Daily Mail
September 5, 2015
A man who spent nearly 25 years on Missouri’s death row was executed Tuesday for the kidnapping, rape and stabbing death of a 15-year-old girl in 1989 during a cocaine binge with a friend who has already paid the ultimate price.
Roderick Nunley, 50, became the sixth death row inmate to be put to death in Missouri this year after he was pronounced dead at 9:09pm CDT.
During the execution, his breathing became labored for a few seconds and he briefly opened his mouth before becoming still.
‘Despite openly admitting his guilt to the court, it has taken 25 years to get him to the execution chamber,’ Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster said in a statement.
‘Nunley’s case offers a textbook example showing why society is so frustrated with a system that has become too cumbersome.’
Ann Harrison’s disappearance and death haunted the Kansas City area in March 1989.
She was waiting for a school bus on her driveway, 20 yards from her front door, when Nunley and Michael Taylor drove by in a stolen car and made the spur-of-the-moment decision to abduct her.
Her body was found in the trunk of the abandoned car three days later.
Both men were sentenced to death in 1991. Taylor was executed last year.
Missouri Gov Jay Nixon on Tuesday denied a clemency request for Nunley, filed by death penalty opponents, asserting that racial bias played a role in the case because a prosecutor refused a plea deal that would have given Nunley life in prison without parole.
Nunley was black, as was Taylor, while the victim was white.