State Executes Walter Barton

Despite pleas from thousands of individuals and numerous organizations, the State of Missouri executed Walter Barton on Tuesday evening. The execution took place not long after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a request to stop the lethal injection. Missouri was the first state to carry out an execution in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Several planned executions had been delayed since early March as the novel coronavirus closed down large areas of the U.S. Outbreaks have been a particular concern in prisons and jails across the country.

Barton was the 90th execution in Missouri since the reinstatement of the death penalty. Missouri remains 5th in the nation in the number of executions carried out.