A bipartisan push to end a Missouri law allowing judges to impose the death penalty when jurors can’t agree has moved further through the legislature this year than at any point in at least a decade. But opposition from Senate leaders makes it unlikely to pass.
Missouri and Indiana are the only states that allow judges to choose the death penalty when a jury is deadlocked in a first-degree murder case. Most other states default to life imprisonment without parole.
A bill sponsored by Republican state Rep. Bishop Davidson of Republic would require a jury’s unanimity to sentence someone to death and mandate life in prison when juries remain split. It would also direct the state to automatically expunge electronic criminal records of thousands of eligible Missourians convicted of nonviolent offenses who have served their sentences.
Davidson’s bill passed the House 140 to 7 in March, with 95 Republicans in support, and was unanimously voted out of a Senate committee last week. Democratic state Sen. Brian Williams of University City is sponsoring a similar bill that also combines the automatic expungement and sentencing measures.
But the proposal faces a significant obstacle in the Senate, where Majority Leader Tony Leutkemeyer said he remains “vehemently opposed” to requiring jury unanimity for a death sentence.
“It will not pass the Senate,” said Leutkemeyer, a Parkville Republican.
Luetkemeyer, who as Senate Majority Leader controls the chamber’s agenda, sparred last year with Republican state Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman of Arnold over a bill that would have required jurors’ unanimity for the death penalty, saying it “would have “protect[ed] some of the most heinous murderers in the state of Missouri.”
Supporters of efforts to eliminate the “judicial override” argue that Missouri’s current system violates defendants’ constitutional right to a trial by jury and increases the chances of executing an innocent person. They also emphasize broad, longstanding support in Missouri.
In cases that could result in the death penalty, sentencing happens in a separate phase of the trial from the determination of guilt.
Corinna Barrett Lain, a legal historian at the University of Richmond and former prosecutor, told The Independent that while jurors must find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt in order to convict someone, the sentencing phase allows them to heed any “residual doubt” about the defendant’s guilt.
“Beyond a reasonable doubt is not beyond all doubt,” Lain said. “Sometimes a jury will have found guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, but they still have residual doubt, and in those cases, they will vote for life rather than death.”
Allowing a judge to override a jury’s vote, Lain said, “nullifies those voices on the jury.”
Heidi Moore, executive director of Missourians to Abolish the Death Penalty, told The Independent that a single person should not be allowed to impose the death penalty.
“If we trust juries to determine whether or not they’re guilty, we should trust them to determine the appropriate sentence,” Moore said.
One or more jurors voted for life in more than 90% of death-row exonerations in states that allow the death penalty based on a non-unanimous jury vote, a 2020 analysis by the Death Penalty Information Center found.
Luetkemeyer, who is running for Platte County prosecutor, said requiring jurors’ unanimity would allow people convicted of horrible crimes to escape punishment.
He referred to Lance Shockley, who was executed last October after being convicted in 2009 for the murder of Missouri State Highway Patrol Sgt. Carl DeWayne Graham Jr. At least two jurors voted for Shockley to serve life in prison, according to his attorney.
Leutkemeyer opposes the bill because it “would have allowed a convicted cop killer who has now received the death penalty to have gotten off of death row.”
Like Shockley, Craig Wood was sentenced to death by a judge. The Missouri Supreme Court in in January refused to resentence Wood, who was convicted of kidnapping, raping and murdering a 10-year-old girl.
“I’m not supportive of changing the law to allow those types of individuals to get off of death row,” Leutkemeyer said.
Ahead of Shockley’s death, members of his legal team argued that his work as a mentor for fellow inmates over more than a decade in Potosi Correctional Center should have allowed him to spend life in prison. Shockley’s behavior qualified him to live in the facility’s honor dorm, and he volunteered with inmates with developmental disabilities, often praying with them.
Shockley was executed two days before a scheduled court hearing on DNA testing of crime scene items that he said could exonerate him, according to The Marshall Project.
Sharon Geuea Jones, a lobbyist representing Missourians to Abolish the Death Penalty, told The Independent that the obstacles to eliminating Missouri’s “judicial override” are “all procedural.”
“The problem that we’re having is there have always been just a few senators who feel very strongly about it, and they’re in leadership positions, and so they’ve been preventing a vote on the bill,” Jones said.
Every year since at least 2016, at least one lawmaker has filed a bill to eliminate Missouri’s “judicial override.”
This year, 13 lawmakers — including four Republicans — filed bills containing a provision mandating life imprisonment without parole when a jury is deadlocked. It’s the fourth year Coleman has filed such a bill. Last year, that number was 10, including five Republicans.
During a Senate committee hearing this month on Davidson’s bill, the measure drew support from the Missouri NAACP, Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty, the interfaith group Missouri Faith Voices and the Peace and Justice Commission of the Archdiocese of St. Louis.
Two weeks before Shockley’s death, a survey of 440 Missouri voters presented with details of his case found that 79% of Democrats, 67% of Independents and 53% of Republicans supported clemency, with many objecting to the judge imposing capital punishment.
The bill’s pairing with automatic expungement has complicated the politics. More than 500,000 Missourians are eligible to have convictions sealed, but fewer than 1% have done so, according to a 2023 study by Santa Clara University researchers. If Missouri cleared this backlog, the study found, the 26% difference between Black and white Missourians with at least one conviction on their record would decrease by over half. The Missouri Budget Project has found that people who receive expungements see an average 23% increase in annual wages, with the largest gains among Black people and women.
Davidson said the coalition behind the package supports both automatic expungement and ending judicial override, but he acknowledged the death penalty provision may prove harder to move.
“If that’s the thing that has to go in order for this whole thing to advance, that’s an unfortunate situation, but it’s something that I think we have to be willing to consider,” Davidson said.
Williams told The Independent that the “clean slate” provision regarding expungement is an equity and economic issue.
“This bill is just as much a workforce development and economic development and racial equity policy all at once,” Williams said.
While Williams said he hopes to keep the judicial override provision in the legislation, “we need to make sure that it doesn’t ultimately prevent over half a million Missourians from having access to an expungement that they’re eligible for.”
This story was originally published by the Missouri Independent.
