Gov. Kehoe, there are too many questions to execute Lance Shockley now | Opinion
.jpg "His jury was deadlocked, so the judge sentenced him to death. That’s not justice.")
Lance Shockley is a Missouri prisoner on death row. Unless Gov. Mike Kehoe stays his pending execution, Shockley will be put to death in less than a week.
Because of valid mitigating factors, we urge Kehoe to empanel a board of inquiry to thoroughly review some of Shockley’s claims that could keep the condemned inmate alive — if not exonerate him, as his advocates contend.
In Missouri, only the governor has the power to appoint five members to a temporary body to go over in secret every detail of a death penalty case, including evidence that wasn’t available at trial. Kehoe should do just that.
At the very least, Kehoe should consider a stay of execution until untested DNA samples linked to this case are forensically examined. Advocates for Shockley contend these samples could either prove his innocence or point to a different suspect altogether. Other supporters argue that Shockley, of Van Buren in southeast Missouri, received ineffective counsel at trial.
Shockley is housed at the Potosi Correctional Center about 70 miles south of St. Louis. In 2009, Judge David Evans sentenced Shockley to death after his first-degree murder conviction in the killing of Missouri Highway Patrol Sgt. Carl Dewayne Graham Jr. The execution is scheduled for Oct. 14.
On Tuesday, Missourians to Abolish the Death Penalty announced it had delivered 31,000 petition signatures to Kehoe’s office asking the governor to consider a pardon for Shockley.
Perhaps the most compelling reason for the governor to keep Shockley alive until these legal matters are settled once and for all: A judge, not a jury of Shockley’s peers, condemned him to death.
In an email, Kehoe spokeswoman Gabby Picard said the governor and his legal team continue to review Shockley’s case ahead of Tuesday’s scheduled execution.
“This is not a decision that the Governor takes lightly, and he will take all available information into account when making a final determination,” Picard wrote to a member of our board.
We are grateful Kehoe didn’t outright dismiss the request for relief that Shockley’s supporters seek.
Jury deadlocked, judge imposed sentence
Missouri is one of only two states — Indiana is the other — that allows a judge to impose a death sentence if a jury can’t reach a unanimous decision in the penalty phase of a trial. In Shockley’s case, the jury deadlocked 11-1 on the death sentence resulting in the judge having the final say.
And that needs to change.
Only the members of the Missouri General Assembly can fix this — and they should. A bill introduced last session by Republican state Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman to repeal this legal calamity that allows a judge to impose the death penalty alone was debated briefly — but it never left the Senate floor, according to The Marshall Project’s Katie Moore.
We consider this a travesty. One agent of the state should not hold the power to arbitrarily hand down a death sentence. As studies have found, judicial bias exists. Although both Shockley and the victim in this case were white, data from the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center back the assertion that Black inmates in particular bear the brunt of these disparities.
US Supreme Court declined to hear case
Shockley has exhausted all appeals, and in 2013 the Missouri Supreme Court upheld his conviction. In March, the United States Supreme Court declined to hear Shockley’s claims of ineffective counsel.
As a board, we firmly believe any death penalty case must be proven far more than just beyond a reasonable doubt. Guilt must be absolute. Further, any capital punishment case must have impeccable and unassailable evidence.
There is another point that should not be ignored here: The jury foreman in Shockley’s original trial was removed before sentencing because of serious bias, according to the Death Penalty Information Center and Shockley’s supporters. The foreman showed other jurors a self-published book describing the graphic revenge murder of a defendant who killed the protagonist’s wife in a drunken-driving accident.
“The jury foreman brought his book — describing murderous vigilante justice against a drunk driver — to deliberations, where he showed it to other jurors before they voted to convict Mr. Shockley,” the center’s website states.
Why is that bit of information important? Because Shockley was sentenced to death for the murder of a state trooper who was investigating Shockley’s role in a drunk driving crash that killed Shockley’s sister-in-law’s fiancé.
“During jury selection, a potential juror shared that he had self-published a book,” the center writes. “Mr. Shockley’s attorney did not follow up on that statement, and the juror went on to become the foreman.”
Bipartisan support for clemency
Nicholas Scurich is a professor and chair of psychology at the University of California, Irvine. He recently conducted a public opinion survey of 440 registered voters in Missouri that found overwhelming and bipartisan support to grant clemency to Shockley.
According to the study, 65% believe the governor should commute Shockley’s death sentence to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Another 15% percent were undecided and sought more information, while only 19% opposed clemency outright, the study found.
According to the survey, support for clemency for Shockley transcends traditional political divisions:
- 79% of Democrats support clemency
- 67% of Independents support clemency
- 53% of Republicans support clemency
Earlier this month, Scurich delivered those findings to Kehoe’s office in Jefferson City.
“This is not a partisan issue,” Scurich said. “The data show strong support for clemency across all political affiliations, indicating broad public concern about the evidence and process in this case.”
According to Scurich, one person surveyed said: “The evidence seems merely circumstantial. I didn’t see anything incontrovertible proving his guilt, which should be the bar for the death penalty.”
According to Scurich, another expressed concern about the judicial process, writing: “As the jury could not reach a unanimous decision and could not agree on a sentence, the judge was overstepping to sentence him to death.”
Most of us could agree the finality of death should preclude any state-sanction killing. Allowing someone’s death before any and all queries are answered is quite inhumane.
In the name of justice, Kehoe must stay Shockley’s execution.