Missouri switches time frame for executions, will start around dinner time instead of midnight
By Kim Bell — St. Louis Post-Dispatch — Feb 6, 2015

Missouri will be taking a new approach to executing inmates.

For an execution scheduled for March 17 for a Barry County cop-killer named Cecil Clayton, the Missouri Supreme Court has given executioners a new time frame to carry out the death sentence.

In the past, Missouri would get a certain day on the calendar to complete the task and the state would start at 12:01 a.m. on that particular day. If something was delayed with appeals or something went wrong in the procedure, the Supreme Court's execution warrant would be good for the rest of that calendar day.

Now, the state still has a 24-hour time limit, but the clock will begin at 6 p.m. Missouri was the only remaining state to use the midnight start time, a federal court official said.

Department of Corrections' spokesman David Owen said the department wanted the change to better accommodate witnesses.

"Moving the execution time to 6 p.m. makes it more practical for witnesses attending an execution and for the courts reviewing the case, and falls in line with the majority of other states that carry out executions," Owen said in an email.

Families of the victim and the condemned often make the drive to the execution site to watch it unfold. They are summoned hours before the 12:01 a.m. start, told to check in by about 10 p.m., then kept hours on site while courts ponder appeals and act on stays of execution. Even if the execution goes off without delays, the witnesses typically are driving home at 2 or 3 a.m.

For years, this was the routine. It was done that way when executions were carried out at Potosi, and more recently at Bonne Terre. State employees whose job it is to oversee the execution often would stay in hotels near the execution site.

Missouri will stick with the midnight start once more — for its execution of Walter Storey scheduled for 12:01 a.m. next Wednesday. Storey was sentenced to die for a fatal attack in 1990 on Jill Lynn Frey in her St. Charles apartment.

Observers have said the reason for the midnight executions was, in part, to cut down on the risk of inmate disturbances and large protests.

Richard Sindel, a defense attorney in Clayton who has represented men on death row, said it may serve a dual purpose of allowing protesters on either side of the debate who want to voice their opinions a more convenient time to stage their protests.

But Sindel said he doesn't support the move. "I don't support any change in the execution protocol as long as they are executing people. The protocol I object to is the entire process."

Clayton, the first prisoner set to be executed under the time change, was convicted of killing Barry County Sheriff's Deputy Christopher Lee Castetter south of Cassville, Mo., in November 1996. The deputy, 29, was shot in the head while responding to a call about a suspicious vehicle. Prosecutors alleged that Clayton was upset after a break-up and he took a loaded gun to the home of his girlfriend's parents.

Clayton's trial was moved to Joplin in Jasper County on a change of venue. The defense attorney argued that Clayton didn't understand his actions that night and that he had lost part of his brain in a accident years earlier.

Clayton is now 74.

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