Chilling last words of Death Row man after leaving officer dead outside his home

Death Row prisoner Lance Shockley was convicted in 2009 of ambushing and fatally shooting Trooper Graham outside his home near Van Buren. His last words have been revealed

The final words of convicted murderer Lance Shockley have been revealed following his execution for the 2005 killing of Missouri Highway Patrol trooper Carl DeWayne Graham Jr.

Shockley, 43, was pronounced dead from lethal injection just after 6:30 p.m. local time on Tuesday at the state prison in Bonne Terre, Missouri. The execution was carried out without incident, according to the Missouri Department of Corrections. His death marked the first execution carried out under Gov. Mike Kehoe.

In a written final statement, he said: “So also you have sorrow now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.”

Shockley was convicted in 2009 of ambushing and fatally shooting Trooper Graham outside his home near Van Buren. At the time, Graham had been investigating Shockley’s involvement in a fatal car crash. A passing motorist discovered Graham’s body on March 20, 2005.

Although the jury found Shockley guilty of first-degree murder, it could not agree on a sentence. Under Missouri law, when a jury deadlocks, the judge is permitted to impose a punishment – including death.

Gov. Kehoe rejected last-minute appeals for clemency, calling the killing “a brutal and deliberate crime” and “an attack not only on a dedicated law enforcement officer, but on the rule of law itself”.

Advocates for Shockley, including the group Missourians to Abolish the Death Penalty, had urged the governor to halt the execution and appoint a board of inquiry, citing untested DNA evidence and questions about the fairness of Missouri’s sentencing law.

Heidi Moore, the group’s executive director, said before the execution that the case “deserved further investigation”.

Shockley maintained his innocence throughout his nearly two decades on Death Row.

Meanwhile, a South Carolina inmate who spent 42 years on Death Row died – but not from execution.

Fred Singleton, 81, was sentenced to die in 1983 for raping and strangling a woman in Newberry County and stealing her jewelry, according to court records. He was the state’s longest-serving inmate on death row.

Singleton spent his last three decades in prison in legal limbo after the state Supreme Court ruled he wasn’t competent to be executed because he didn’t understand he could die in the electric chair and only answered questions from his attorneys with “yes” or “no.”

But the justices also decided in 1993 that Singleton’s death sentence should remain in case advances in psychology allowed him to get better and that he couldn’t be forced to take medication to improve his mental state only so he could be executed. Read the full story here.

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