ST.LOUIS (MISSOURI), 6 MAR - Un uomo di 37 anni, Jeffrey Tokar, e' stato giustiziato oggi nel Missouri, con una iniezione letale, per aver ucciso dieci anni fa presso Centralia il padre di due bambini durante un furto.

   Sorpreso dalla famigliola mentre rubava degli oggetti insieme a un altro complice, Tokar aveva freddato a sangue freddo il padre, Johnny Douglass, nonostante le suppliche dei figli che imploravano pieta', sparandogli in faccia due volte. Due giorni dopo e' stato arrestato.

   L'esecuzione ha avuto luogo quattro minuti dopo mezzanotte nel carcere di Potosi. 

MARCH 6, 2002:

MISSOURi -  State executes Jeffrey Tokar

 In Potosi, a man convicted of fatally shooting another man in front of the victim's 2 young children was executed early Tuesday morning.

 Jeffrey Tokar died at 12:04 a.m., 3 minutes after the 1st of 3 injections was administered at the Potosi Correctional Center, prison spokesman John Fougere said.

 Tokar appeared to be singing until he lost consciousness.

 "A dying man should always tell the truth, and the truth isn't necessarily what a person hears, but what they choose to believe," Tokar said in a prepared final statement. "Praise the Lord, I am on my way."

 Gov. Bob Holden on Tuesday night denied clemency for Jeffrey Tokar, removing the last apparent legal barrier before his execution. Spokesman Jerry Nachtigal said the governor found nothing to warrant clemency and decided the jury's original verdict should be respected.

 The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear Tokar's appeal Tuesday, marking the 4th time the court refused to halt the execution.

 Tokar was convicted 10 years ago of murdering Johnny Douglass at his home during what began as a burglary.

 After completing sentences for stealing and driving while intoxicated in a Boone County jail shortly before Douglass' murder, Tokar was scheduled to begin a 7-year state sentence for a 1991 burglary conviction. Instead, he was accidentally released.

 5 days later, on March 11, 1992, Tokar and his girlfriend, Sandra Stickley, picked the Douglass residence while driving around the Centralia area looking for an unattended house to burglarize. The pair were still inside when Douglass and his 2 children, ages 4 and 9, returned home.

 Tokar, using a shotgun he found at the home, confronted the family in the garage, where he shot Douglass twice in the head.

 Stickley pleaded guilty to 2nd-degree murder and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

 In the clemency request, Tokar's attorneys argued he suffered from paranoid personality disorder, a condition that prevented him from assisting with both his original trial and appeals.

 Tokar, according to a doctor who reviewed his records, was "highly suspicious of his attorneys, their legal assistants, the sheriff, the guards, even the judge and the court reporter because, in his mind, they all were conspiring against him, having secret meetings, hiding and distorting evidence in order to turn the jury against him, and even trying to humiliate and possibly kill him."

 The petition also cites a history of severe alcohol abuse, which began when he started drinking as a child, and a history that lacks any previous arrests or convictions for a violent crime.

 State law prohibited Douglass' children, Jarad and Lynzie, from witnessing the execution because they are not yet 21. But Stuart Miller, the Audrain County Sheriff who investigated the murder, was at the prison. 7 family members witnessed the execution but declined to speak with the media afterward, prison officials said.

 "I'm a strong believer and supporter in the death penalty," Miller said. "I don't know if I really want to witness one, but I feel an obligation to the family as the investigator, so that's why I'm going to be there."

 Tokar becomes the 3rd condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Missouri and the 56th overall since the state resumed capital punishment in 1989. Only Texas (261) and Virginia (83) have executed more people than Missouri since the death penalty was re-legalized on July 2, 1976.

 Tokar becomes the 13th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 762nd overall since America resumed executions on January 17, 1977.