Missouri governor denies pardon for man facing execution for killing girl | Missouri

Missouri’s governor on Monday denied clemency to Christopher Collings, a death row inmate facing execution for sexually assaulting and killing a nine-year-old girl and leaving her body in a sinkhole.

Collings, 49, is scheduled to receive a single injection of pentobarbital at 6 p.m. CT Tuesday at the state prison in Bonne Terre, Missouri, for the slaying of fourth-grader Rowan Ford in 2007. It would be the 23rd execution in the United States this year and the fourth in Missouri.

“Mr. Collings has received every protection afforded by the Missouri and United States Constitutions, and Mr. Collings’ conviction and sentence remain for his heinous and callous crime,” Republican Gov. Mike Parson said in a statement.

Parsons’ decision likely sealed Colling’s fate. Earlier Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal on behalf of Collings without comment. No further appeals are planned, said Collings’ attorney, Jeremy Weis.

Parson’s decision was not unexpected – a former sheriff, Parson has overseen 12 previous executions without granting clemency. Weis said Parson has allowed other executions to proceed for prisoners with claims of innocence, intellectual disabilities and for men who were “reformed and remorseful” for their crimes.

“In every instance of redemption, the governor has ignored the evidence and sought revenge,” Weis said in a statement.

Collings confessed to killing Rowan, a child who referred to him as “Uncle Chris,” after Collings lived for several months with the girl’s family in the village of Stella, Missouri. Rowan was killed on 3 November 2007. Her body was found in a sinkhole outside the town six days later. She had suffocated.

The pardon application said an abnormality in Collings’ brain causes him to suffer from “functional deficits in awareness, judgment and deliberation, compassion, appropriate social inhibition and emotional regulation”. It also noted that he suffered frequent and often violent abuse as a child.

“The result was a damaged human being with no guidance on how to grow into a functioning adult,” the petition states.

The petition also challenged the fairness of executing Collings since another man accused of the crime, Rowan’s stepfather, David Spears, also confessed but was allowed to plead to lesser crimes. Spears served more than seven years in prison before being released in 2015.

Collings told authorities he was drinking heavily and smoking weed with Spears and another man in the hours before the attack on Rowan, according to court records. Collings said he picked up the sleeping child from her bed, took her to the RV where he lived and assaulted her there. He said he strangled the child with a rope when he realized she recognized him.

Collings told investigators he took the girl’s body to a sinkhole. He burned the rope used in the attack, along with the clothes he was wearing and his bloodstained mattress, the prosecutor said.

Spears also implicated herself in the crimes, according to court documents and the pardon petition. A transcript of Spears’ statement to police, cited in the petition, said he told police that Collings handed him a leash and that he killed Rowan.

“I’m suffocating her with it. I know she’s gone. She’s … she’s really gone,” Spears said, according to the transcript. It was Spears who led authorities to the sinkhole where her body was found, according to court documents.

No phone records were found for Spears.

The Supreme Court appeal challenged the reliability of the key law enforcement witness in Collings’ trial, a police chief from a neighboring town who had four awol convictions while serving in the Army. Failure to disclose details of the criminal history at trial violated Collings’ right to a fair trial, Weis argued.

“His credibility was really at the heart of the whole case against Mr. Collings,” Weis said in an interview.

Three men have been executed in Missouri this year – Brian Dorsey on April 9, David Hosier on June 11 and Marcellus Williams on September 24. Only Alabama, with six, and Texas, with five, have carried out more executions than Missouri in 2024.