Missouri Executes Lance Shockley Amid Doubts about Guilt

• “What Governor Kehoe did today was not an act of courage, it was an abdication of it. Clemency exists for precisely these moments: when the courts have faltered, when evidence remains untested, when humanity demands a pause. Missouri has chosen speed over truth and cruelty over conscience. We call on every Missourian, every pastor, every prosecutor, every legislator, to stand up and say this is not done in our name.” – Attorney Mandi Schenley

Jefferson City, MO – The state of Missouri executed Lance Collin Shockley on Tuesday night despite serious questions about his guilt and widespread pleas for commutation and clemency. Advocates, faith leaders and legal experts had urged Governor Mike Kehoe to stop the execution until untested DNA evidence could be examined, warning that the state risked killing an innocent man.

Missourians to Abolish the Death Penalty said in a statement, “Missouri has executed Lance Shockley. We are heartbroken that the state did not listen to our pleas to ‘Let Lance Live!’ He could have easily turned angry being sent to death row for a crime he did not commit—but instead he dedicated his life to serving others. May we all learn from Lance and take a small piece of who he was with us.”

Shockley’s daughters, Summer Shockley–Anagnostopolous and Morgan Shockley, wrote in their statement, “We are two daughters — two women who have spent most of our lives holding tightly to faith, to hope, & to the promise that God’s justice and mercy always prevail. Prison has given our dad an opportunity to find Jesus & space to restore his heart. Since then, he has been a steadfast man of God.

“Through every season, he has remained faithful, loyal, and selfless — a servant to God’s people even in the darkest of places. He is a light that cannot be dimmed, a man who speaks about grace more than pain, and forgiveness more than bitterness. His life, even behind bars, has been a Ministry. Now, through us he will continue to live out his Divine calling — how beautiful it is to be in the midst of it.”

They shared words from Shockley’s sermon “Never Give Up”:

“Whatever trial, whatever difficulty you’re experiencing, whatever impossible situation you’re facing right now, I want to encourage you to NEVER GIVE UP. With God’s power your promises are waiting. You never know how close you are. You might be one step away and a shout away from that wall coming down. You might be just a moment away from Jesus restoring your sight and blessing you with a vision to see things from His perspective. You could be one prayer away from God parting your sea, producing dry ground for you to walk on safely, and rescuing you from what has become your enemy. God is not scared of your mess! Your life is the opportunity for him to paint His masterpiece. To spread the kind of love that changes the world.”

Governor Kehoe denied clemency to Shockley on Monday, clearing the way for his execution. “This is not law and order,” said a campaign spokesperson. “It is cowardice masquerading as strength.”

“Governor Kehoe’s refusal to grant clemency is a moral disgrace and a legal tragedy. Lance Shockley’s conviction is marred by untested DNA, juror misconduct, and a sentencing process that stripped the jury of its rightful authority. The courts have failed him. Clemency was his last chance at justice,” said Jeremy Weis, Shockley’s lead attorney.

Attorney Mandi Schenley added, “What Governor Kehoe did today was not an act of courage, it was an abdication of it. Clemency exists for precisely these moments: when the courts have faltered, when evidence remains untested, when humanity demands a pause. Missouri has chosen speed over truth and cruelty over conscience. We call on every Missourian, every pastor, every prosecutor, every legislator, to stand up and say this is not done in our name.”

Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking, wrote a letter to Governor Kehoe pleading for mercy. “It lifts my heart to hear that you are a man of faith, who tries his best to follow the way of Christ,” she wrote.

“My Christian faith means a lot to me, too. I am the Catholic nun in Louisiana who wrote the book Dead Man Walking, has accompanied eight human beings to the execution chamber, and been engaged for 35 years in educating my fellow citizens about the cruelty and futility of state killing. Today I come before you, Governor, to plead with you to use your power as governor to grant clemency to Lance Shockley.

“This is a man who has truly been transformed during his years of incarceration at the Potosi Correctional Centre,” she said. “Everyone he has touched during his years of incarceration tell of how he has helped them, including [a corrections officer] who has testified how Lance once prevented him from being assaulted. Lance seems to be quite the peacemaker on death row. He helps everybody. He lives his faith. What possible good can be accomplished by now extinguishing his life?”

Prejean wrote that Shockley’s case was “a case in point” of flaws in the death penalty system, noting that “his jury did not vote unanimously for his death, a single judge made that decision,” and DNA evidence had not been tested. “Please be Christ in this life-death situation for this man, Lance Shockley,” she concluded.

After the execution, attorneys with the Federal Public Defender’s Office for the Western and Southern Districts of Missouri released a statement: “Tonight the state of Missouri executed Lance Collin Shockley despite serious questions about his guilt. This is not justice. When truth is accessible but ignored, justice is dismissed. We all must confront that the refusal to test evidence and the denial of mercy are not signs of justice. They are a failure of it.”

They continued, “Lance was let down by the courts again and again, but he did not allow himself to become bitter. He remained hopeful. From inside of a carceral system that seeks to strip the humanity from those that it confines, Lance refused to be diminished. He knew in his bones that he was more than where he was, and he wanted everyone else who was incarcerated with him to know the same.”

“Lance’s faith meant everything to him. He sought to live his life every day as an example of the radical love of God and he poured that love unselfishly on everyone he came into contact with. He was not a quiet Christian. Lance was the embodiment of religion as relationship. He believed that God never gave up on him and so he would never give up on those around him.”

“One piece of scripture that was particularly important to Lance in the last few years comes from Psalm 118. It reads, ‘I shall not die, but I shall live and recount the deeds of the Lord.’ The state of Missouri seeks to take Lance away from us, but they cannot succeed.”

The statement concluded,

“Each of us who have been lucky enough to know Lance are better for having had him in our lives. Lance was a light in a dark place. Each of us will carry Lance with us in the way that we treat others, in meeting people exactly as they are and loving them through. He will not die, but live on in his two daughters that meant the world to him, in his countless family members and friends, his community in Van Buren, in the men at Potosi that he mentored and counseled, in the volunteers that come into the prison to share God’s love, and in those of us who were privileged to advocate for him and call him a friend. May we all strive to be more like him.”

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