My home state of Missouri is one of the most aggressive in carrying out the death penalty. So far this year, Missouri has executed two men, Walter Storey, forty-seven, on February 11 and, most recently, Cecil Clayton, seventy-four, on March 17. Since 1989, Missouri has executed eighty-two people.
From conviction through appeal to last night on earth, Storey was twenty-four years on death row, Clayton eighteen. Storey was convicted three times in retrials for killing his next-door neighbor, a thirty-six-year-old special education teacher. He was searching for beer money. Clayton shot a sheriff’s deputy. Severe temper outbursts had plagued him for years, ever since a sawmill accident cost him a fifth of his brain. Doctors had to remove that much to save his life, along with a sizable splinter that penetrated his skull in the accident.
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