Attorneys and former judges ask Supreme Court to stay Missouri execution
[JURIST] Attorneys for a convicted Missouri man and 15 former judges on Monday asked [cert. petition, PDF; stay application, PDF] the US Supreme Court to block his execution [JURIST backgrounder], claiming that mistakes were made by his former attorneys, which led him to lose his opportunity to appeal his case to the federal courts. Mark Christeson, 35, is scheduled to be executed at 12:01 AM Wednesday for killing a Missouri woman and her two children in 1998. On Friday Christeson's attorneys and the former judges filed an amicus brief with US Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit [official website], claiming that he was unable to appeal his case to the federal courts because his former attorneys missed a deadline by four months in 2005. The court refused the request to stay the execution and rejected his appeals. Sarah Turberville [official profile], an attorney for The Constitution Project [official website], said that it is rare for anyone to face a death sentence without first having the case appealed to the federal courts [AP report].
Use of the death penalty [JURIST backgrounder] has been a controversial issue throughout the US. Earlier this month the brother of Clayton Lockett, whose prolonged execution last April caused Oklahoma to suspend its death penalty to review procedures, filed a lawsuit [JURIST report] against the state of Oklahoma. The lawsuit contends that the execution [JURIST report], which lasted nearly 45 minutes, was a violation of Lockett's Eighth Amendment rights. In July a judge for the US District Court for the Central District of California struck down [JURIST report] California's death penalty, finding that it violated the Eighth Amendment. In April the Supreme Court of Oklahoma ruled [JURIST report] that inmates' constitutional rights were not violated by keeping the sources of lethal injection drugs secret. Earlier that month a judge for the US District Court for the Western District of Missouri allowed the continuation [JURIST report] of a lawsuit challenging a bill that would conceal the identities of individuals involved in the administration of the death penalty.
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