Missouri prepares for Jeffrey Ferguson to be fifth execution in 5 months

A St. Louis area man convicted of kidnapping, raping and strangling a 17-year-old girl in 1989 could become the fifth person executed in Missouri in five months.

Jeffrey Ferguson was scheduled to die at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday at the state prison in Bonne Terre. The execution would be about 25 years after Kelli Hall was abducted from a St. Charles gas station. Her frozen body was found 13 days later, on Feb. 22, 1989, on a St. Louis County farm.

Gov. Jay Nixon is weighing a clemency request, and court appeals are pending.

Missouri switched to a one-drug execution method last year. All five inmates put to death since November were killed by pentobarbital. The state obtains the drug from a compounding pharmacy it refuses to name.

This story was originally published March 25, 2014 at 6:58 AM with the headline "Missouri prepares for Jeffrey Ferguson to be fifth execution in 5 months."