MALLETT TO BE EXECUTED JULY

The Missouri Supreme Court Tuesday set a July 11 execution date for Jerome Mallett, who has been on death row for 15 years for killing a Missouri State High Patrol trooper.

Mallett is scheduled to receive a lethal injection at the Potosi Correctional Center, Attorney General Jay Nixon said.

"The guilty verdict and death sentence imposed by the court were just the beginning of a long, difficult road to see justice done," Nixon said.

The road has included a seven-year battle with a federal judge who refused to act on Mallett's appeal and a high-profile advertising campaign by an Italian clothing company that featured the convicted murderer and others on death row.

The trooper's widow, Sarah Froemsdorf of Cape Girardeau, could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

After rejecting the 42-year-old's final appeal on May 29, the path had been cleared of all obstacles to set a date for execution, said Bill Thompson, counsel to the Missouri Supreme Court.

Trooper James Froemsdorf of Cape Girardeau stopped Mallett for speeding March 2, 1985, on Interstate 55 in Perry County. Froemsdorf handcuffed Mallett and put him in his patrol car after he discovered five warrants for his arrest. A deformed hand allowed Mallett to slip out of the handcuffs and take the trooper's handgun out of his holster and shoot him.

Although Mallett claimed Froemsdorf hit him, he confessed to killing the trooper before a jury in Schuyler County. He was placed on Missouri's death row March 7, 1986.

Since then, Mallett and several attorneys have been fighting for his life in court.

The basis of his appeal has been his conviction in Schuyler County. Mallett, who is black, contended there were no black residents in Schuyler County to serve as jurors.

The Missouri Supreme Court upheld Mallett's death penalty in 1989, after a lower court in 1988 overturned the original verdict and ordered a new trial for Mallett.

The case was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1990, the high court refused on a 6-3 vote to hear Mallett's appeal. Later in 1990, Mallett filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus with the U.S. District Court for Eastern Missouri.

The largest impediments to Mallett's execution have been federal laws regulating schedules for appeals and a former federal judge in St. Louis, Nixon said. After the 1990 case was given to then Senior District Judge Edward L. Filippine, it was not acted on for seven years.

The attorney general's office then filed a writ of mandamus, which requires a government official to act on a matter, Nixon said. "We had to sue the judge to get him to rule," he said.

However, Nixon blamed the execution delay on a system that allowed Filippine to put off a ruling for seven years.

Nixon, along with former California Attorney General Dan Lungren, took action against slow-moving appeals courts with the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, which set specific time limits for federal appeals.

Although a case like Mallett's would be stopped from years of appeals now, similar cases that began wading through appeals courts before 1996 are not effected, Nixon said.

Mallett's latest attorney, Michael Gorla of St. Louis, declined to comment Tuesday on the possibly of any further litigation to stop the execution.

Nixon also filed a lawsuit against Italian clothing maker Benetton alleging fraud and misrepresentation when Mallett and three other Missouri death row inmates were interviewed and photographed for an advertising campaign against capital punishment in 2000.