ST. LOUIS (AP) – Five legal groups are supporting a Missouri death row inmate whose execution was halted hours before it was to be carried out in 2014, saying that he can’t receive an adequate defense with the money allocated.
Three national criminal defense associations, a civil rights law firm and the American Bar Association made court filings last week to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis on behalf of Mark Christeson, convicted of the 1998 killings of a Missouri woman and her two children.
The U.S. Supreme Court halted the execution because Christeson’s original trial attorneys missed the federal appeal deadline. Virtually all capital cases are appealed through the federal courts.
New lawyers were appointed, but a district court provided only $10,000 of the $161,000 sought.
