Late Tuesday night, the Supreme Court stopped the planned execution of Mark Christeson by the state of Missouri, citing issues over whether or not his legal counsel was ineffective. Christeson was sentenced for killing a woman and her two children. He was scheduled to die at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday. The appeal to the Supreme Court included issues like his past lawyers’ failure to meet a deadline for an appeal hearing in a federal court. He would have been the ninth person executed in Missouri this year, which would have matched the all-time high set in 1999. The Supreme Court did reject a second appeal challenging the state’s use of an execution drug made by an unidentified compounding pharmacy.
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