Missouri executed death row inmate David Hosier by lethal injection on Tuesday, making his the second execution in the state this year and the seventh in the nation.
Hosier was pronounced dead at 6:11 p.m. after he was administered a 5-gram dose of pentobarbital, Missouri Department of Corrections spokeswoman Karen Pojmann told USA TODAY.
Hosier, 69, was convicted in the 2009 shooting death of his former lover, Angela Gilpin, a married mother of two. Gilpin was seeing Hosier while she was separated from her husband but had decided to make her marriage work and broke it off with Hosier, infuriating him, according to court records.
A neighbor found the bodies of Gilpin and her husband Rodney in the threshold of her apartment in the early morning hours of Sept. 28, 2009. Prosecutors dropped a murder charge against Hosier in Rodney’s killing.
Hosier has always maintained that he didn’t do it, pointing to a lack of DNA evidence or anything tying him to the crime scene. Recently he reiterated his innocence, telling the Kansas City Star that he felt bad that Gilpin and her husband were killed but: “You cannot show remorse for something you did not do.”
“I’m the luckiest man on Earth … I’ve been able to speak the the truth of my innocence,” Hosier said in a final statement issued to members of the media through his spiritual advisory on Tuesday. “I’ve been able to reminisce with family and friends new and old. I’ve been able to learn to be, the fullest version of me.”
He ended the statement by saying: “I leave you all with love. Now, I get to go to heaven. Don’t cry for me. Just join me when your time comes.”
David Hosier’s last meal, last appeal
Hosier ate his last meal at 11 a.m. It consisted of steak, a baked potato, Texas toast, apple pie, milk and orange juice.
Jeremy Weis, Hosier’s attorney and a witness to the execution, told USA TODAY that Hosier’s eyes were closed as he was put to death, with the last movement he saw from Hosier happening at roughly 6:01 p.m.
Hosier’s spiritual advisor, the Rev. Jeff Hood, was in the death chamber and had his hand on Hosier’s shoulder during the execution. Hosier’s last name was mispronounced when death was declared, Weis said calling it, “irritating and disrespectful.”
“I feel just profound sadness about the whole process,” Weis told USA TODAY after the execution. “I’m confident we did all that we could for David, but that doesn’t make me feel any better, because we ultimately didn’t get relief.”
Republican Missouri Gov. Michael Parson turned down Hosier’s request for clemency on Monday, his 11th such denial since taking office in 2018. In his most recent denial, Parson says that Hosier “displays no remorse for his senseless violence.”
“I cannot imagine the pain experienced by Angela’s and Rodney’s loved ones but hope that carrying out Hosier’s sentence according to the court’s order brings closure,” he said in a statement.
Anti-death penalty activists gathered at Parson’s office hours ahead of the execution and presented new signatures on a petition for clemency to the governor’s office.
“In his refusal to offer the mercy and compassion that his faith dictates, he has continuously shown the citizens of this state that he is as apathetic and horrendous as he claims of the acts committed by people on death row,” Michelle Smith, co-director of Missourians to Abolish the Death Penalty, said in a statement to USA TODAY.
Hosier recently told the Kansas City Star that he may have supported the death penalty following his father’s death, but he no longer does so after having gone through the system.
“I can’t see by any justification, the death penalty as being anything but cruel and inhumane,” Hosier told the newspaper. “The state says it’s illegal for us to kill somebody, but they can sanction a murder and it’s A-OK, no big deal.”
Hosier executed for killing former lover
Sometime between 2008 and 2009, Hosier got involved romantically with Angela Gilpin, who had separated from her husband. When Gilpin decided to end the affair and reconcile with her husband, Hosier got angry.
Two weeks before she was killed, Gilpin applied for a restraining order against Hosier and was looking to move apartments, writing to her landlord that she could no longer live next to Hosier. “He scares me. I don’t know he will do next,” she wrote, according to court records.
The day before the killings, Hosier left a voicemail for a friend saying that he was going to “finish it” and called another friend to say that he was going to “eliminate his problems,” court records show.
The next morning, a neighbor found Gilpin’s and her husband Rodney’s bodies at the threshold of their Jefferson City apartment. They had been shot to death.
In Gilpin’s purse was an application for a protective order from Hosier that said “he knows everywhere I go, who I go with, who comes to my home,” adding that he was stalking and harassing her every day.
Hosier was arrested in Oklahoma later that day following a pursuit and a standoff, after which Hosier told police: “Shoot me and get it over with,” according to court documents.
Hosier’s arguments to be spared
In appeals, Hosier’s lawyers argued that there was a lack of physical evidence tying Hosier to the scene of the murder, including the state’s ballistics expert’s inability to identify that the bullets found at the crime scene.
They also argued that he had ineffective attorneys during trial, saying that among other failings, they failed to present a witness who could have told jurors about a stroke Hosier had in 2007 that caused brain damage.
Hosier also argued that the judge who presided over his trial and sentencing had a conflict of interest, having prosecuted him in 1998 for failing to pay child support.
The Federal Public Defenders Office produced a 19-page clemency petition and video for Hosier in a final attempt to spare him from the lethal injection.
The petition and video pointed to the death of Hosier’s father as a source of unresolved trauma that created a downward spiral in his life starting when he was 16.
When is the next scheduled execution?
The next execution in the United States is scheduled for June 26 in Texas. The state is set to execute Ramiro Felix Gonzales for the murder of 18-year-old Bridget Townsend in 2001.
The state of Missouri is scheduled to execute Marcellus “Khaliifah” Williams on Sept. 24. Williams was convicted in 1998 of the murder of social worker Lisha Gayle.
Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens stayed Williams’ execution twice when DNA evidence showed that Williams was not the person who held the knife during the stabbing.
“To date, no court has ever reviewed the DNA evidence proving Mr. Williams was not the individual who wielded the murder weapon and committed this crime,” Tricia Bushnell, the executive director of the Midwest Innocence Project, told The Kansas City Star when the date was set in June.