Rights organization asks Missouri to stop execution of man scheduled to die in June

An international human rights organization is asking Missouri officials to stop the execution of Michael Andrew Tisius because, it says, the state violated his rights starting early in his life.

Tisius is scheduled to die by lethal injection June 6.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights issued the resolution in response to a petition from Tisius’ legal team, saying the state violated his rights by not protecting him from severe neglect and abuse as a child and using exaggerated evidence about his behavior in prison during resentencing.

The organization also said Tisius shouldn’t be executed because he had an “incompetent” defense lawyer who withheld information that could have helped his case and because he has a history of severe mental illness and trauma.

Tisius was convicted in the deaths of two Randolph County jail workers in June 2000. The two men were fatally shot in a failed attempt to free another prisoner, according to archives from The Star.

Tisius was 19 at the time. His legal team has argued that, at the time, he “lacked an adult capacity to make reasonable judgments.”

Larry Komp, an attorney for Tisius, said last month that his team was planning to send a clemency petition to Gov. Mike Parson.

“We are profoundly saddened at the setting of the date,” Komp said in a statement. “The legal challenge that was presented to the Missouri Supreme Court was overwhelmingly supported by science and uncontradicted experts. We are disappointed that a legal claim supported by so much was denied by a check the box order.”

Two people have been executed so far this year in Missouri. Amber McLaughlin, 49, was the first openly transgender woman to be executed on Jan. 3, and Leonard “Raheem” Taylor, 58, was put to death despite maintaining his innocence in a quadruple killing.