Missouri Death Row Inmate Executed Despite Questions of Mental Competence and Racial Bias During Trial

On Tuesday night, Andre Cole became the third convicted murderer in Missouri to be executed in 2015. His death brought an end to a dramatic 11th hour appeals process in a case that has drawn attention from civil rights activists over claims of jury rigging and racial bias.

Cole's lawyers secured a last minute stay Monday 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, and a three-judge panel at the 8th Circuit appeals court ruled 2-1 Tuesday that the execution would proceed as planned.

All day, Cole and his attorneys had waited for a phone call from the court that would determine whether he would live or die, according to Staci Pratt, state coordinator for anti-execution group Missourians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. Lawyers for the group are part of the team representing Cole in his last-minute appeal.

As preparations for his executions carried on, Cole declined his final meal in favor of the regular daily offerings, and refused sedatives, or to make a final statement, according to the Missouri Department of Corrections. The news from the court came late in the day. It was not the phone call Cole's attorneys had hoped for.

More than 3 hours later than the original scheduled time of execution, at 10:15pm, Cole was injected with a lethal dose of drugs. Relatives blew kisses from the gallery as Cole breathed deeply on the gurney. Nine minutes later, he was dead.

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

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.

In the letter, the advocates detailed "disturbing" aspects of Cole's trial, including a jury that allegedly made no effort to 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."

Nixon denied the pleas for clemency, releasing a statement Tuesday night, saying, "There is no doubt of Andre Cole's guilt in the murder of Anthony Curtis, who he stabbed more than 20 times."

"This was a brutal crime, and my denial of clemency upholds the court's decision to impose a sentence of death," he added.

Cole was convicted of breaking into his ex-wife Terri's home in 1998 and stabbing her boyfriend, Curtis, 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, was partially based on questions surrounding his mental competence.

Cole's mental capacity had reportedly deteriorated dramatically in the lead-up to the execution, and he was hearing voices, his lawyers said.

Last week, however 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."

After the 8th Circuit Court handed its decision down Tuesday, Cole's lawyers immediately lodged another appeal to the Supreme Court, which turned it down.

"Andre Cole's execution is heartbreaking," Pratt said. "It strengthens our resolve to continue the fight, however. The road to justice may be long and rocky, but it must be traveled."

Follow Liz Fields on Twitter: @lianzifields