Missouri executed a person Tuesday evening for the 2007 sexual assault and homicide of a fourth-grade lady who known as him “Uncle Chris.” Gov. Mike Parson denied his clemency petition earlier this week and the U.S. Supreme Court docket rejected his request to listen to an attraction, clearing the best way for the process to go ahead.
Christopher Collings, 49, was pronounced lifeless at 7:10 p.m. Japanese Time on the state jail in Bonne Terre, the Missouri Division of Corrections stated in a press release. Missouri makes use of excessive doses of a single drug, pentobarbital, to hold out executions by deadly injection. The heavy sedative is usually used to euthanize animals.
Collings was convicted of first-degree homicide within the dying of Rowan Ford, his buddy David Spears’ 9-year-old stepdaughter, in against the law that Missouri Legal professional Basic Andrew Bailey and others have described as “vile, horrible and inhumane.”
On the night of Nov. 2, 2007, Spears was ingesting with Collings and one other buddy, Nathan Mahurin, at his house in Stella, a small village in southwestern Missouri, whereas the younger lady slept and her mom labored an in a single day shift at Walmart, courtroom information present. The lads relocated at one level to Collings’ trailer in a unique city, leaving Ford at house on her personal.
On the finish of the evening, when Mahurin drove Spears house, he took again roads to keep away from police as a result of he was intoxicated. Within the meantime, Collings rushed to Spears’ house, kidnapped Ford and introduced her again to his trailer to rape her. Collings later testified he didn’t initially intend to kill the lady, however panicked when she acknowledged him. He stated he noticed a twine within the mattress of a close-by pickup truck and used that to strangle her to dying, based on the information. Collings stated he then disposed of her physique within the cave the place she was finally discovered.
Missouri Division of Corrections through AP
Ford knew Collings as a result of he had lived together with her and her household at their house for a number of months that yr. The kid’s mom, Colleen Spears, reported her lacking on Nov. 3 when her daughter didn’t return from college that afternoon. When she couldn’t discover Ford that morning, Colleen Spears’ husband had informed her the lady was at a buddy’s home. The kid’s physique was finally found after an enormous search.
David Spears was implicated within the youngster’s homicide alongside Collings, and investigators initially believed the stepfather was answerable for her killing. Court docket information present inconsistencies in Spears and Collings’ respective accounts of the crime, with each males confessing to sexually assaulting and killing her, though Collings denied Spears’ involvement.
Spears pleaded responsible to a lesser cost. He served greater than seven years in jail earlier than his launch in 2015.
In Collings’ clemency petition, attorneys argued that he suffered from a mind abnormality that brought on “functional deficits in awareness, judgment and deliberation, comportment, appropriate social inhibition, and emotional regulation” and stated he skilled abuse and sexual abuse throughout his personal childhood. The petition to Gov. Parson and attraction to the Supreme Court docket additionally known as into query the credibility of a regulation enforcement witness central to the prosecution’s case in opposition to Collings throughout his trial.
“Mr. Collings has received every protection afforded by the Missouri and United States Constitutions, and Mr. Collings’ conviction and sentence remain for his horrendous and callous crime,” Gov. Parson stated in a press release Monday saying the clemency petition had been denied. “The State of Missouri will carry out Mr. Collings’ sentence according to the Court’s order and deliver justice.”
Collings’ execution was the twenty third carried out this yr within the U.S. and the fourth carried out in Missouri. Solely Alabama and Texas have executed extra folks in 2024 — six and 5, respectively.
