Killer Offers Organ to Get Off Death Row

Milton V. Griffin, scheduled to be executed March 25 for fatally stabbing a man in 1986, says he would swap a kidney or some bone marrow to save his neck. With an organ donation--in exchange for sparing his life--”I can give back to the community,” says Griffin, 37, from his southeastern Missouri cell. Such a transaction isn’t legal, but it would be under a controversial proposal in the Missouri Legislature. A House committee is to consider a bill allowing condemned inmates to donate bone marrow or a kidney in exchange for a life sentence without parole. Nationally, about 39,000 patients are on waiting lists for kidneys and an estimated 3,000 more await life-saving bone marrow transplants.