Wow, that could be a FR record for turning on one of our own; less than 24 hours.
USA Today is still running the 6-3 story with Alito siding against conservatives, so I don't know what is going on.
ST. LOUIS — The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday granted a stay of execution for Michael Anthony Taylor and agreed to hear arguments in his case.
Just hours before Taylor was to be executed, the appeals court voted 9-1 Wednesday to grant his petition for a rehearing by the full court.
A few hours later the U.S. Supreme Court refused to overrule the appeals court and lift the stay.
Earlier Wednesday, the Supreme Court had rejected Taylor’s appeal that argued that Missouri’s death penalty system is racist. Taylor is black and his victim was white.
“The death penalty as practiced in the state of Missouri discriminates against African-Americans such as (Taylor), such that it is a badge of slavery,” the justices were told in a filing by Taylor’s lawyer, John William Simon.
Before Wednesday’s vote by the full 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis, a three-judge panel of that court had denied Taylor’s request for a stay of execution, although one of the three judges dissented.
The 8th Circuit’s decision to hear the case gives Taylor at least a temporary reprieve.
Phone messages seeking comment from prosecutors in the state’s case were not returned Wednesday.
Taylor, 39, of Kansas City, and his co-defendant, Roderick Nunley, 40, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder, forcible rape, armed criminal action and kidnapping for the March 1989 killing of 15-year-old Ann Harrison.
Taylor and Nunley have said they had been using drugs and wanted to steal Harrison’s purse when they got the girl into their stolen vehicle. Taylor raped Harrison in Nunley’s mother’s basement. Fearing she would identify them, the two men killed the teenager.
Both were sentenced to death in 1991. After their sentences were overturned, they were again sentenced to death in 1994.
The Missouri Supreme Court is expected to set an execution date soon for Nunley.