NEW YORK CITY – Amnesty International is calling on Missouri Governor Mike Kehoe to halt the scheduled October 14 execution of Lance Shockley, arguing that his death sentence rests on a trial tainted by juror misconduct, circumstantial evidence, and defense failures that violated his right to a fair trial.
Shockley was sentenced to death after being accused of fatally shooting a law enforcement investigator who was looking into the death of a passenger in Shockley’s truck following a drunk driving accident. The case has drawn renewed scrutiny more than 20 years later as human rights advocates demand a commutation.
On the evening of Nov. 26, 2004, Shockley lost control of his vehicle and crashed into a ditch. He left his injured passenger at the scene and went to a nearby home to seek help. The residents accompanied him back to the site and called emergency services, where they determined the passenger had already died. Police found beer cans and a tequila bottle in the truck.
Months later, the lead investigator on the case was shot and killed in his driveway. No witnesses placed Shockley himself at or near the scene, but one person later said she saw his grandmother’s red Grand Am in a nearby parking lot.
That identification only came after multiple interviews with police and a car lineup that included several red sedans alongside the two-door vehicle owned by Shockley’s grandmother.
The same witness gave conflicting accounts about a yellow sticker she claimed was on the car, altering its size, location, and appearance in different statements and at trial.
Shockley was first arrested for the earlier drunk driving accident, but prosecutors ultimately charged him with the murder. A Missouri jury convicted him of killing the officer, but when they deadlocked on punishment, the judge imposed a death sentence.
Justin Mazzola, Amnesty International USA’s deputy director for research, said, “The State of Missouri must not execute Lance Shockley, whose jury deliberations were marred by significant irregularities.” Mazzola pointed to the jury foreperson, whose son was a police officer, and who shared with jurors a fictionalized autobiography about avenging a drunk driving death where the perpetrator “escaped justice.”
Amnesty International argues that Shockley’s defense attorney failed to properly question the juror about his book prior to the hearing. The organization said the misconduct came to light only after the guilty verdict. When the foreperson was later removed, the jury was unable to agree on a sentence. The judge then imposed the death penalty, using a rarely applied Missouri law criticized by former judges as arbitrary.
“The evidence against Lance Shockley was entirely circumstantial,” Amnesty International said, noting that requests for modern DNA testing of crime scene evidence have so far been denied.
The organization has called on Kehoe to commute Shockley’s sentence, emphasizing that allowing his execution to proceed would compound the injustices in a case already marked by irregularities and flawed legal processes.
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