Missouri executes killer of teen after Supreme Court rejects appeal

Missouri executed Roderick Nunley Tuesday evening after the U.S. Supreme Court denied his lawyer's request to stay the execution. The 50-year-old, who was convicted of kidnapping, raping and stabbing death of 15-year-old Ann Harrison more than two decades ago, is the sixth death-row inmate to be executed this year in Missouri. 

Nunley was pronounced dead at 9:09 p.m. local time after receiving a lethal injection of drugs in the state's death chamber in Bonne Terre, Missouri, corrections spokesman Mike O'Connell said. 

"Despite openly admitting his guilt to the court, it has taken 25 years to get him to the execution chamber," Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster said in a statement. "Nunley's case offers a textbook example showing why society is so frustrated with a system that has become too cumbersome."

Of 20 executions nationally in 2015, all but four have been in Missouri and Texas. 

In their appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, lawyers for Nunley argued among other things that the death penalty constituted “cruel and unusual punishment.” But less than an hour before the scheduled execution, the Supreme Court said it was denying a stay of execution.

Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon on Tuesday denied a clemency request for Nunley, filed by death penalty opponents, asserting that racial bias played a role in the case because a prosecutor refused a plea deal that would have given Nunley life in prison without parole. Nunley was black, as was Taylor, while the victim was white.

Nunley's execution was also delayed by last-minute appeals from attorneys for death penalty opponents in Missouri questioning the competence of Nunley's lawyer.

Nunley made no final statement and no one witnessed his punishment on his behalf, although he visited earlier in the day with his daughter and a spiritual adviser.

Robert Harrison, the father of the girl killed, watched the execution along with the victim's uncle and two family friends

Janel Harrison, the victim's mother, said hours before the execution that she and her husband were looking forward to gaining some closure.

“For the past 26 years there have been times when Bob and I have felt compassion for Nunley, Taylor and their families only to remember how frightened Ann must have been,” Janel Harrison said.

“The total fear she felt when she was bound and unable to defend herself while listening to them discuss how they were going to kill her. The pain she felt when they stabbed her, not once, but at least 10 times. That is the true definition of unusual pain and suffering. The only closure that our family will have is knowing that justice for Ann has been attained and that we are finally through with the judicial system," Harrison said. 

According to prosecutors, Nunley and co-defendant Michael Taylor binged on cocaine and stole a car in the pre-dawn hours of March 22, 1989. At one point, a police officer from neighboring Lee's Summit chased the car but was called off by a supervisor when the stolen car crossed into Kansas City.

Later that morning, the men were driving around Kansas City when they saw Ann standing on her driveway, waiting for a school bus. Taylor and Nunley quickly grabbed the 15-year-old girl and took her to Nunley's mother's home. She was raped and sodomized, then stabbed repeatedly in the stomach and neck.

Taylor and Nunley put the girl's body in the trunk of the stolen car, then abandoned it in a residential area. The body was found three days later.

Edlund said the case was cracked months later when a man in jail for robbery — and seeking a $10,000 reward in the case — turned in Taylor and Nunley. Both men confessed, and some of Ann's hair was found in carpeting at the home where the crime occurred. 

Nunley was previously set to be executed in October 2010 but the execution was delayed to address an appeal raised by him challenging the imposition of a death sentence by a judge and not a jury.

Taylor was also was convicted of first-degree murder and was executed last year.

Wire services