Missouri inmate executed for double killing in 1997

Associated Press WriterPOTOSI, Mo. (AP) -- A man who killed a former girlfriend and her stepfather in northeast Missouri six years ago was put to death early Wednesday, expressing sorrow for what he did and saying he hoped to find forgiveness.

John Clayton Smith, 42, who had waived appeals and said he wanted to die, become the second murderer killed by Missouri this year. His execution was the 61st since the state reinstated the death penalty in 1989.

Before the first of three chemicals were pumped into his veins, Smith raised his head and mouthed "I'm sorry" to reporters and other state witnesses, then did the same to the 12 survivors of his victims, Brandie Kearns, 22, and Wayne Hoewing, 51.

"I only ask that somewhere down life's road, you can find it in your hearts to forgive me," Smith said in a final statement. "I know my death can never bring back your loved ones, but I pray my death may give you some sort of peace."

Bridie Brooks, a sister of Kearns, shouted "Burn in hell" from behind the glassed-off witness area at the Potosi Correctional Center, and said later she considered Smith's final comments "a joke."

"He's not human. He's just a worthless whatever," said Brooks, 31, an insurance claims examiner from Williamstown.

"I think everyone will say this was the easy way out for him," said Wayne Hoewing's son, Scott. He said Smith's death by chemical injection just after midnight was "pretty calm" and swift compared to the brutal killings of the two victims.

Kearns, who had broken off her relationship with Smith about a month before she was slain in July 1997, was stabbed or slashed eight times at her home near Canton, a Mississippi River town about 30 miles south of the Iowa border. Her infant daughter Tatum was found unharmed at her mother's feet the next morning.

Before she died, Kearns scrawled the following words in blood on the kitchen floor: "It was Joh-."

Hoewing, mortally injured with numerous stab wounds, managed to point a loaded gun at Smith, who taunted him by saying, "Go ahead and shoot me."

Hoewing's daughter, Amy Bringer, said that while it may forever be unclear to her whether Smith's final apologies were sincere, "I needed to hear them."

Smith had access Tuesday to forms for 11th-hour federal appeals, but made no use of them. He spent his final day quietly, without visitors, eating ice cream and granola bars and at times talking with relatives by telephone. No members of his family attended the execution.

"He had told us all day he was accepting his punishment, and there was no indication he wanted to do anything other than to follow through with the execution," state Department of Corrections spokesman Tim Kniest said.

Gov. Bob Holden declined two clemency requests filed, without Smith's approval, by the Missouri Catholic Conference and a former public defender who had represented Smith on appeals to the Missouri Supreme Court.

Smith rejected interview requests in the days before his death. His push to halt appeals of his death sentence dated to at least mid-2001, when he told the judge who condemned him that he was "totally guilty," "very sorry," mentally fit to abandon his legal challenges and ready to die "once and for all."

"The punishment of death is suitable," he wrote then.

Kearns' daughter, now 7, lives with her grandmother and has not been told about the attacks. Her aunt, Bridie Brooks, said the little girl blows kisses when she passes the cemetery where her mother is buried.

"She doesn't have the grief or bitterness I know I have," Brooks said, her eyes welling with tears. "Tatum has her own personality, but part of my sister lives in her."