ST. LOUIS – Final appeals from a man is considered by the U.S. Supreme Court which is scheduled to be executed Tuesday in Missouri for the rape, kidnapping, and stabbing death of a 15-year-old girl which is more than two decades ago incident.
At 6 pm CDT, Roderick Nunley, 50, is scheduled for lethal injection. As per the investigators, he and his co-defendant have randomly targeted and kidnapped Ann Harrison in 1989, as she waited outside her Kansas City home for the school bus. The girl was brutally raped and stabbed to death.
In Missouri, Nunley would be the sixth death-row inmate to be executed this year, if the court doesn’t step in Michael Taylor, who is Nunley‘s co-defendant in the case was executed last year.
There has been three appeals from Nunley‘s attorney before the U.S. Supreme Court, which includes one that says the death penalty amounts to cruel and being an unusual punishment.
Pete Edlund, Retired Kansas City detective said the only thing unusual and cruel is how long Nunley and Taylor remained on the death row and he should have been put to death long ago.
In an interview this week, Edlund told reporters, “They just take forever to do the deed. The delay in executing these two is just nuts because it didn’t have anything to do with their guilt. It was legal mumbo jumbo nonsense.”
The other two appeals which are pending take issue with Missouri‘s process of secretly acquiring its execution drug. It argue that Nunley should have been not been sentenced by a judge, but by Jury.
A clemency petition have been filed by Death penalty opponents with Gov. Jay Nixon.
As said by prosecutors, Nunley and Taylor indulge in cocaine and stole a car on March 22, 1989. A police officer from neighboring Lee’s Summit chased the car at one point, but when the stolen car crossed into Kansas City, his supervisor called off the chase.
Later that morning, while the men were driving around Kansas City, they saw Ann standing waiting for a school bus on her driveway. Nunley and Taylor quickly grabbed the girl who was 15-year-old and took her to Nunley‘s mother’s home. She was then raped and stabbed repeatedly in the neck and stomach.
Girl’s body was put in the trunk of the stolen car by them, then abandoned it in a residential area. Thereafter 3 days later, the body was found.
According to Edlund, months later the case was cracked when a man in jail for robbery turned in Nunley and Taylor. They both confessed to the crime. Location the crime took place, some Ann’s hair was found in carpeting at the home.
He also noted that girl’s father was a former reserve officer with the police department and her uncle was a Kansas City officer.
Edlund said, “To all of us, she was part of our police family. That made it even more important that we solve the case”.
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