A Missouri death row inmate was executed Tuesday by lethal injection in Bonne Terre for the 1996 double slaying of an elderly couple amid a robbery.
Carman Deck was convicted after three trials and sentenced to death over the fatal shooting of James and Zelma Long when he was 30-year-old.
“Tonight, justice was served,” Anne Precythe, the director of the Missouri Department of Corrections, said after Deck was officially pronounced dead at 6:10 p.m. CT.
His attorney, on the other hand, called the execution “unjust and immoral” citing the “endured pattern of abuse, neglect and abandonment” and the “horrific childhood” of the inmate.
“Due to the passage of time caused by the State of Missouri, the jury did not hear from a single live witness who knew Carman before the crime,” Attorney Elizabeth Carlyle said.
“This botched process simply provides insufficient guardrails to support taking Carman’s life. Life imprisonment without parole would have been a just and adequate punishment for him.”
