ST. LOUIS (AP) – The U.S. Supreme Court was considering final appeals from a man scheduled to be executed Tuesday in Missouri for the kidnapping, rape and stabbing death of a 15-year-old girl more than two decades ago.
Roderick Nunley, 50, is scheduled for lethal injection at 6 p.m. CDT. Investigators say he and his co-defendant randomly targeted and kidnapped Ann Harrison as she waited outside her Kansas City home for the school bus in 1989. The girl was then raped and fatally stabbed.
Gov. Jay Nixon was also weighing a clemency request. If neither Nixon nor the courts step in, Nunley would be the sixth death-row inmate to be executed this year in Missouri. Nunley’s co-defendant in the case, Michael Taylor, was executed last year.
Nunley’s attorney has three appeals before the U.S. Supreme Court, including one that says the death penalty amounts to cruel and unusual punishment – an argument rebuffed by a detective who helped break the case.
Retired Kansas City detective Pete Edlund said the only thing cruel and unusual is how long Nunley and Taylor remained on death row. He said Nunley should have been put to death long ago.