Michael Owsley was executed by the State of Missouri for the murder of Elvin Iverson
According to court documents Michael Owsley and accomplices would attack Elvin Iverson and a woman. Elvin Iverson would have a pillow case put over his head before he was fatally shot
Michael Owsley would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Michael Owsley would be executed by lethal injection on February 6 2002
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Michael Owsley FAQ
When Was Michael Owsley Executed
Michael Owsley was executed on February 6 2002
Michael Owsley Case
Asking only for spiritual salvation, Michael Owsley went to his death in a Missouri execution chamber early Wednesday with no apologies and little regard for a judicial system he accused of being stacked against blacks like him. “I hope for salvation. I hope that the mercy and forgiveness that I have asked for will suffice. Praise Allah,” read the final words of the man executed in the 1993 shotgun killing of a Kansas City teen-ager. Hours after declaring himself repentant but blaming his trial attorney and co-defendant for his fate, Owsley died at 12:07 a.m. at the Potosi Correctional Center. The execution took six minutes.
No one representing Owsley’s 18-year-old victim in the killing over drug-dealing proceeds watched Owsley die. Owsley’s relatives also weren’t there, at the 40-year-old condemned man’s request. In the end, Owsley got a wink from a volunteer who teaches religion classes at the prison, then muttered something inaudible while straining to keep his eyes open before the first intravenous drug rendered him unconscious.
Owsley’s fate was sealed late Tuesday when the U.S. Supreme Court and Gov. Bob Holden refused to halt the execution, Missouri’s 55th since the state resumed capital punishment in 1989 and the ninth since Holden took office a year ago. In interviews this week, Owsley insisted the shotgun blast that killed Elvin Iverson came accidentally while Owsley was “catatonic” on gin and PCP. He said that meant the slaying was unintentional and worthy of a lesser charge not punishable by death. Owsley’s clemency petition cast his court-appointed trial attorney as a bumbler — and co-defendant Marion Hamilton as the killing’s instigator who unfairly got a 20-year sentence on a second-degree murder conviction. “This case needs to be reviewed because Missouri’s death-row situation is a situation that has been used repeatedly on people like me — poor, black and unable to defend ourselves,” Owsley told The Associated Press hours before his execution. “I’m nothing to Missouri, I’m nothing to the United States — instead of a poor Negro they could do anything to. As they see it, I’m still chattel property.”
In the clemency petition Owsley also faulted his troubled upbringing dating to even before he was born, claiming that his then-alcoholic mother’s repeated “home remedies” meant to abort him during pregnancy included hours over a bucket filled with turpentine and hot water. But on Tuesday, Owsley visited with his mother and stepfather, telling a reporter “my mother has nothing to be embarrassed about” and that trying to kill him as a fetus was her choice. “It’s by God’s good grace that I’m here,” Owsley said.
Iverson and companion Ellen Cole drove from Kansas City to Junction City, Kan., to sell drugs in April 1993, then returned to Iverson’s Kansas City home where they were confronted by Owsley and Hamilton. When Iverson tearfully insisted he had given the drug money to someone else, Owsley punched and kicked him, at times beating his face with the shotgun before trying to smother him with a bag. Hamilton tied Iverson and Cole together by the feet before the two were covered with a blanket. “One of you live, one of you die,” Owsley reportedly said while hitting the two with the shotgun, moments before it fired into Iverson’s head.
Hamilton and Owsley untied Cole and made their getaway with her. She managed to escape and call police. Hamilton, 43, will have his first parole hearing in April 2003, a Department of Corrections spokesman said
