State readies for execution in murder during robbery

POTOSI, Mo. -- Condemned killer Jeffrey Tokar awaited word from the U.S. Supreme Court and Gov. Bob Holden Monday as his scheduled execution drew near.

Tokar, 37, was scheduled to die by injection at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday at the Potosi Correctional Center. He would be the third Missouri prisoner put to death this year.

"I think he's pretty stressed out," Tokar's attorney, Elizabeth Carlyle, said. Tokar did not wish to be interviewed.

An appeal to the Supreme Court and a clemency request to the governor claim Tokar's trial lawyer was ineffective. In the clemency petition, Tokar's lawyers also cite his mental illness -- paranoid personality disorder -- and blamed the killing partly on his history of substance abuse.

A Holden spokesman said the governor was still weighing clemency.

Tokar of Columbia was convicted of killing Johnny Douglass during a burglary at Douglass' home almost 10 years ago.

'Horrific, uncalled for' acts

According to court records, Tokar and his girlfriend, Sandra Stickley, drank beer and drove around a rural area near Centralia, Mo., on March 11, 1992, looking for an unattended house to burglarize. They found the Douglass home.

The two were stealing items and stuffing them into empty pillowcases when Douglass and his children returned home. Tokar shot Douglass in front of the children, who were ages 4 and 9 at the time.

"The execution of a father in front of your kids is not really something that words can describe," Attorney General Jay Nixon said. "The acts he committed were unprovoked, uncalled for and horrific."

Stickley pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

The court appeal claimed the arrest warrant for Tokar failed to show probable cause, and said Tokar's original lawyer was remiss in failing to make that point.

The Missouri Supreme Court and the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals have both refused to halt the execution based on the ineffective counsel claim.

Carlyle said people suffering from paranoid personality disorder "develop this defense mechanism to think that people are trying to harm them or conspire against them."

Despite the mental illness, Tokar's trial counsel did not seek to have him declared incompetent for trial, the clemency petition claimed.

Court records show Tokar began drinking as a child. He was admitted to a hospital in 1988 and given six blood transfusions because he was vomiting blood, the result of damage from heavy drinking. The petition said Tokar, who is HIV-positive, was exposed to the virus during those transfusions.

The murder happened just five days after Tokar was released from prison because of a paperwork mix-up.

Already incarcerated for stealing and driving while intoxicated, Tokar was to serve a seven-year sentence for a 1991 burglary conviction.

But he was paroled on the stealing and DWI conviction and let go. Prison officials said they never received notification from Boone County on the burglary conviction. Boone County officials disagreed over whose responsibility it was to notify the Department of Corrections -- the sheriff's department or the circuit clerk.

In 1994, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by Douglass' widow, Tammy, who blamed the mistake for her husband's death.