No New Hearing on Condemned Missouri Man’s Innocence Claim
ST. LOUIS—The attorney for a Missouri man facing lethal injection next week said Tuesday that he will ask the state Supreme Court to postpone the execution by three or four months to allow more time to investigate his innocence claim.
Leonard Taylor, 58, faces execution Feb. 7 for the deaths of his girlfriend and her three children in suburban St. Louis in 2004. Attorney Kent Gipson had asked St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell to request a hearing on Taylor’s claim that he was out of state when the killings occurred. A relatively new provision in Missouri law allows a prosecutor to seek a hearing before a judge if evidence of a wrongful conviction emerges….