The U.S. Supreme Court had said it wouldn’t stop the scheduled execution and Gov. Jay Nixon denied his clemency petition. Both Nunley and his co-defendant in the case, Michael Taylor, were sentenced to death in 1991. Taylor was executed last year.

Nunley’s attorney has three appeals before the U.S. Supreme Court, including one that says the death penalty amounts to cruel and unusual punishment — an argument rebuffed by a detective with a 42-year career who helped break the case.

Retired Kansas City detective Pete Edlund said the only thing cruel and unusual is how long Nunley and Taylor remained on death row.

“A travesty,” he said. “I’m frustrated by the fact it’s taken so long and over ridiculous excuses to extend their time on death row.”

He said Nunley should have been put to death long ago.

“They just take forever to do the deed,” Edlund told The Associated Press. “The delay in executing these two is just nuts because it didn’t have anything to do with their guilt. It was legal mumbo jumbo nonsense.”

Hailey H

Topic- Sould man get the death penalty for a girls murder in 1989
Title-Man Facing Execution for Girl’s 1989 Kidnapping, Rape, Death
Source- Google News
Summary- A man killed a girl in 1989, raped her and stabed her to death and has been on death row for more then two decades. The case was a slow case and the only problem is the court is not sure if it is to late for his sentence. The judge decided that his last breath would be on September 2nd at 6:00.
Reaction- The judge took far to long with this mans sentence, I think that the judge should have taken care of this in 1989 when he was found guilty. It is not fair for him to get 20 more years of life after what he did, and it isn’t right for the girl or her family, how do you think the girls parents felt for 20 years knowing that their daughter is dead and the killer is still alive? This event dose not directly affect me but it makes me question the judical branch, why would they not have sentenced him right away, why dose he deserve life after he kidnaped, raped, and killed a innocent girl without reason?
World Impact- Some peope don’t see affecting them, and they are probably right, its not something that affects the world, but it is something that has changed lives. It has ended the girls future, ended the killers life, and broken the girls family and her friends. If a tragity like this dose not make your heart hurt then the world is just as heartless as the killer.

To this day neighbor Deborah Bowen carries a picture of Ann and her sisters in her car. It’s there to remind her of the innocent girl down the street from her.

“I will never forget the girl, she was just a beautiful thing,” Bowen said. “My dad went to his grave knowing those two were still alive.”

The former detective is hoping, with Nunley’s execution, it will offer some sort of peace for Ann’s family.

“It has been a long time, justice delayed,” Edlund said.

The other two pending appeals take issue with Missouri’s process of secretly acquiring its execution drug and argue that Nunley should have been sentenced by a jury, not a judge.

The clemency petition to Nixon, filed by death penalty opponents, alleges that racial bias played a role in the case because a prosecutor refused a plea deal that would have given Nunley life in prison without parole. Nunley is black, as was Taylor, while the victim was white.

According to prosecutors, Nunley and Taylor binged on cocaine and stole a car in the pre-dawn hours of March 22, 1989. At one point, a police officer from neighboring Lee’s Summit chased the car but was called off by a supervisor when the stolen car crossed into Kansas City.

Later that morning, the men were driving around Kansas City when they saw Ann standing at the end of her driveway, waiting for a school bus. The girl’s mother had stepped inside to get a younger daughter ready for school. When she heard the bus, she looked outside. The books and flute were still there, but Ann was gone.

Taylor and Nunley had quickly grabbed the 15-year-old girl and took her to Nunley’s mother’s home. She was raped and sodomized, then stabbed repeatedly in the stomach and neck.

Taylor and Nunley put the girl’s body in the trunk of the stolen car, then abandoned it in a residential area. The body was found three days later.

Edlund said the case was cracked months later when a man in jail for robbery — and seeking a $10,000 reward in the case — turned in Taylor and Nunley. Both men confessed, and some of Ann’s hair was found in carpeting at the home where the crime occurred.

Read more: http://www.kctv5.com/story/29935601/missouri-executes-roderick-nunley-for-ann-harrisons-1989-killing#ixzz3kmLvTSX6