No midnight execution in Missouri for Russell Bucklew; U.S. Supreme Court will review his case

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito called off a planned execution one minute after midnight on Wednesday for Russell Bucklew, a southeast Missouri man sentenced to death for a 1996 murder.

Alito’s order, made about 90 minutes before Missouri planned to execute Bucklew, delays but doesn’t necessarily dissolve the death warrant. Missouri’s death order is good until 11:59 p.m. on Wednesday, which means the state can carry out the punishment if the majority of Supreme Court justices doesn’t agree with Bucklew’s position.

Bucklew’s appeals in recent weeks have focused on his medical condition – a birth defect in which malformed vessels form in his head and neck – posing a risk for an unconstitutional execution under Missouri’s shadowy and largely obscure lethal injection protocol. His execution would have been the first in the United States following the April 29 horror show execution of Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma.

A federal judge in Kansas City wasn’t persuaded by Bucklew’s case, but two of three judges on the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis decided to delay the execution in the early evening on Tuesday. Hours later, the full panel of 8th Circuit judges reversed that decision. Shortly thereafter, Alito, who gets the first look at capital punishment appeals coming out of the 8th Circuit, decided to give his colleagues a chance to review Bucklew’s case on Wednesday morning.

Missouri death row inmates seem to be slowly gaining traction among Supreme Court justices since the state set off for a course of once-a-month executions starting late last year. A pair of justices have consistently voted to stay executions. But recent executions have resulted in three to four justices on the nine-member Supreme Court opposing the punishment, given the state’s extreme secrecy with how it carries out the death penalty.

Bucklew received a death sentence in 1997 for the murder of Michael Sanders in Cape Girardeau the year before.