(Reuters) — The U.S. state of Missouri on Tuesday (September 1) executed a man who, along with a friend, pleaded guilty to the 1989 abduction, rape and murder of a 15-year-old girl, a state corrections department spokesman said.
Roderick Nunley, 50, was pronounced dead at 9:09 p.m. CDT after receiving a lethal injection of drugs at the state’s death chamber in Bonne Terre, Missouri, corrections spokesman Mike O’Connell said.
Nunley pleaded guilty to the murder of Ann Harrison, a Kansas City high school girl who was waiting for her school bus on a March morning when he and accomplice Michael Taylor drove by and decided to kidnap and rape her. After assaulting her, the two men stabbed Harrison multiple times and left her body in the trunk of a car they had stolen.
In an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, lawyers for Nunley argued among other things that the death penalty constitutes “cruel and unusual punishment.”
Less than an hour before the scheduled execution, the Supreme Court said it was denying a stay of execution.
Janel Harrison, the victim’s mother, said she and her husband, Bob Harrison, were looking forward to gaining some closure.
Nunley was previously set to be executed in October 2010 but the execution was delayed to address an appeal raised by him challenging the imposition of a death sentence by a judge and not a jury.
