Richard Clay gets to live; Gov. Jay Nixon commutes sentence

If Richard Clay dies Wednesday, it won’t be by lethal injection. Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon commuted Clay’s death sentence, instead giving him life in prison without parole.

Clay was

convicted in 2004 of killing Randy Martindale in 1994 in a murder-for-hire plot. Nixon released a statement saying Clay’s “involvement in this crime is clear” and “the evidence clearly supports the jury’s verdict of murder in the first degree.”