Executions trigger protest

The second execution in as many months, after more than a year without one, has some Columbia protestors discouraged about their attempts to end capital punishment in the state.

Twenty people showed up at the Boone County Courthouse Tuesday afternoon to hold signs protesting the execution of a man who was convicted of killing his grandmother for drug money. It was one of many demonstrations scheduled around the state.

Donald Jones, 38, was executed early today at the Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center in Bonne Terre.

Jones was convicted of killing his grandmother, 68-year-old Dorothy Knuckles, in St. Louis in 1993.

The execution came a week after the Mid-Missouri Fellowship of Reconciliation announced that 50 local businesses had joined them in asking the Missouri General Assembly to consider placing a moratorium on capital punishment.

Early Tuesday, Gov. Matt Blunt — for the second time in little more than a month — refused to grant clemency despite a recommendation to do so by the state parole board. The Republican expressed sympathy, but he described the murder as “terrible.”

Jones was the 63rd inmate put to death by the state since Missouri reinstated the death penalty in 1989, but only the second prisoner executed since 2003. On March 16, Stanley Hall was put to death for murdering a woman and throwing her into the Mississippi River in St. Louis in 1994. Another execution is scheduled for next month.

Jeff Stack, coordinator of the Mid-Missouri Fellowship of Reconciliation, said he is scared that the state is returning to the old way of handling executions.

“This pace of once a month was sadly the norm a couple years ago,” Stack said.

Protestor John Schuder said that though every execution saddens him, he will continue to show up and protest every one.

Tuesday was the first time Ivy White had joined the group to demonstrate. She said she hopes people driving and walking by gained a different perspective.

“Maybe someone will have an ‘ah-ha’ moment,” White said. “That would be great.”

Jones’ family had hoped Blunt would commute the prisoner’s sentence to a life term without parole, arguing that Knuckles would not seek vengeance against her grandson.

“We don’t have the death penalty so that families can feel a sense of vengeance,” Blunt said. “We have the death penalty because we believe as a society, we believe as a state and we believe as a people that some crimes are so horrific that the only appropriate punishment is the death penalty.”

Jones said he was high on PCP-laced crack cocaine when he went to his grandmother’s St. Louis home in March of 1993 to ask the woman for more money for drugs. After she refused, Jones first beat her with a butcher’s block of knives, then repeatedly stabbed her.

Jones took the grandmother’s videocassette recorder, some money and the keys to her car, then sold the VCR and rented out the vehicle to get two pieces of crack cocaine.