capital punishment

Gov. Mike Parson on Monday confirmed the state will carry out the scheduled execution of Brian Dorsey on Tuesday, April 9. More than 150 people spoke out in support of sparing Dorsey’s life, including over 70 corrections officers and a retired Missouri Supreme Court judge. Dorsey was convicted of murdering his cousin and her husband in 2006.

Hypoxia is the medical term for when there is insufficient oxygen in the body. Kansas hasn't executed someone since 1965, and Attorney General Kris Kobach is pushing to legalize the method first used in Alabama this January. Critics call it cruel and akin to suffocation.

Taylor would be the third person sentenced to death by the state in the last 10 weeks.

NPR spoke with 26 people who were involved with more than 200 executions across the country — including in Missouri. Most said their health suffered and they had little support to help them cope with their unusual jobs.

Earlier this year, Wesley Ira Purkey and Keith Dwayne Nelson were put to death by the federal government.

When the Bureau of Prisons finally turned over the records — after Purkey's second execution date was set — they went to the government's lawyers, who Purkey’s lawyers say failed to turn the records over to them.

His execution came after a flurry of legal moves seeking to halt the procedure.

Purkey admitted to abducting Jennifer Long as she was walking home from high school, raping and murdering her in his Lansing, Kansas, home and then dismembering her body.

Since the federal death penalty was reinstated in 1988, only three federal executions have taken place.

Walter Barton was executed Tuesday for a 1991 murder in southwest Missouri.

The Missouri Supreme Court on Tuesday set an execution date of Oct. 1 for Russell Bucklew, whose challenge to the state’s lethal injection method was…

A narrowly divided U.S. Supreme Court rejected a Missouri death row inmate’s challenge to the state’s single-drug lethal injection method, finding Monday…