Dennis Skillicorn could be Missouri’s first execution since 2005
Capital attorneys with the Public Interest Litigation Clinic say they expect the Missouri Supreme Court to announce an execution date for Dennis Skillicorn, a 49-year-old inmate at the Potosi Correctional Center, of May 20, 2009. Skillicorn’s previous execution date, August 27, 2008, was stayed after Skillicorn asserted that Potosi’s warden was interfering with his council’s attempts to interview prison staff in order to present a thorough request for clemency to the governor.
Skillicorn and Allen Nicklasson, dubbed “The Good Samaritan Killers,” were convicted in Lafayette County of first-degree murder for killing Richard Drummond in the summer of 1994. Nicklasson is also on Missouri’s death row.
Some people think Skillicorn should be spared.
In 2006, executions were halted in Missouri over U.S. District Judge Fernando J. Gaitan Jr.’s decision that the state’s methods of lethal injection subjected inmates to unconstitutional pain and suffering. Gaitan was troubled by the fact that Dr. Alan Doerhoff, the doctor who had administered the lethal drug cocktail to 54 of Missouri’s capital inmates, is dyslexic and has trouble reading numbers. Screw ups with drug quantities could make death by lethal injection agonizingly painful. More disturbing facts regarding Doerhoff been revealed since — like the fact that Doerhoff has been sued over 20 times for malpractice and is barred from working in two Missouri hospitals.
In June 2007, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis decided that Missouri’s death penalty is constitutional, paving the way for today’s expected announcement.
