MISSOURI: A man in Missouri has been executed after killing two people as a teenager, despite multiple jurors in the case requesting for a reduced sentence.
Forty-two-year old Michael Tisius died by lethal injection at a Missouri state jail on Tuesday evening.
He was given the death sentence in 2010 for killing two sheriff’s personnel in a failed attempt to free a former cellmate, the BBC reported on Wednesday.
He was the twelfth man to be executed in the United States this year.
Mike Parson, Missouri’s Republican governor, rejected a clemency request for the criminal. A last-minute appeal for a stay of death sentence with the Supreme Court was also failed.
The prosecutors said that the then 19-year old Tisius had turned up at the Randolph County prison in 2000 with Tracie Bulington, the girlfriend of his ex-cellmate Roy Vance.
Tisius then pulled out a gun and killed sheriff’s deputies Leon Egley and Jason Acton, who were unarmed.
However, he and Bulington could not find the keys to Vance’s cell and fled. They were arrested the next day after their vehicle broke down.
Vance and Bulington were eventually sentenced to life sentence.
Tisius’ lawyers had argued that he should be spared the death sentence as he was nineteen at the time of the crime and suffered from mental disease.
Six former jurors among the twelve who voted unanimously to recommend the death sentence also said in sworn affidavits that they were now in favour of life imprisonment instead of death punishment.
However, Governor Parson rejected the request for clemency, stressing that Tisius had been provided with fair proceedings and due process for the brutal killings.
Man feels sorry
In a final written statement, Tisius showed everlasting remorse to the relatives and families of the men he had murdered.
