Herbert Smulls Execution Occurred Before Appeals Exhausted, State Said It Did Nothing Wrong
Missouri inmate Herbert Smulls was executed last week four minutes before all of his appeals were exhausted. His attorneys claim that they were on the phone with him when guards came to take him to the death chamber and carry out the order of execution.
"It's just troubling and fundamentally lawless," Smulls' attorney Joseph Luby told Daily Mail.
Smulls was pronounced dead at 10:20 p.m., a full 10 minutes before Luby received an email from the United States Supreme Court stating that his stay of execution application as denied at 10:24 p.m. Had the stay been approved, it would have been too late for Smulls.
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According to reports, this is not the first time that the state of Missouri has jumped the gun on executions. Allen Nicklasson was executed in December after murdering a Good Samaritan who offered to help him with his car. Nicklasson also killed two others and described a sense of "euphoria" after the murders. He was still waiting to hear back from the full court of appeals when his execution was carried out.
"In my near 14 years on the bench, this is the first time I can recall this happening," Judge Kermit Bye wrote just days after the execution.
Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster defended the state's decision in both cases and argued that the state did nothing wrong.
"The United States Supreme Court has ruled that pending litigation is not sufficient to stop an execution," Koster wrote in an email to Daily Mail. "The legal mechanism for a federal court to stop an execution is a court-ordered stay." The state "directly asked the United States Supreme Court if the execution of Herbert Smulls should be stayed; for the third time that day, the Court said no. No stay of execution was in effect at the time of execution."
The state has executed three prisoners in the past three months, leading to much controversy over the use of their execution procedure.
