On Tuesday evening, the state of Missouri executed Michael Tisius, a 42-year-old who murdered two jail guards in 2000.
The execution was carried out at the Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center in Bonne Terre, Missouri.
Tisius, 42, died via lethal injection. He was declared dead by 6:10 p.m.
Tisius made a written final statement in the days leading up to his execution:
"I am holding tightly to my faith. It’s all I have to take with me. I am sorry it had to come to this in this way. I wish I could have made things right while I was still here. I really did try to become a better man. I really tried hard to give as much as I could to as many as I could. I tried to forgive others as I wish to be forgiven. And I pray that God will forgive those who condemn me. Just as the forgave those who condemned Him. I am sorry. And not because I am at the end. But because I truly am sorry.
And I need to say that I love you Truffle.
Seacrest Out!"
Michael Tisius' case attracted international attention and pleas for clemency, especially after several jurors who had voted to sentence Mr. Tisius to death said in a petition to the governor that they now believed life imprisonment was appropriate.
Mr. Tisius’s lawyers had also argued that another juror from the sentencing trial was unable to read, a requirement under Missouri law for jury service.
In a statement, Mr. Tisius’s lawyers said that in the hours before his death, he had expressed “everlasting remorse” to the families of the men he killed and a hope that his death would bring closure.
“Today marks another sad chapter of America’s perverse fascination with state-sanctioned homicide,” they said.
Mr. Tisius was the third person to receive the death penalty in Missouri this year.
Gov. Mike Parson, a Republican, said in a statement on Monday that Mr. Tisius’s case “received fair and careful review at each step in the judicial process.”
“Missouri’s judicial system provided Mr. Tisius with due process and fair proceedings for his brutal murders of two Randolph County jail guards,” he said.
On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court denied a stay of execution for Mr. Tisius, rejecting his lawyers’ argument that his age at the time of the crime, 19, should spare him from the death penalty. Mr. Tisius’s legal appeals have been exhausted.
That left the possibility that Mr. Parson would step in and halt the execution. A former sheriff, Mr. Parson was seen
as unlikely to commute the sentence. For weeks, organizations and institutions — including the American Bar Association, the Missouri State Public Defenders, the European Union and the Catholic Church — lobbied him, arguing for clemency.
Of the jury that had voted to sentence Mr. Tisius to death in 2010, six jurors, including two alternates, have said in sworn affidavits included in the clemency petition that they would be supportive or would not object if Mr. Parson stepped in to commute the sentence to life imprisonment, rather than death.
One juror, Jason Smith, said in an interview that he was remorseful for his vote, saying that he felt that he had wronged Mr. Tisius.
At least one surviving family member of one of the murder victims supported execution: Linda Arena, the older sister of Jason Acton, one of the slain jail employees, said in an interview that she felt justice would have been served once the death penalty had been carried out.
The murders occurred in June 2000, when Mr. Tisius and Tracie Bulington entered a county jail and tried to free Roy Vance, a friend who was an inmate. During the attempt, Mr. Tisius shot and killed two jail employees, then fled.
Lawyers for Mr. Tisius had appealed for clemency, saying that he suffered abuse and neglect in his childhood, had a limited mental capacity for decision-making and was heavily influenced by the older Mr. Vance, who convinced him to carry out the plot.
Background: Public support for the death penalty has waned.
Only four states have carried out executions so far in 2023 — Missouri, Oklahoma, Florida and Texas — according to the Death Penalty Information Center. That is partly a reflection of decreasing support in the last several decades for capital punishment in the United States.
It is also a sign of the practical difficulties that some states have experienced in performing executions, whether in obtaining drugs necessary for lethal injections or carrying out executions.
Why It Matters: Several jurors from the sentencing trial changed their minds about Mr. Tisius’s fate, an unusual development in a death penalty case.
Mr. Tisius’s plea for clemency raises questions that are rarely discussed during death penalty cases. Should it matter that jurors who have already sentenced a person to death now favor or accept life imprisonment, as they said in sworn affidavits sent to the governor? How should the legal system consider the trauma and remorse that jurors feel if they believe they made the wrong decision in voting for capital punishment?
There is no legal recourse for jurors in this position, so those who had reconsidered in Mr. Tisius’s case had only an emotional appeal to the governor.
The legal system “doesn’t leave room for the emotional trauma that happens to jurors later,” said Juandalynn Taylor, a visiting professor at Gonzaga University School of Law who teaches on the death penalty. She said that jurors were asking themselves: “I have voted to wipe someone off the earth — how do I deal with that?”
— Tisius becomes the 96th condemned inmate to be put to death in Missouri since the state resumed capital punishment in 1989. Only Texas (583), Oklahoma (120), Virginia (113) and Florida (102) have carried out more executions since the U.S. Supreme Court ended it 3-year moratorium on executions with the July 2, 1976 Gregg v Georgia decision.
— Tisius becomes the 12th condemned inmate to be put to death this year and the 1,570th overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977.
Source:
nytimes.com, Julie Bosman; Rick Halperin, June 7, 2023
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