CLAYTON — Gov. Mike Parson announced Monday that he would not grant clemency or stop the execution of death row inmate Leonard Taylor.
Taylor, 58, of Jennings, is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection Tuesday evening at the state prison in Bonne Terre for the deaths of his girlfriend and her three children.
“Leonard Taylor brutally murdered a mother and her three children. The evidence shows Taylor committed these atrocities and a jury found him guilty. Courts have consistently upheld Taylor’s convictions and sentences under the facts and the Missouri and United States Constitutions,†Parson said in a statement Monday afternoon. “Despite his self-serving claim of innocence, the facts of his guilt in this gruesome quadruple homicide remain.â€
The 2004 murder victims are Taylor’s girlfriend Angela Rowe, 28; Rowe’s daughters, Alexus Conley, 10, and AcQreya Conley, 6; and her son, Tyrese Conley, 5. All had been shot at a house on Park Lane in Jennings.
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ºüÀêÊÓƵ County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell’s office also announced last week that it would reject requests from Taylor’s lawyers to seek a hearing to vacate Taylor’s conviction under a new state law.
“We are not filing a motion to vacate Leonard Taylor’s sentence — the facts are not there to support a credible case of innocence,†the prosecutor said in a statement.
Bell said he would not elaborate or take interviews on the reasons for his findings in a statement Monday.
“For this office to provide details on why we came to this judgment could only further incriminate a person who sought relief from this office and currently has appeals pending,†the statement reads.
The Missouri Supreme Court also denied a stay in the case on Feb. 2. Taylor’s defense attorneys, Kent Gipson and Kevin Schriener, raised multiple issues they wanted a judge to hear: time of death, concerns that a key witness had been threatened by police, and phone records they say bolster their claim that the victims were still alive when Taylor boarded a flight to California.
The Missouri Attorney General’s Office, in response to some of Taylor’s appeals over the years, has said the case against Taylor is solid.
The execution is slated to be the third in Missouri in the past three months.