James Chambers was executed by the State of Missouri for the murder of Jerry Oestricker
According to court documents James Chambers was on a prison furlough where he was serving time for shooting a man at a bar when he would get into a bar fight with Jerry Oestricker. The fight ended when Chambers shot Oestricker in the chest
James Chambers would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
James Chambers would be executed by lethal injection on November 15 2000
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When Was James Chambers Executed
James Chambers was executed on November 15 2000
James Chambers Case
Jessica Oestricker Coplin of Herculaneaum said the May 1982 shooting death of her brother Jerry Oestricker by James Wilson Chambers “should never have happened.”
Chambers had received a 3-year sentence in July 1972 for the felony of 2nd-degree burglary. Then-Gov. Christopher Bond freed Chambers through commutation about halfway through his sentence. A few weeks later, Chambers was arrested for shooting a man in the stomach outside a bar in Jefferson County. In April 1975, Chambers received a 15-year sentence for felony assault with intent to kill, according to state records provided by Nixon’s campaign. Seven years after beginning his second prison sentence, Chambers received a Memorial Day weekend pass and killed Jerry Oestricker while outside prison walls. In September 1982, while awaiting trial for the Oestricker killing, Chambers’ sentence for shooting Griffin was commuted by Bond. Chambers is now on death row for the Oestricker slaying. Ms. Coplin said no commutations should have been approved by Bond: “This was senseless and should never have happened.”
The Missouri Supreme Court set the new execution date for Chambers, thrice-convicted and long under death sentence for a tavern slaying nearly 2 decades ago. Chambers has been convicted 3 times of killing Jerry Oestricker outside an Arnold, Missouri bar on May 29, 1982. Jerry had inadvertently bumped into a friend of Chambers’s outside the bar restroom. Chambers challenged the victim to step outside and after hitting him over the head with a gun, shot him in the chest, pistol-whipped him, then dragged him across the parking lot, and taunted him before fleeing. Two of the convictions were set aside, with a state court and a federal appeals court each ordering new trials. Chambers was tried and convicted a 3rd time in 1991. Chambers won a stay of execution from the St. Louis-based 8th Circuit last November after the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to decide about the federal Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act law’s application in a Nevada death row case. Last April, the Supreme Court upheld the decision from Nevada. That’s when Attorney General Jay Nixon filed a motion with the 8th Circuit to lift Chambers’ stay of execution. The Missouri Supreme Court sets state execution dates.
