Missouri Executes Double Murderer

The state of Missouri executed double-murderer Michael Tisius by lethal injection Tuesday evening.  He died ten minutes after receiving a fatal dose of the anesthesia pentobarbital.  Jim Salter of the Associated Press reports that Tisius was 19-years-old in 2000 when he murdered two guards at the Huntsville County Jail while helping a friend escape.  In the years since his conviction, his attorneys claimed that Tisius’ sentence should be reduced to life-without-parole because of his neglected childhood, and because one of the sentencing jurors was illiterate.  His attorneys also claimed that the murders were unintentional, although Tisius came to the jail armed with a gun and shot one of the guards multiple times.  It was the twelfth U.S. execution this year.  Last year seven murderers had been executed by June 8th.