GARY ROLL EXECUTION SET AUG. 30

~Correction: The victims of the homicide were Sherry Scheper and her sons, Curtis and Randy Scheper.

Gary Lee Roll has run out of court appeals and is sentenced to die Aug. 30 for murdering a Cape Girardeau family in 1992, an official in the Missouri attorney general's office said.

After Roll's final appeal for a hearing before the U.S. Supreme Court was rejected, the Missouri Supreme Court was free to set an execution date, said the official, Scott Holste.

Roll, 47, was convicted in the triple murder of a woman and her two sons. Along with two accomplices, he shot, stabbed and pistol whipped the three before stealing a small amount of marijuana and $215 in cash.

Roll was sentenced to death more than seven years ago by Circuit Judge Frank Conley.

Roll's first appeal to the Missouri Supreme Court claimed the effects of LSD and prescription drugs on him at the time of the killings were not adequately considered in court. Roll had also claimed that his attorney, Kenneth McManaman, had not presented his troubled mental condition adequately.

"Appeals often have to do with the representation of an attorney," Holste said.

Botched attempts by Roll to plead guilty to the murders at the start of his trial did not qualify as an unfair hearing, the Missouri Supreme Court found.

On the first day of his trial in 1992 he had tried to plead guilty, but Conley would not accept it because Roll stated earlier about his drug use before the crime and he couldn't remember firing a gun. On the next day, Roll said he had made a false statement about recalling the killings, and his guilty plea was accepted, court records say.

The state Supreme Court decided Roll's claims against his attorney and Conley were unfounded.

An automatic appeal for a hearing before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1997 was also denied, Holste said.

The next appeal, a habeas corpus petition before a federal appeals court in 1998, made the same claims about the influence of narcotics and ineffectiveness of McManaman. It was rejected, but reappeared again in federal court last spring. The court considered Roll's same complaints and rejected the appeal. That left Roll with one more appeal for a hearing before the U.S. Supreme Court this summer.

Barring clemency from the governor, Roll will die by lethal injection on Aug. 30.

"This reaffirms that Missouri has the death penalty, and it will be carried out for crimes in Cape Girardeau County," county Prosecuting Attorney Morley Swingle said.