Gov. Parson denies clemency for Missouri man whose death sentence was reversed 3 times
Gov. Mike Parson denied a request of clemency on Monday for a Missouri man whose death sentence for the killing of a couple in their De Soto, Missouri home was reversed three times.
Parson said the state would carry out the execution of 56-year-old Carman Deck on Tuesday as ordered by the Missouri Supreme Court, according to a news release from the governor’s office.
“Mr. Deck has received due process, and three separate juries of his peers have recommended sentences of death for the brutal murders he committed,” Governor Parson said. “The State of Missouri will carry out Mr. Deck’s sentence according to the Court’s order and deliver justice.”
Deck is scheduled to die by lethal injection for the 1996 fatal shootings of James and Zelma Long during a robbery.
Missourians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty said on Twitter that it will continue to watch the U.S. Supreme Court as the group continues its calls to end executions. The group will hold execution watches across the state on Tuesday, including two in the Kansas City area.
The group plans to gather between 5 and 6 p.m. at 39th Street and Troost Avenue and at 5:45 p.m. St. Sabina’s Catholic Church, 700 Trevis Ave. in Belton to pray the Rosary for Deck.
Deck, who confessed to the killings, was convicted of the killings in 1998. He has been sentenced to death three times since, but each time that sentence was overturned.
In 2020, the Missouri Supreme Court threw out his death sentence due to ineffective council from Deck’s lawyers. His second death sentence was thrown out by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2005 because he had been shackled in front of the sentencing jury.
He was sentenced to death a third time in 2008. A U.S. district judge ruled in 2017 that the sentencing phase was “fundamentally unfair” because evidence available in the first two sentencing phases arguing for a sentence other than death was unavailable due to the decade of delays.
A three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit reinstated the death penalty in 2020. Earlier this year, the Missouri Supreme Court ordered that Deck’s sentence be carried out during a 24-hour period beginning at 6 p.m. Tuesday.
