KANSAS CITY, Missouri (Reuters) - A Missouri man was executed early on Wednesday for raping and murdering a 15-year-old schoolgirl, authorities said, hours after the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed a flurry of petitions seeking a stay.
Michael Taylor died by lethal injection 25 years after he and an accomplice abducted Ann Harrison from a bus stop near Kansas City, raped her and stabbed her to death.
The 47-year-old had pleaded guilty to the rape and murder. But his attorneys launched a string of appeals, including one asserting the drugs used for lethal injection could subject him to a slow and tortuous death.
Lawyers also argued he should have been offered a life sentence, or at least a sentencing by a jury instead of a judge - and said that Missouri should allow all appeals to be exhausted before they proceeded with the execution.
Death penalty opponents and a federal judge have criticized the state for putting condemned inmates to death while petitions for a stay are still pending.
It was the state's 72nd execution since the death penalty was reinstated there in the 1970s and the second this year.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday night denied several petitions for a last-minute stay or further judicial review sought on Taylor's behalf by his attorney, John Simon.
The execution continued as scheduled after the string of terse denials issued for the high court by Justice Samuel Alito.
Governor Jay Nixon had refused to grant Taylor clemency earlier in the day.
"ULTIMATE PENALTY"
Before the execution, Taylor's family issued a statement saying he had showed remorse and that life imprisonment would have been sufficient.
Janel Harrison, mother of the victim, also made a public statement, asking for justice for her daughter. "There should be an ultimate penalty," she said.
Michael Taylor was pronounced dead at 12:10 a.m. local time at a prison in Bonne Terre, said Mike O'Connell, a spokesman for the Missouri Department of Public Safety.
The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had not completed its review of previous death row inmate Allen Nicklasson's request for a stay based on a challenge to Missouri's lethal injection drug protocol when he was executed on December 11.
Circuit Judge Kermit Bye said in a written ruling after Nicklasson's execution that Missouri's actions should undergo intense judicial scrutiny.
Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster has defended the state's actions and said in a statement that Taylor has had more than enough time to file appeals on any issue, and that his sentence has been upheld repeatedly by the Missouri Supreme Court and U.S. Supreme Court.
"It is ridiculous to suggest that Mr. Taylor should avoid his execution by filing a flood of new paperwork," Koster said.
Taylor was narrowly spared from execution in 2006 by a late court-ordered reprieve after revelations about problems with the state's lethal injection practices at that time.
(Reporting by Carey Gillam in Kansas City and Eric M. Johnson in Seattle; Editing by Steve Gorman and Lisa Shumaker)
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