Once a leader, state backs off on executions

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- Not too long ago, Missouri's death row was being emptied into the execution chamber. The state trailed only Texas and Virginia in the number of convicted murderers put to death.

Today, Missouri's death row is being gradually emptied by the courts.

Since the balance of the Missouri Supreme Court tipped toward Democratic-appointed judges two years ago, the court has overturned an increasing amount of death sentences and has slowed the scheduling of executions to a standstill. Now the state that once executed someone about every other month hasn't held an execution in more than a year.

Prosecutors are fuming. Death penalty opponents are rejoicing. And politicians are taking note.

"There clearly has been a philosophical shift in a majority of the court, making it more difficult to hold death penalty sentences and slowing down the ultimate process," said Attorney General Jay Nixon, whose office defends death penalty appeals and requests execution dates. "I am frustrated. But I'm more frustrated for the crime victims and their families."

Judicial skepticism of the death penalty has grown nationally during the past few years.

For the second straight year, juries are projected to set a 30-year low in imposing death sentences. And this year's 59 executions nationally are the lowest since 1996, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Illinois Gov. George Ryan commuted all of the state's death sentences in 2003. Arizona, which executed 22 people over an eight-year span, hasn't executed anyone in four years. Louisiana, which executed 27 people over two decades, hasn't executed anyone in 2 1/2 years.

But Missouri's metamorphosis stands out because "it once was one of the leading execution states in the country," said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center.

Since it resumed executions in 1989 through 2002, Missouri put to death 59 inmates -- second only to Texas' 220 and Virginia's 80. Yet Missouri carried out just two executions in 2003 and none this year.

The turning point came in March 2002, when the addition of Judge Richard Teitelman gave the seven-member court -- once entirely composed of appointees of Republican Gov. John Ashcroft -- a new majority appointed by Democratic governors.

Since then, the Democratic appointees have redefined Missouri's death penalty in a series of 4-3 decisions.

Over the objection of Republican appointees, they overturned Joseph Amrine's conviction and death sentence for the 1985 stabbing death of fellow prison inmate Gary Barber of St. Louis. They also ordered a retrial for Kenneth Baumruk, despite acknowledging his guilt in a courthouse shooting rampage, because the original trial occurred in the same courthouse.

When the U.S. Supreme Court said juries, not judges, must impose death sentences, the Missouri Supreme Court applied that retroactively and simply canceled those numerous death sentences. Republican appointees on the court preferred resentencing hearings.

In the state court's most groundbreaking decision, it declared it unconstitutional to sentence juvenile offenders to death -- despite a state law allowing it and a 1989 U.S. Supreme Court precedent upholding it in a previous Missouri case.

The court's recent skepticism is a welcome change for death penalty opponents.

"We had a Supreme Court several years ago that was just kind of rubber stamping all the cases that came before it," said Jeff Stack, a lobbyist for Missourians to Abolish the Death Penalty. Now "what's happening is we have a group of judges who are very careful, very wary in determining if death was in fact the appropriate sentence."

The Missouri Supreme Court also has changed its approach to scheduling executions. The court used to set an execution date within weeks of receiving a petition from the attorney general, noting a death row inmate had lost appeals before the state and U.S. supreme courts.

But Missouri's highest court has yet to act on six execution date requests submitted by Nixon, several dating to 2002.

Supreme Court judges declined interview requests through court spokeswoman Beth Riggert. But she noted that several of those death row inmates still have litigation pending.