The crime was stunningly gruesome: three convenience store workers in central Missouri beaten to death with a claw hammer during a robbery.
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Ernest Johnson, 55, has lost all appeals and is scheduled to be put to death after 6pm (0000 GMT Wednesday).
The USA state of Missouri plans Tuesday to execute a man even though he has a brain tumour and says killing him by lethal injection will cause him great pain. Texas has performed more executions, totaling 12 this year.
A Missouri inmate is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to spare his life, claiming the execution drug could trigger severe pain and convulsions due to the remnants of a brain tumor and the damage caused by surgery to remove it. It was first set aside in 2001 after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that executing the mentally impaired was unconstitutionally cruel, and again in 2003 when the Missouri Supreme Court cited evidence that Johnson was mentally disabled.
However, the Missouri Attorney General’s office said that both claims are without merit.
Police arrested Johnson after finding a bank bag, stolen money and store receipts at his home. He cut Jones’ face and his brain, broke and fractured his skull, and left his body in the cooler.
At the time, he was trying to rob a Casey’s general store from Columbia, Missouri, after closing time, in order to get money for drugs. Testing after his conviction measured the IQ at 67, still a level considered mentally handicapped.
The courts had previously vacated two death sentences, one over concerns that Johnson had inadequate representation and a second over questions of his mental capacity to be executed. The Missouri Supreme Court tossed that sentence, too, forcing another sentencing hearing. However, he then was sentenced to death a third time.
He suffers from a slow growth brain tumour that was partially removed in 2008.
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Specifically, they contend the lethal injection drugs used by Missouri – midazolam and pentobarbital – pose a “a substantial and unjustifiable risk” of inflicting violent and painful seizures during the execution. From a recent MRI, it was seen that about 20 percent of his brain tissue was also removed.
