Originally published at National Catholic Register
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a Missouri death row prisoner’s appeal on the eve of his execution date, while lawyers for the condemned man argue that he was a frequent victim of physical and sexual abuse in his youth and suffered judgment-impairing brain injuries as a result.
The prisoner, Christopher Collings, was convicted and sentenced to death for the 2007 abduction, rape, torture, and murder of a 9-year-old girl, Rowan Ford.
Police said Collings confessed to killing Ford after raping her in rural Stella, Missouri, in the far southwest corner of the state. Collings allegedly burned the evidence of his crime, including the rope used to strangle the child, and dumped her body in a sinkhole.
The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Collings’ case in a brief Dec. 2 order. Barring an intervention by the Missouri Supreme Court or Republican Gov. Mike Parson — who has never granted clemency during his governorship — Collings will be executed Tuesday by lethal injection.
Collings’ clemency petition filed with Parson states that Collings’ brain is “multiply injured” and “structurally abnormal,” which causes him to suffer from “functional deficits in awareness, judgment and deliberation, comportment, appropriate social inhibition, and
