19 November 2018 :

Joseph Amrine was sentenced to death in 1986. Wednesday, he'll be at Ragtag Cinema. Amrine, who in 2003 was released from prison 17 years after he was sentenced to death, will attend a screening at Ragtag of "Unreasonable Doubt: The Joe Amrine Case," a 50-minute documentary. The producers are John McHale, Dan Huck and Ryan Wylie, who graduated from MU in 2001. Amrine and Wylie are scheduled to attend the discussion session after the screening, according to the city of Columbia website. Also, Lindsay Runnels, a professor of the School of Law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and Rodney Uphoff, MU law school professor, will join them. Also, Reginald Griffin, another exonerated man whose death sentence was overturned in 2011, will join the discussion, Wylie said. After the documentary is shown, there will be an additional 15 minutes of footage that shows Amrine getting out of the prison, answering questions from the press and seeing his family again. When Wylie was at an Innocence Project meeting in fall 2001, he was shocked to know that Amrine was going to be executed with no witnesses linking him to the crime. After that meeting, Wylie, an experimental filmmaker, made up his mind to make a film about Amrine as his first documentary. "I had a strong sense of justice," he said. Because Amrine was in prison and officials weren't willing to let Wylie and other producers inside, interviewing Amrine was difficult, he said. He finally got the interview once Amrine's lawyer, Sean O'Brien, intervened, he said. Wylie said the film is about humanity - that is, understanding others, including someone sentenced to death. "This is my fellow human being," he said. "Whatever they did or didn't do, they deserve dignity, and how we treat them, that defines who we are." Wylie said the screening would be a valuable opportunity for the public because Amrine will talk about his story, and a discussion on the death penalty will take place afterward. "We don't have to execute people," Wylie said. 'So why do we do it? Do we do it because we are vengeful people? I hope that we are not." In an interview Amrine looked back on the day he was released, saying it was indescribable. Being free was a dream, he said. People should watch the documentary because it humanizes a solemn topic, he said. "When you see the news or you read an article about someone who was sentenced to death or executed, it's just an article," he said. "But once you put a face to the article, it's not just an article anymore."

15 August 2018 :

Former corrections officers seek to block Missouri execution. Nearly 2 dozen former corrections officers from across the country have filed a court brief in support of a Missouri death row inmate's claim that his medical condition could cause an unconstitutionally cruel execution. Russell Bucklew was sentenced to death in 1997 for killing 27-year-old Michael Sanders on March 21, 1996. The man was living with Bucklew’s former girlfriend, Stephanie Pruitt. Russell also kidnapped, beat, and raped 21-year-old Stephanie Pruitt. Bucklew, 50, White, has been scheduled for execution twice in the last 4 years but was granted a stay each time. Bucklew has a rare condition called cavernous hemangioma, which causes blood-filled tumors in his neck and head. His case is before the Missouri Supreme Court. It's unclear when the court will rule. Bucklew's attorney, Robert N. Hochman, said in court documents that lethal injection "will not go smoothly." But Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley, in a separate filing, wrote that the growth in Bucklew's mouth had shrunk. Hawley disagreed that the condition presents a risk of suffering under lethal injection. The Columbia Tribune reports that several briefs were filed on Bucklew's behalf, including 1 from 23 former corrections officers who turned death penalty opponents. They argue that such a high-risk execution places an unfair burden on corrections workers involved in the execution process. Some of the corrections officers have witnessed or overseen multiple executions and some have served as executioners themselves. "It's incredibly traumatic even in the best of circumstances for corrections officers to participate in executions," said Tejinder Singh, the attorney who filed the brief on behalf of the corrections officers. He said the burden is significantly worse when a medical condition comes into play. "But when, as is here, there is a real risk the execution will be botched because of the inmate's unique medical condition leading to complication, the risk becomes truly intolerable. It becomes extreme and there is no good reason to force public servants into a position of carrying out those executions," Singh said. Bucklew was convicted of killing Michael Sanders, 27, and kidnapping and raping his ex-girlfriend. A Missouri State Highway Patrol trooper found Bucklew in St. Louis County and Bucklew shot the trooper in a gunfight. The trooper survived. Bucklew later escaped jail and attacked his ex-girlfriend's mother before being arrested again.

14 August 2018 :

Missouri Federal Appeals Court: Journalist's Execution Witness Lawsuit May Proceed. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit has rejected the state of Missouri's appeal of a district court ruling allowing a lawsuit to go forward challenging the Missouri Department of Corrections' procedures for determining who may witness executions in the state. The challenge, brought by BuzzFeed News reporter Chris McDaniel, alleged that Missouri denied every application to witness an execution that was filed by any individual "who, like McDaniel, expressed a desire to ensure that executions were carried out properly and constitutionally." The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit ruled that Christopher S. McDaniel, an investigative reporter for BuzzFeed News, may proceed with his lawsuit challenging the Missouri Department of Corrections's policy for selecting execution witnesses. McDaniel, who has written numerous articles exposing irregularities in Missouri's execution procedures, applied to the Director of the Department of Corrections in 2014 to witness executions in Missouri, stating in his witness application that he wanted to observe executions "to ensure that this solemn task is carried out constitutionally." The Department has never responded to McDaniel's application and he has not been permitted to witness any of the 17 executions carried out in the state since then. The lawsuit, filed on McDaniel's behalf by the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri, alleges that neither McDaniel nor any other person whose witness application "expressed a desire to ensure that executions were carried out properly and constitutionally" has been accepted as a witness, and that McDaniel also had been rejected as a witness because he has written articles critical of Missouri's administration of its death penalty. Working first for St. Louis Public Radio and laterw for BuzzFeed News, McDaniel's reporting revealed that Missouri had obtained lethal-injection drugs for executions carried out in 2013 and 2014 from an unlicensed out-of-state compounding pharmacy that committed nearly 1,900 violations of pharmacy regulations before it was sold and its assets auctioned off to help repay defaulted loans. In February 2018, he reported that the compounding pharmacy to which Missouri then switched to carry out 17 executions between 2014-2017 had been deemed "high risk" by the Food and Drug Administration because of the company's hazardous pharmaceutical practices. McDaniel reported that the state had paid the company—which was alleged to have engaged in illegal practices, Medicare fraud, and numerous manufacturing improprieties—more than $135,000 for execution drugs. The court wrote that "McDaniel’s allegations support a plausible claim that an applicant’s viewpoint is a factor used by the Director when considering whom to invite as a witness." Though the state argued that McDaniel did not have standing to file suit, the court found "McDaniel’s allegations that the Director’s policies provide an opportunity to exclude McDaniel based on his viewpoint and that the Director has excluded McDaniel and all applicants sharing his particular viewpoint are sufficient to give him standing to press the claim."

22 February 2018 :

Missouri Executed 17 Prisoners With Drugs Secretly Obtained From 'High-Risk' Pharmacy Cited for Hazardous Practices. BuzzFeed News investigation has disclosed that Missouri carried out seventeen executions between 2014 and 2017 using supplies of pentobarbital it secretly obtained from a pharmacy the Food and Drug Administration had classified as “high risk” because of repeated serious health violations. The February 20 exposé describes a complex system of clandestine meetings, code names, and undocumented cash payments that Missouri employed to conceal the identity of Foundation Care, a suburban St. Louis compounding pharmacy that reporter Chris McDaniel discovered “has been repeatedly found to engage in hazardous pharmaceutical procedures.” Foundation Care—which was reportedly paid more than $135,000 for execution drugs—is alleged to have engaged in illegal practices, medicare fraud, and numerous manufacturing improprieties and, McDaniel reports, its cofounder has been accused of "regularly ordering prescription medications for himself without a doctor’s prescription.” Two former senior employees of the company—including the head of pharmacy operations—have alleged in a lawsuit that Foundation Care violated government regulations by reselling drugs returned by patients, intentionally omitting the names of ingredients in drugs it prepared, and failing to notify other states about a $300,000 settlement with Kansas over allegations of Medicaid fraud. Another suit by a former employee alleges that she was fired after complaining to her supervisors and the Missouri Board of Pharmacy about “serious operational violations.” Missouri switched to Foundation Care after reporters discovered the identifty of the state's prior secret supplier of execution drugs—an Oklahoma compounding pharmacy called The Apothecary Shoppe. Reporters learned that The Apothecary Shoppe was not licensed to sell drugs in Missouri and had admitted to nearly 2,000 health and safety violations. In 2013, the FDA designated Foundation Care as a "high-risk" compounding pharmacy, and cited it as an example as to why greater federal oversight of compounders was necessary. A second inspection of the company that year found “multiple examples” of practices that could lead to contamination, and that Foundation Care had failed to “assure that drug products conform to appropriate standards of identity, strength, quality and purity.” In a February 2014 letter to the Missouri Board of Pharmacy, the FDA warned that the pharmacy’s practices “could lead to contamination of drugs, potentially putting patients at risk.” Foundation Care was acquired by AcariaHealth, a subsidiary of health-care giant Centene Corporation, in October 2017. After McDaniel's report was published, the company issued a statement that, “under Centene’s ownership, Foundation Care has never supplied, and will never supply any pharmaceutical product to any state for the purpose of effectuating executions.” Compounding pharmacies are drug producers that mix small batches of medications to meet the specialized needs of patients for whom mass produced medicines are not available. Regulated primarily by states, their drugs are reported to have a significantly higher failure rate than drugs produced by FDA-regulated manufacturers. An estimated twenty percent of drugs created by Missouri compounding pharmacies failed to meet Missouri Board of Pharmacy standards.

14 January 2018 :

Greene County Circuit Judge Thomas Mountjoy sentenced Craig Wood, 49, White, to death after an out-of-county jury empaneled in the February 2014 rape-murder of a ten-year-old girl, Hailey Owens. Woods was convicted in November of first-degree murder but the jury couldn’t decide whether to impose the death penalty or life in prison without parole. Missouri and Indiana require judges to make the determination of life or death if the capital sentencing jury does not reach a unanimous verdict. No Missouri jury has imposed a death sentence since 2013.