Missouri executed a man convicted of abducting, raping and killing a teenage girl, officials said Wednesday.
Jeffrey Ferguson, 59, was administered the lethal injection of pentobarbital at 12:01 a.m. and was declared dead at 12:11 a.m. at a state prison in Bonne Terre. He was Missouri's third jail inmate to be executed this year.
At the time of his execution Ferguson was draped in a white sheet and strapped to a hospital gurney. He took a few breaths and his legs made a flurry of kicking motions under the sheet before he was pronounced dead.
Earlier, he attempted to lighten the tense atmosphere in the room as his friends and family said their final goodbyes..
Ferguson was found guilty of raping and murdering 17-year-old Kelli Hall on Feb. 9, 1989. With help from his accomplice, Ferguson abducted Hall after she completed her shift at the Mobil gas station in St. Charles. Her body was found naked and frozen 13 days later on a St. Louis County farm, reports the Associated Press.
He was first convicted for the crime in 1992 but the verdict was turned over after some problems with the jury instructions. The court convicted him in the second trial and he was given the death sentence. His last-minute appeal for stay order on execution was rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court late on Tuesday.
In a bid to stop the execution, Ferguson's lawyers told the court that an FBI agent gave false and misleading testimony.
Prosecutors argued that Ferguson was drunk at the time he abducted and raped Hall. Witness said that he forcefully took her to the back seat of a vehicle.
Refusing clemency for Ferguson, Missouri Governor Jay Nixon said that the decision taken by the jury was right. "Kelli Hall was only 17 when she was abducted from her workplace, raped and brutally murdered," Nixon said in a statement, reports Reuters. "Her life, so full of promise, was brutally taken from her and her family."
Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster said that he hoped the execution could bring some justice to the Hall family. "While this sentence cannot bring Kelli back, her parents have waited a quarter-century for justice for their daughter," Koster said.
However, his supporters said that Ferguson was a changed man and regretted what he did. Some said he became deeply religious in prison, counseled inmates and helped start a prison hospice program. "Society doesn't gain anything by his execution," Rita Linhardt of Missourians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, said Tuesday, reports AP. "He's not the same man he was 24 years ago."
Several states in the U.S. have come under the scanner for using lethal injection drugs from lightly regulated compounding pharmacies. Chief pharmaceutical companies in the United States have stopped the sales of their drugs for executions. This has led to some states either delaying the execution or to come up with alternative drugs.
