Missouri executes convicted murderer after clemency denied

Earl Ringo Jr. was executed in Missouri early Wednesday after the U.S. Supreme Court and the governor denied his requests for clemency.

Ringo was executed by lethal injection at 12:22 a.m. Central time for the 1998 murders of Dennis Poyser and Joanna Baysinger. He was pronounced dead at 12:31 a.m., according to a news release from the Missouri Department of Corrections.

“It should not be lost in the national debate over the death penalty that Earl Ringo Jr., was responsible for the murders of two innocent Missourians,” state Atty. Gen. Chris Koster said in a statement. “For 16 years he avoided payment for this crime. Tonight he has paid the penalty.”

Lawyers were fighting for delays in executions scheduled for Wednesday in Texas and Missouri, questioning whether the drugs to be used will prevent the type of difficulties that marred executions in Ohio, Oklahoma and Arizona.

An inmate on death row in Texas is suing the state seeking to stop his execution, contending that the sedative had expired.

Texas plans to execute Willie Trottie for fatally shooting his common-law wife and her brother in Houston in 1993. The execution would be the eighth this year in Texas. Ringo’s execution was also Missouri’s eighth this year.

Ringo’s attorneys questioned the use of the sedative, midazolam, arguing that it could make it difficult for the inmate to express any pain. Midazolam has come under scrutiny after it was used in executions in Ohio, Oklahoma and Arizona, where inmates gasped and didn’t die immediately, according to witnesses.

Ringo’s attorneys asked Gov. Jay Nixon to grant clemency on several grounds, including that the black man was convicted and sentenced by an all-white jury.

In Texas, Trottie could be executed after 6 p.m. Wednesday depending on the appeals. His attorneys contend that the sedative, pentobarbital, has expired. The state rejects that argument.

“If the execution is carried out, Trottie will be executed using 5 grams of pentobarbital. The drugs have been tested for potency and defect,” Jason Clark, the director of public information for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, said in an email. “The drugs have a potency of 108% and were found to have no defects. The pentobarbital is not expired and has a use by date of September 2014. The industry standard is when an expiration is stated only in the month and year, the expiration date is the last day of the month.”

Texas uses pentobarbital but, like other states, has refused to disclose from where the drug is obtained.

“They don’t tell you what it is and where it comes from,” Trottie told the Associated Press. “What I’ve learned in 20 years here on death row is all you can do is say, ‘OK.’

“I’m ready whichever way it goes. If God says, ‘Yes,’ I’m ready.”

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