(Reuters) – A man who fatally shot two Missouri correctional officers in 2000 was scheduled to be executed on Tuesday after the U.S. Supreme Court and the governor declined to intervene even though jurors in the case petitioned for a reduced sentence.
Michael Tisius, 42, was convicted in 2001 of murdering Randolph County sheriff’s deputies Jason Acton and Leon Egley, who were both unarmed, during a failed attempt to help a former cellmate escape from jail.
Lawyers for Tisius argued he should be spared the death penalty given that he was 19 at the time of the crime, the New York Times reported. They said he was abused and neglected as a child, and that he was convinced by Roy Vance, the inmate, to go through with the plan.
Six jurors, including two alternates who voted in favor of a death sentence in 2010, said in sworn affidavits they were sympathetic to a reduced sentence, the Times reported.
Governor Mike Parson on Monday declined a clemency petition to commute the sentence to life in prison.
“Missouri’s judicial system provided Mr. Tisius with due process and fair proceedings for his brutal murders of two Randolph County jail guards,” the Republican governor said in a statement.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined a request by Tisius to stay the execution.
Tisius was accused of plotting with Tracie Bulington, Vance’s then-girlfriend, to help Vance escape from jail. Prosecutors said Bulington had decided against going through with the plan before Tisius shot Acton and Egley.
Bulington was sentenced to life in prison for her role in the killings.
Tisius had met Vance in 1999 while he was in jail on a misdemeanor charge for theft of a rented stereo, CBS News reported.
(Reporting by Tyler Clifford in New York; editing by Paul Simao)
