Missouri executes man for 2001 abduction, killing

The U.S. Supreme Court denied all appeals from 55-year-old inmate David Zink and Gov. Jay Nixon denied a clemency request.

Zink, 55, was pronounced dead at 7:41 p.m. after receiving a lethal dose of drugs at a state prison, said Mike O'Connell, spokesman for the Missouri Department of Corrections. 

Zink had been the named plaintiff in a lawsuit brought by a group of Missouri death row inmates who alleged the state's lethal-injection protocol is unconstitutional and creates a substantial risk of severe pain.

Missouri has executed four men this year, one of whom was brain-damaged, and 16 since November 2013. Only Texas has executed more inmates over that span.

Jurors in western Missouri's St. Clair County deliberated 90 minutes in 2004 before convicting Zink and recommending a death sentence for the killing of Amanda Morton. Authorities said Zink abducted her after rear-ending her car from behind on an Interstate 44 exit ramp a mile from her Strafford home. 

Just months before the slaying, Zink had been released from a Texas prison after serving 20 years on rape, abduction and escape charges. Fearing that his drunken fender-bender with Morton could violate his parole and send him back to prison, Zink initially abducted Morton, taking her to a motel. 

Zink was arrested at his parents' home after the hotel manager gave investigators Zink's name and license plate number. Zink led authorities to Morton's body which was buried in a cemetery, confessing matter-of-factly and at times laughing on videotape that he had tied her to a tree there and told her to look up.

Zink said he snapped her neck when she looked skyward. Then, worried that Morton might regain consciousness, Zink admitted he used a knife to sever her spinal cord at the neck.

Jurors who convicted him found three aggravating circumstances that by law justified Zink's death sentence, including that the killing "involved depravity of the mind and was outrageously and wantonly vile, horrible and inhuman," the state Supreme Court has found.

Nixon called the acts "brutal and horrifying" and said his denial of clemency upheld the jury's decision.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday denied several appeals from Zink's lawyers to halt his execution, including claims that Missouri officials would be violating federal law by using pentobarbital obtained from a compounding pharmacy.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on June 29 that a drug used in lethal injections by Oklahoma, midazolam, did not violate the U.S. Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

Earlier on Tuesday, a three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declined, without comment, Zink's claims that the death penalty was unconstitutional. On Monday, the St. Louis-based court rejected his challenge of the drug process used during lethal injections.

Wire services