Moratorium Now backs bill to stop death penalty

JEFFERSON CITY - For nearly 15 years, Vera Thomas said she has lived in an hourglass.

Time is slipping by for her 33-year-old son Reginald Clemons.

Clemons was convicted in 1993 of two counts of first-degree murder in the 1991 killings of Julie and Robin Kerry. The sisters were raped and pushed off the Chain of Rocks Bridge, which spans the Mississippi River near St. Louis.

Clemons has been off and on death row ever since.

It's unclear when and if the state would put Clemons to death, his mother said. Clemons' co-defendant, Marlin Gray, has already been executed.

"It's like a lottery," Thomas said. "You don't know when your number is going to come up. It's kind of scary."

Thomas was one of about 50 people who gathered in the Capitol Tuesday to support Moratorium Now, a group seeking to halt and review the state's death penalty. The group called for Missourians to support a bill sponsored by Rep. Bill Deeken, R-Jefferson City. Deeken's bill calls for a death penalty moratorium until 2011. It also calls for a 10-member commission to review the state's death penalty.

Thirty Democrats and 13 Republicans co-sponsored the bill.

But many Republicans in the General Assembly favor the death penalty.

"It's not like I don't have any compassion," said death penalty supporter Rep. Gary Dusenberg, R-Jackson County. "Most of these are horrible crimes."

Sen. Rita Day, D-St. Louis County, has sponsored a similar moratorium bill in the Senate.

And Rep. Rodney Hubbard, D-St. Louis County, and Sen. Joan Bray, D-St. Louis County, have sponsored bills calling for the state to repeal the death penalty altogether.

Missouri currently has an effective judiciary moratorium imposed by a federal judge that has questioned the methodology of Missouri's lethal-injection process. 2005 marked the last time Missouri executed a prisoner. The state put to death five men that year.

Although Deeken said he ultimately supported the death penalty, he said the state must take careful measures to ensure it executes those who are guilty.

"We've got to do something about the people who are being put to death who are not guilty," Deeken said. "We're finding this out more and more."

According to Moratorium Now, Missouri has executed 66 people since 1989, the fourth most of any state. But group representatives also said that more than 120 people nationwide have been exonerated from death row since the death penalty was reinstated in 1972. Three of those were from Missouri.

Some advocates of a moratorium say the death penalty unjustly targets minorities and lower-class citizens. They also say police brutality and forced confessions could wrongly lead to a conviction.

"It is morally incumbent upon us to do the right thing," said Redditt Hudson, with the American Civil Liberties Union's Eastern Missouri chapter. "As a human being...we have to do a better job of delivering the justice process."

But Deeken said his bill was unlikely to gain approval this year.

Calls to nullify or place a moratorium on the death penalty have drawn sharp opposition.

Matt Bartle, R-Jackson County, said he, like most Missourians, supported the death penalty and was unsure what benefit would come from studying the issue for four more years.

"The death penalty has been studied five ways to Friday," Bartle said. "And right now before the state executes somebody, there's almost a decade worth of appeals. So I'm not sure more study on the subject is going to add more value at all."

Dusenberg, a member of the House Crime Committee, said such a moratorium would simply delay justice for the victims' families. Dusenberg said he supported the death penalty and doubted that the bills aimed at stopping it would succeed.

"Nobody considers the victims of these brutal crimes," Dusenberg said. "The people in the cemetery, they don't have a voice."

Sen. Mike Gibbons, R-St. Louis County, said unlike other states, Missouri doesn't have a record of wrongful convictions. He, too, said he was not in favor of the moratorium.

"I'll look at it with an open mind," Gibbons said. "But I haven't seen the case be made for a moratorium in Missouri. We really have a very good record."