MDN.ORG:
Missouri Digital News
MDN.ORG
Mo. Digital News
Missouri Digital News
MDN.ORG:
Mo. Digital News
MDN.ORG:
Missouri Digital News
MDN.ORG:
Missouri Digital News
MDN.ORG
Mo. Digital News
Missouri Digital News
MDN.ORG:
Mo. Digital News
MDN.ORG:
Missouri Digital News
JEFFERSON CITY - A mock execution in protest to the death penalty was staged in the Capitol rotunda Wednesday by the Columbia Fellowship of Reconciliation and St. Francis Catholic Worker Community.
The play, that lasted around 30 minutes, was about an execution and the different persons who participate in it.
Since the death penalty was reinstated, Missouri has had 24 executions since 1989. The six executions last year put Missouri second only to Virginia among the states for the number of executions.
According to Jeff Stack, spokesman for Columbia Fellowship of Reconciliation, said state Attorney General Jay Nixon's office has been very aggressive seeking to carry out death sentences.
One of the actors is the play is the mother of Reginald Clemons who is on death row at Potosi Correctional Center.
Vera Thomas said that her son's case is now in the Missouri Supreme Court.
"My son's case is so circumstantial, there's no weapon, there's no one who was physically there, there was not even blood," Thomas said. "But I7 learned that jurors can be persuaded by publicity in the prosecution and I felt that happened in our case."
So far this year, there has been just one execution. The next one is scheduled for March 4.
Legislation has been filed to repeal the death penalty. But it has almost no chance of passage.
The death penalty enjoys widespread support.
"I passed the law that allows the lethal injection," said Senate Criminal Jurisprudence Committee Chairman Harold Caskey, D-Butler.
"I favored death penalty because according to the statistics, a person who has killed once, has a 65 % chance of kill again."