A Missouri Death Row Inmate is Waiting for the Phone Call That Decides if He Lives or Dies Tonight

Andre Cole is currently sitting in a prison cell in Missouri, waiting for a phone call to find out if he will be executed at 6pm this evening. He may be eating his last meal when the call comes. He may even be strapped to a steel gurney in the execution chamber — the preparations for his lethal injection will continue right up until the phone rings and a judge announces whether Cole lives or dies.

Cole's lawyers secured an 11th-hour stay yesterday for the 52-year-old convicted of the 1998 killing of his ex-wife's lover, but the attorney general quickly appealed the district court decision. Now they are keenly awaiting news from the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals on whether the stay will be upheld, or if the execution will proceed as planned.

That decision could come down in the very final moments before Cole is scheduled to die, according to Staci Pratt, State Coordinator for anti-execution group Missourians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, whose lawyers are part of the team representing Cole in his last-minute appeal.

Pratt is among a coalition of civil rights activists, Missouri legislators, legal experts, religious organizations, and exonerated former death row inmates, who earlier this month banded together to write a letter to Missouri's Governor Jay Nixon seeking clemency for Cole.

Related:Eric Holder calls for moratorium on death penalty and conclusions in Ferguson investigations

In the letter, the advocates detailed "disturbing" aspects of Cole's trial, including a jury that allegedly made no effort conceal racial bias, and claims of deliberate jury-rigging by prosecutors in St. Louis County — the same area where racial profiling and fatal use of force by police against unarmed black men have been the subject of raging protests over the past several months.

Cole's supporters based their claims on allegations that prosecutors in Cole's case unfairly struck out three potential black jurors from the pool, and a sworn affidavit from an alternate juror saying that white jurors made racist comments about both Cole and "those people," referring to black residents. The juror's affidavit also stated that the 12 white women and men picked for the panel had pre-determined a guilty verdict before all the evidence was presented.

The office of St. Louis County prosecutor Bob McCulloch did not immediately respond to VICE News' request for comment Tuesday.

"Regardless of one's views about capital punishment, our justice system should not tolerate disparate or unequal treatment — particularly when a life is at stake," the authors wrote. "We strongly urge you to exercise your authority to appoint a Board of Inquiry… to examine the exclusion of African Americans from jury service in death penalty cases."

Pratt said that courts in Missouri have found at least five incidents where prosecutors deliberately and unfairly struck black jurors from criminal prosecutions since Cole's trial, three of which were death penalty cases.

"Sadly, this is part of a pattern," Pratt said. "Both in southern states and in Missouri, prosecutors use pretextual reasons for removing African American individuals from juries — for example, someone's a postal worker, someone's divorced, but they do not apply those criteria consistently to white jurors."

Cole was accused of breaking into his ex-wife Terri's home in 1998 and stabbing her boyfriend to death over a child support payment spat. During jury selection, one black potential juror was excused because he was a divorcee, Pratt said. A white juror was not removed, despite being a divorcee and paying child support, proving prosecutors used the divorcee angle as a pretext to obtain an all-white jury, she said.

Even Cole's ex-wife, who was left with knife wounds in the attack, has denounced her former husband's impending execution. Other family members of the victims and members of the public have also backed activists in calls for Nixon to grant a reprieve.

"Often you hear that the execution is necessary for the healing of murder victims' families, but I would say in this case and in fact in many cases that is not true," said Pratt. "It's symptomatic of Missouri's rush to execute, flying in the face of the need to pause and actually consider the evidence."

Related: Darren Wilson to grand jury: 'I had to kill him'

The location of Cole's case is also notable. In November, a St. Louis County grand jury comprised of nine white and three black citizens decided not to indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson for the August 9, 2014 shooting death of unarmed black teen Michael Brown.

The protests over Brown's death and other police killings of unarmed black men spread across the nation and sparked several formal Justice Department reviews of local law enforcement agencies, including Ferguson's police force. A lengthy DOJ report detailed how Ferguson police used discriminatory practices and excessive force to violate the civil rights of the town's African American residents.

The latest claims of jury-rigging in Cole's and other death row cases suggest prejudice also pervades St. Louis County's criminal justice system. Pratt said skewed jury pools are not only a concern for individuals facing execution, but also "a problem in a more general sense."

"When you as an African American are denied access to a jury, that diminishes your opportunity to engage as a full citizen," she said. "It's stigmatizing, it's racist, and it's inappropriate for a system of justice that's built on the idea that we are judged by our peers."

Related: Ferguson police official fired for racist emails revealed by scathing DOJ report

Cole's stay of execution, which was handed down by Missouri's Eastern District court to his lawyers shortly before 3pm Monday, the day before his scheduled death, is partially based on questions surrounding his mental competence.

Cole is currently in a sort of fugue state, his lawyers say. His mental capacity has reportedly deteriorated dramatically, and he is hearing voices.

"He's at a place where he honestly doesn't understand what's happening to him," Pratt said. "He is not connected to reality right now."

His attorneys believe he is suffering from diminished mental capacity, and say they have evidence to back-up their assertion, including expert testimony from a doctor who says Cole is no longer connected to reality and is genuinely confused by the judicial process.

Last week, the Missouri Supreme Court denied a death sentence appeal, determining Cole was mentally competent enough to be executed based on court filings, but did not allow him a competency hearing that would have allowed oral arguments and testimony. His lawyers argued that it was not an appropriate way to conduct a competency hearing, and a judge for the district court agreed, writing in the stay that the decision was an "unreasonable application of the law."

Whether that determination will stick or be overturned is quite literally a matter of life and death that will be delivered in coming hours. Until then, Cole's lawyers say he will sit in his cell and wait for that phone call, even if he's not entirely able to understand the consequences conveyed by the voice on the other end of the line.

Follow Liz Fields on Twitter: @lianzifields