children of their own, she is forever in their thoughts as that smiling, pretty, brown-haired girl who loved softball and music.

    “Ann deserves to be remembered for the wonderful spirit that she was, and continues to be, for her family, friends and community,” said Tina Thomasee.

    Next month, on the anniversary of her death, friends are planning a ceremony to commemorate her life.

    And they are waiting to see what happens to one of the two men convicted of killing her — the one who is scheduled to be put to death early Wednesday.

    Though news coverage in recent days has centered on the legal challenges surrounding Missouri’s lethal injection procedures and Michael Taylor’s efforts to stay his execution, her friends say it is Ann who should be remembered, not her killers.

    “We would rather the world focus on Ann, and who she was, instead of controversies over death penalty drugs and the death penalty itself,” Thomasee said.

    Barrett and Ann shared classes. They played on the same softball team, coached by Ann’s father, and they were bandmates. Ann played the flute, and Barrett wonders if Ann would have pursued a career in music.

    “She loved playing the flute,” Barrett said. “She was really good.”

    Ann’s death was a life-altering event for Barrett and other children who knew her.

    “It just wasn’t in my realm of possibility at that age,” she said.

    Previously, they rode their bikes around the neighborhood and walked everywhere without worry.

    “After that, no more,” she said. “It changed the way I think of the world.”

    The mother of two daughters now 12 and 17, Barrett never has allowed them the freedom she enjoyed. Where they go, a parent goes with them.

    “What happened to Ann changed me for the rest of my life,” she said.

    She said all of those fears that have haunted her rose to the surface again last week with news of the kidnapping and killing of 10-year-old Hailey Owens in Springfield.

    Thomasee agreed.

    “The recent events in Springfield, along with any other time a child is taken and murdered, continue to remind me of that terrible time 25 years ago,” she said.

    Of course, few know what Hailey’s family is going through except people like Ann’s parents and her two younger sisters, now grown with children of their own.

    For Bob and Janel Harrison, the loss of their daughter on March 22, 1989, has been exacerbated by the lengthy legal struggle over the fates of her killers, Taylor and Roderick Nunley, both sentenced to death.

    They know that whether or not Taylor and Nunley are ultimately put to death, it will have no bearing on the pain that always will be with them.

    Still, to them, Taylor and Nunley earned the ultimate punishment for their crimes.

    “People talk about closure,” Janel Harrison said. “There’s no such thing as closure. What we want is justice for Ann.”

    In Taylor’s case, that justice is scheduled to be meted out at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday.

    Although a flurry of litigation challenging Missouri’s lethal injection protocol, being fought out now in federal court, could delay or halt the execution, it would not be the first time.

    In early 2006, Taylor came within hours of being put to death before the courts halted the execution.

    In 2010, it was Nunley’s turn. Again he won a last-minute reprieve.

    Both times, the Harrisons chose not to witness the execution.

    If Taylor is indeed put to death Wednesday, Bob Harrison intends to be be there.

    He is not eager to see another man die. Nor does he want to see Taylor’s family if they attend. The Harrisons consider them, too, to be victims.

    “They didn’t deserve this to happen to their family,” Bob Harrison said.

    The morning Ann disappeared, Bob Harrison was at work and his wife was inside their home when Ann yelled goodbye and stepped out their front door in southeast Kansas City to wait for the school bus.

    Nunley, then 24, and Taylor, then 22, who grew up near each other in Kansas City, were binging on crack cocaine and cruising in a car they had stolen in Grandview. They eluded a Lee’s Summit police officer who tried to pull them over for having a broken taillight.

    A few hours later, happenstance led them to the street where they saw Ann. One of them got out, grabbed her and forced her into the car. Each has blamed the other.

    They drove her to a home in south Kansas City where Nunley’s mother lived. There Ann was raped. Testing of DNA later linked Taylor to the crime. He maintains that Nunley also raped her, though Nunley denied that.

    It was then that they decided to kill Ann. Once again, each blames the other for being the aggressor.

    They lied to her to get her into the trunk of the car. They told her they were going to call her parents and demand ransom money.

    Instead, knives were retrieved from the kitchen. One of them stabbed her in the throat. The other stabbed her in the torso. Taylor’s confession revealed the horror of the moment:

    “I stuck her, two or three times, probably four, you know I stuck ’em in the stomach down here, you know,” he told police.

    “And then I stayed and watched it, you know. … Her eyes rolled up in her head, and she was sort of like trying to catch her, her breath. She couldn’t breathe, you know.”

    What motivates Bob Harrison more than anything to see the case through to the end is the thought of what Ann went through during her last few minutes of life.

    “That’s the part I can’t stop thinking about,” he said. “That’s the part that makes them need to have this punishment.”

    http://www.kansascity.com/2014/02/22...#storylink=cpy

  3. #13
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    State argues for lifting of impediments to execution of Michael Taylor’s accomplice

    By Mike Lear

    In the days after Michael Taylor was executed for his part in the murder of a 15-year-old girl in 1989, the state is working to lift barriers to the execution of his accomplice.

    Taylor and Roderick Nunley participated in the abduction of Ann Harrison and her subsequent rape and murder. Nunley was also sentenced to death and in December his attorneys were asked to give the Supreme Court reason why it shouldn’t set his execution date.

    Their primary argument is that he has had a stay in place for more than 3 years in the U.S. District Court in Western Missouri, stemming from an appeal of his death sentence. The Attorney General’s Office has challenged that stay.

    Nunley’s attorneys have also asked the court to consider his pending request for the right to appeal a rejected habeas corpus petition, and his role as a plaintiff in a pending court challenge to Missouri’s execution protocol. The four men executed since November were also plaintiffs in that case.

    Nunley’s attorneys also maintain that the way those executions were carried out violated state and federal law.

    Missouri’s next scheduled lethal injection is that of Jeffrey Ferguson on March 26. Like Nunley and Taylor, Ferguson was sentenced to death for a 1989 murder; that of 17-year-old Kelli Hall in St. Louis County.

    http://www.missourinet.com/2014/03/1...rs-accomplice/

  4. #14
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    On January 14, 2015, oral argument will be heard in Nunley's appeal before an Eighth Circuit panel made up of Judges Loken (G.H.W. Bush), Murphy (Clinton) and Melloy (G.W. Bush).

    http://media.ca8.uscourts.gov/webcal/jan15stl.pdf

  5. #15
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    Today, the US Eight Circuit Court of Appeals DENIED Nunley's appeal.

    http://media.ca8.uscourts.gov/opndir/15/04/133627P.pdf

  6. #16
    Moderator Dave from Florida's Avatar
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    That is great news. Now hopefully SCOTUS will refuse to hear this and an execution date can be set.

  7. #17
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    Execution set for man who raped, killed Kansas City girl, 15

    A September execution date has been set for a man convicted of raping and killing a 15-year-old Kansas City girl in 1989.

    The Missouri Supreme Court set the execution date for Roderick Nunley for the 24-hour period beginning at 6 p.m. on Sept. 1. Missouri has executed four men this year, and another inmate is scheduled for execution Tuesday evening.

    Nunley was one of two men who pleaded guilty and received the death penalty in the death of Ann Harrison. She was waiting for a school bus in front of her home when she was abducted.

    Michael Taylor was executed for the same crime in 2014.

    An appeals court ruled earlier that Nunley wasn’t entitled to a new sentencing hearing because he waived jury sentencing when he pleaded guilty.
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

  8. #18
    Senior Member Frequent Poster elsie's Avatar
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    It is a good thing for the victim and her family to get justice. It is a horrible miscarriage of justice to wait as this family has.
    Proverbs 21:15 "When justice is done, it is a joy to the righteous but terror to evil doers."

  9. #19
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    Doubting Jennifer Herndon

    An appeals lawyer who has represented more than a half-dozen men put to death in Missouri faces questions about her competency.

    By Ken Armstrong
    The Marshall Project

    In six days, on Sept. 1, Missouri is scheduled to execute 50-year-old Roderick Nunley, who was condemned for the 1989 rape and murder of 15-year-old Ann Harrison. The high school freshman was abducted while in her driveway, waiting for the school bus.

    If the execution takes place, one of Nunley’s attorneys, Jennifer Herndon, will have represented eight of the last 19 men executed in Missouri. And those eight men will have been executed in a span of four and a half years.

    The Marshall Project profiled Herndon in June, describing how she juggles a debilitating workload as a capital appeals attorney with a separate career as an internet marketer, sending out inspirational messages along with product pitches geared for online entrepreneurs. The story also detailed Herndon’s financial and professional struggles; in 2013, her law license was suspended for four months because of delinquent state income taxes.

    On Tuesday, two other attorneys who once assisted in Nunley’s case filed a motion with the Missouri Supreme Court, asking that Nunley’s execution warrant be recalled because of “severe doubts” about Herndon’s fitness as a lawyer. Their motion cited The Marshall Project’s story, in which Herndon said, among other things, “I feel like I’m not doing the best work I can or should be doing for my clients right now.”

    With Herndon, the quantity of her legal work was already an issue. Because relatively few attorneys handle capital appeals in Missouri, the state’s accelerated pace of executions in recent years has created unusual stress for the defense bar. Of the 19 executions held nationally this year, Missouri has five, second only to Texas.

    But the motion went as much to the quality of Herndon’s work, and whether she has met her ethical obligations as an attorney.

    In years past, the Missouri Department of Revenue filed three liens against Herndon, saying she owed more than $47,000 for unpaid state income taxes from 2006 to 2012, according to court records. But two months ago, the department filed a fourth lien, saying Herndon owes $2,077.85 for unpaid taxes in 2013 — a delinquency that could once again place her law license in jeopardy.

    The motion filed by the two other attorneys said “equally troubling” was a lawsuit filed against Herndon last month. That suit, an unlawful detainer action, alleges that Herndon’s house was purchased on July 14 in a foreclosure sale, but Herndon has failed to leave the residence.

    “Ms. Herndon appears to lack the time and capacity to competently represent Mr. Nunley,” the motion says. “Her online career and pending legal and financial problems raise substantial questions about her competence.”

    In an email sent to The Marshall Project, Herndon wrote of how the court system has placed her in the unfair position of handling “a never-ending string of back-to-back executions,” while simultaneously refusing to approve additional funds.

    “I have rejected opportunities to make money in my other business, opting instead to work on Mr. Nunley's case because his life matters more than money to me. I have laid out money from my own pocket, in excess of $300 to date, to cover copy costs, postage and filing fees. I will not be reimbursed for this, but can't take that into consideration when his life is at stake.

    “I am doing everything I can for Roderick. Is it enough? No. Do I think I could save his life if I had all the resources in the world? Not without a miracle. Over the last two years, just considering my clients, I have seen the state execute two men who were incompetent, one who was mentally ill, one who was mentally retarded, and one who made such a transformation in prison that he would have made a fine next door neighbor. I have filed motions supported by case law the state couldn't refute, hired experts whose opinions were uncontroverted, drafted clemency petitions the size of a book, and yet Missouri continues to execute men, no matter how legally or morally wrong it is under the specifics of each case. That's why I want out. Not because I don't care anymore, but because the system is broken here. I can't fix it, and being a part of it makes me feel like an enabler of the executioner.”

    The motion filed Tuesday included affidavits from Lindsay Runnels and Jennifer Merrigan, the two attorneys who once assisted in the case, and from Shynise Nunley Spencer, who is Nunley’s daughter. Runnels, in her affidavit, said that in the summer of 2010, she agreed to help the defense team search for evidence in Nunley’s past that might mitigate the crime, such as childhood trauma or mental illness. But because of Herndon, Runnels wrote, she encountered obstacles with such basic steps as obtaining a copy of the trial file, which “was mostly missing and what did exist was in disarray.”

    Herndon told Runnels she had never requested the file from the Missouri State Public Defender, nor had she checked with the trial attorneys — because one was a friend and the trial had been difficult for her, and Herndon was hesitant to “bring it all up again,” according to Runnels’s affidavit.

    In the fall of 2010, Nunley received a stay of execution based on a due process issue. Afterward, Runnels wrote, she “had essentially no contact” with Herndon, despite informing her that she was “able and willing” to continue working on the case.

    This year, when Runnels learned through The Marshall Project’s story of Herndon’s previous law suspension, Runnels sent a copy of the article to Nunley’s daughter. Afterward, Runnels spoke with Nunley on the phone. A rule of the Missouri Supreme Court says lawyers who are suspended must notify their clients. But, Runnels wrote, “Mr. Nunley told me that Ms. Herndon never informed him that she had been suspended from the practice of law, nor had Ms. Herndon obtained his consent to continue representing him…”

    Nunley also told Runnels that he had tried to fire Herndon in 2009 or 2010, but Herndon would not withdraw from the case, according to Runnels’s affidavit.

    Shynise Nunley Spencer, in her affidavit, wrote that she has kept a “consistent, close and loving relationship” with her father. Despite that, she wrote, “I have never, not once, spoken with Jennifer Herndon. She has never called me. She has never returned my calls. My brother has never spoken to her either.”

    Reading the story about Herndon made her feel “sick,” the daughter wrote. “I was shocked to learn that she had been suspended from practicing law.… I do not understand how the system allows someone in Ms. Herndon's situation to represent people in the most serious of all criminal cases, where their lives are at stake.”

    Herndon’s last client to face execution was Richard Strong, condemned for the stabbing deaths of his girlfriend and her two-year-old daughter. Herndon pleaded for a stay from the U.S. Supreme Court, but came up a vote short. Strong was put to death on the evening of June 9.

    That same evening, Herndon went on her business’s Facebook page and posted this message:



    Three days after Herndon gave her fellow shopper 31 cents, Missouri filed its lien against Herndon, saying she owed the state more than $2,000.

    https://www.themarshallproject.org/2...nnifer-herndon

  10. #20
    Senior Member Frequent Poster elsie's Avatar
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    Oh Mr. Nunley, it is time for justice. The murder of innoncents call for nothing less. So take your medicine like a man.
    Proverbs 21:15 "When justice is done, it is a joy to the righteous but terror to evil doers."

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