A man was executed Tuesday, June 6 in the US state of Missouri, 23 years after killing two prison guards while trying to help a former fellow inmate escape. Michael Tisius, 42, received a lethal injection and was pronounced dead at 18:10 p.m. (23:10 GMT) in the Bonne-Terre penitentiary in the central United States, prison authorities said in a statement.
According to court documents, on June 22, 2000, he went with the girlfriend of his former cellmate, Roy Vance, to the Randolph County Jail - where Michael Tisius had previously been incarcerated for a misdemeanor - under the pretext of bringing him cigarettes. After exchanging several minutes with the guards, he pulled out a pistol and shot them in the head. One died immediately, the other after receiving another volley of bullets.
Michael Titius then tried to open his friend's cell, but failed, and fled with Roy Vance's girlfriend. Their vehicle broke down a little further away and they were arrested the next day. The young man had been sentenced to death for murder in a first trial, which had been cancelled on procedural grounds. The sentence was upheld in a second trial in 2010.
Recourse
Since then, Michael Tisius' lawyers have multiplied, in vain, the appeals to try to save him, highlighting in particular the difficulty of his childhood and the control exercised over him by his former co-detainee, older. On Monday, Missouri's Republican Gov. Mike Parson denied a request for clemency, saying the case had "been carefully and fairly reviewed at every stage of the legal process."
On the same day, the Supreme Court rejected an appeal based on his young age - 19 - at the time of the crime, which his defenders said should have spared him the death penalty. It remained seized of a final request from Michael Tisius' lawyers who said they had recently discovered that one of the jurors in the 2010 trial was illiterate, which they said should have disqualified him. The state of Missouri had criticized a delaying strategy and asked the high court to give the green light to the execution.
Michael Titius is the 12th convict executed since the beginning of the year in the United States, in only four states: Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri and Florida.