A Missouri man who was sentenced to death by a trial judge in 2009 after a jury deadlocking on whether he should be executed has been scheduled to undergo lethal injection in October.
The Missouri Supreme Court recently issued a warrant for the execution of Lance Shockley, who recently exhausted his state and federal appeals and was convicted of the 2005 murder of Missouri State Highway Patrol Sgt. Carl Dewayne Graham Jr., a Troop G officer.
The court announced the execution date on June 24.
Graham was shot and killed in his rural Carter County driveway. Graham had been investigating Shockley’s role in a fatal drunk driving accident, which the prosecution argued gave Shockley the motive to kill him. Shockley has insisted he’s innocent.
A jury in 2009 found Shockley guilty of first-degree murder. But in the punishment phase of Shockley’s trial, the jury failed to reach a unanimous decision on whether he should be executed.
But under Missouri law, Shockley’s penalty case then got handed off to a Carter County circuit judge who, after independent review, sentenced him to death.
Shockley has denied his involvement in Graham’s death, citing the lack of physical evidence or eyewitnesses. His attorneys have tried unsuccessfully to get evidence from the crime scene tested for DNA and have argued the police failed to investigate other possible suspects.
“Shockley’s defense at trial was that he was not the one who killed Sgt. Graham,” his attorney wrote in a brief in May. “Shockley has never wavered in that position.”
The prosecution said Shockley borrowed a relative’s car the afternoon of Graham’s death and the car matched the description witnesses gave of one parked near Graham’s house the afternoon of his murder. Prosecutors also argued the recovered bullets may have been consistent with the caliber of a rifle Shockley owned. No murder weapon was found.
Shockley would be the first person executed in Missouri this year on Oct. 14, barring intervention from Gov. Mike Kehoe or the U.S. Supreme Court.
Last year, Missouri executed four people.
