Executions are set to resume Tuesday night in the United States after two and a half months of interruption linked to the new coronavirus, with a lethal injection planned in Missouri.
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Walter Barton, 64, was sentenced to death for the murder of an octogenarian, stabbed with knives in 1991, which he denies having committed. The old lady, one of his acquaintances, managed a plot of mobile homes and he was one of the three people who discovered his body.
At the end of a long judicial saga, he was convicted on the basis of an expert report on traces of blood and the testimony of a former co-detainee, whose reliability his lawyers dispute. It must be performed in the evening in the prison of Bonne Terre.
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, no executions have taken place in the United States since March 5. The governor of Ohio reported several, courts in Texas and Tennesse did the same, noting in particular that the executions bring together too many people: guards, lawyers, witnesses, relatives ...
Lawyers for Walter Barton had asked that he too be given a break during the crisis, but the Missouri Supreme Court rejected their petition on April 27.
Opponents of the death penalty have mobilized on its behalf. "Walter may be innocent. The health and safety of the public will be compromised just for the spectacle, "denounced on Twitter the association" Missourian for alternatives to death penalty ".
They petitioned Governor Mike Parson, but the Republican elected official on Monday ruled out leniency for Walter Barton. His lawyers then brought a last resort before the Supreme Court of the United States, mixing arguments of substance and context.
For them, the charge record has always been weak. For proof, they point out, his first two trials failed without a verdict and the following two were quashed on appeal. He is now on death row because of the decision taken by the jurors during a 5th trial, in 2006.
When Missouri set a date for execution in February, its lawyers began to file a new case on the basis of scientific evidence which they claim refutes the expertise of traces of blood. But their efforts have been "considerably slowed down" by the containment measures, they argue.
These items were "known and available to Barton in 2006" and are nothing new, said Missouri lawyers. The high court should rule in the evening on this request.