https://news.yahoo.com/appeals-court-clears-way-execution-130702514.html
All but one of the judges on this court were nominated by republican presidents.
Associated Press•May 18, 2020
A federal appeals court has cleared the way for a Missouri death row inmate to be executed Tuesday and ordered his petition for post-conviction relief dismissed, despite questions raised about evidence used to convict him.
The Sunday decision by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals vacates a 30-day stay of execution granted Friday to Walter Barton by a federal judge.
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The federal judge on Friday had decided the court needed more time to consider issues raised by Barton’s attorneys, including new concerns about blood spatter evidence used to convict him.
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Barton’s attorney, Fred Duchardt Jr., said last week that three jurors involved in Barton’s 2006 trial now express misgivings, based on new blood spatter evidence.
A blood spatter expert hired by the defense found the assailant would have had far more blood on his clothing than was found on Barton’s clothing. Duchardt said three jurors recently signed affidavits saying the new evidence would have affected their deliberations. The jury foreman said, based on the evidence, he would have been “uncomfortable” recommending the death penalty, Duchardt said.
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https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/crime/article242808976.html
Man to be executed was tried by unit that wrongly convicted others: Innocence Project
By Luke Nozicka
May 18, 2020 05:19 PM
Misconduct that marred the trials of a Missouri man set to be executed Tuesday was part of a pattern of problems at the state attorney general’s office at the time, according to the Innocence Project.
Two of the prosecutors who tried Walter Barton, who was convicted of murdering an elderly woman in 1991, came from a special prosecution unit at the Missouri Attorney General’s Office that had an established practice of “gravely unethical and unconstitutional tactics,” the legal organization said.
Prosecutors from the unit wrongly convicted several men of murder, the Innocence Project wrote in a letter Friday to Gov. Mike Parson. Four of them were exonerated, the nonprofit’s lawyers said.
Combined, those men spent nearly 60 years behind bars for killings they did not commit. Among them was Mark Woodworth, who was exonerated in 2014 after spending 17 years in prison for a conviction stemming from a 1990 fatal shooting near Chillicothe.
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