Judges in several states — including Tennessee and Texas — have postponed at least half a dozen executions in recent weeks after prisoners’ lawyers argued that they were needlessly risky or that their appeals had been delayed because of the pandemic.
But Walter Barton, 64, was unsuccessful in challenging his execution, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene on Tuesday night. He was pronounced dead at 6:10 p.m. Central time, after being injected with a lethal dose of pentobarbital, a barbiturate, at the state prison in Bonne Terre.
Mr. Barton’s final statement, which he issued in writing, was, “I, Walter ‘Arkie’ Barton, am innocent & they are executing an innocent man!!”
Mr. Barton was convicted in 2006 of murdering Gladys M. Kuehler, an 81-year-old mobile home park manager, in 1991 after he was evicted. That conviction came during Mr. Barton’s fifth trial over the murder, after two mistrials and two guilty verdicts that he successfully appealed.
Karen Pojmann, a spokeswoman for the Missouri Department of Corrections, said before the execution that everyone who entered the prison, including each of the nine witnesses scheduled to attend, would be required to have their temperatures taken and would also be given hand sanitizer and face coverings. She said the witnesses would be split among three rooms.
Vanessa Potkin, the director of post-conviction litigation at the Innocence Project, said Mr. Barton never should have been convicted, in part because the evidence against him included “unscientific blood spatter analysis” and the testimony of an unreliable jailhouse informant.
The next U.S. execution is scheduled for June 16 in Texas, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Reference: New York Times
