Earlier this month, the Missouri Supreme Court decided to send someone to death for the first time since October 2003. If Missouri Attorney General and death penalty booster Jay Nixon gets his way, the state will put to death Stanley L. Hall on March 16 at the Potosi Correctional Center.
Nixon and other fans of judicial murder have been whining that the state has been dragging its feet on snuffing out inmates since Supreme Court appointments by Democratic governors created a liberal majority on the court. The tide turned in March 2002, when then-Gov. Bob Holden appointed Judge Richard Teitelman. In January, Chief Justice Ronnie L. White said that the court “has taken a more deliberative approach” in death penalty cases, attempting to exhaust other alternatives before flipping the switch.
Nixon must long for the days when the likes of John Ashcroft was appointing justices. From 1989 through 2002, Missouri killed 59 inmates. Only Texas (220) and Virginia (80) drew more judicial blood during the same period. Ashcroft, of course, graduated to overseeing more spectacular deaths in the Bush Administration (under George W. Bush, the very Texas governor who licked him in the state execution sweepstakes).
A taste of Hall’s blood will only make Nixon thirsty for more n and there are more than 50 men waiting to die in Potosi. After that, who knows? Maybe he will follow Ashcroft’s bloody trail to Washington.