A Missouri man who killed a couple during a robbery at their rural home more than a quarter of a century ago was put to death Tuesday, becoming just the fifth person executed in the United States this year.

Carman Deck, 56, died by injection at the state prison in Bonne Terre. He was pronounced dead at 6:10 p.m. His fate was sealed a day earlier when neither the U.S. Supreme Court nor Republican Gov. Mike Parson stepped in to halt the execution. Deck's death sentence was overturned three times before for procedural issues.

Just four other people have been executed in the U.S. in 2022 — Donald Anthony Grant and Gilbert Ray Postelle in Oklahoma, Matthew Reeves in Alabama and Carl Wayne Buntion last month in Texas. Eleven people were executed in the U.S. last year, the fewest since 1988.

Court records show that Deck, of the St. Louis area, was a friend of the grandson of James and Zelma Long in De Soto, about 45 miles southwest of St. Louis. He knew the couple, in their late 60s, kept a safe in their home.

In July 1996, Deck and his sister stopped at the home under the guise of asking directions. Deck wasn't surprised the couple let them in.

"They're country folks," Deck told a detective, according to court records. "They always do."

Once inside, Deck pulled a gun from his waistband. At Deck's command, Zelma Long opened the safe and removed jewelry, then got $200 from her purse and more money hidden in a canister.

Deck ordered the couple to lie on their stomachs on their bed. Court records said Deck stood there for 10 minutes deciding what to do, then shot James Long twice in the head before doing the same thing to Zelma Long.

A tip alerted police to Deck, and he was arrested later that night outside his sister's apartment building in St. Louis County. The decorative tin canister from the Long home was on the floorboard of his car.

Prosecutors said Deck later gave a full account of the killings in oral, written and audiotaped statements. He was sentenced to death in 1998, but the Missouri Supreme Court tossed the sentence due to errors by Deck's trial lawyer.

The U.S. Supreme Court threw out his second sentence in 2005, citing the prejudice caused by Deck being shackled in front of the sentencing jury.

He was sentenced to death for a third time in 2008. Nine years later, U.S. District Judge Catherine Perry determined that "substantial" evidence arguing against the death penalty in Deck's first two penalty phases was unavailable for the third because witnesses had died, couldn't be found or declined to cooperate.

In October 2020, a three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals restored the death penalty, ruling that Deck should have raised his concern first in state court, not federal court. Appeals of that ruling were unsuccessful.

The clemency petition on behalf of Deck cited abuse he suffered as a child, including beatings that left welts and sexual abuse. It said he and his siblings often were left alone without food.

The number of executions in the U.S. has declined significantly since peaking at 98 in 1998. The drop has coincided with declining support, falling from a high of 80% in 1994 to 54% in 2021 according to Gallup polls. Since the mid-1990s, opposition has risen from under 20% to around 45%.

Use of the death penalty has become concentrated mostly in a few Southern and Plains states. Last year, Texas executed three inmates, Oklahoma executed two, and one each were put to death in Alabama, Mississippi and Missouri. Three federal inmates were executed in January 2021, toward the end of President Donald Trump's administration.

On Monday, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee paused executions in his state for the rest of the year to enable a review of lethal injection procedures after a testing oversight forced the state to call off the execution of Oscar Smith an hour before he was to die on April 21.

The lawyer for a Georgia man scheduled to be executed next week says her client has significant cognitive impairments that likely contributed to his crimes and has suffered horrific abuse in prison.

She argues that means his life should be spared. Virgil Delano Presnell Jr. was convicted of killing an 8-year-old girl and raping her 10-year-old friend after abducting them as they walked home from school in Cobb County, just outside Atlanta, on May 4, 1976. He is scheduled to be executed on Tuesday.

The five-member parole board, which is the only authority in Georgia that can commute a death sentence, has scheduled a closed-door clemency hearing Monday to consider his case.

“Before society makes a man pay the ultimate price for a crime, it must determine if his culpability justifies the cost. In Virgil’s case, it simply does not. Virgil Presnell is profoundly disabled,” his attorney Monet Brewerton-Palmer wrote in a clemency application released on Friday by the State Board of Pardons and Paroles.

The application acknowledges the seriousness of what Presnell Jr. did and says he's “deeply and profoundly sorry” to the families of the two girls. The application asks the parole board to delay his execution by 90 days so the board can review his application, then it asks the board to commute his sentence to life without the possibility of parole.

Jurors in the penalty trial of Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz viewed graphic video Tuesday of him murdering 17 people as he stalked through a three-story classroom building at Parkland's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School four years ago.

The video, compiled from 13 security cameras inside the building, was not shown to the gallery, where parents of many of the victims sat. Prosecutors say it shows Cruz shooting many of his victims at point-blank range, going back to some as they lay wounded on the floor to kill them with a second volley of shots.

The 12 jurors and 10 alternates stared intently at their video screens. Many held hands to their faces as they viewed the 15-minute recording, which has no sound.

Some started squirming. One juror looked at the screen, looked up at Cruz with his eyes wide and then returned to the video.

Cruz looked down while the video played and did not appear to watch it. He sometimes looked up to exchange whispers with one of his attorneys.

The video was played over the objection of Cruz's attorneys, who argued that any evidentiary value it has is outweighed by the emotions it would raise in the jurors. They argued that witness statements of what happened would be sufficient.

Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer dismissed the objection, saying a video that accurately reflects Cruz's crimes does not unfairly prejudice his case. Prosecutors are using the video to prove several aggravating factors, including that Cruz acted in a cold, calculated and cruel manner.

Cruz, 23, pleaded guilty in October to 17 counts of first-degree murder, and 17 more counts of attempted murder for those he wounded. The jury must decide if he should be sentenced to death or life without parole for the nation's deadliest mass shooting to go before a jury.

Later on day two of the trial, jurors heard testimony from Christopher McKenna, who was a freshman during the Feb. 14, 2018, shooting. He had left his English class to go to the bathroom and exchanged greetings with two students, Luke Hoyer and Martin Duque, as they crossed paths in the first-floor hallway. McKenna then entered a stairwell and encountered Cruz assembling his AR-15 semiautomatic rifle.

"He said get out of here. Things are about to get bad," McKenna recalled.

McKenna sprinted out to the parking lot as Cruz went into the hallway and began shooting. McKenna alerted Aaron Feis, an assistant football coach who doubled as a security guard. Feis drove McKenna in his golf cart to an adjacent building for safety, and then went to the three-story building McKenna fled from.

By then, the sounds of gunfire were already ringing out across the campus. Feis went in and was fatally shot immediately by Cruz, who had already killed Hoyer, 15, and Duque, 14, and eight others. Cruz then continued through the second floor, where he fired into classrooms but hit no one. When he reached the third-floor, he killed six more.

The jurors also heard testimony from English teacher Dara Hass, who had three students killed and several wounded in her classroom when Cruz fired through a window in the door.

"The sound was so loud. The students were screaming," said Hass, who wept and dabbed her eyes with tissue as she testified. She thought it might be a drill, but then she spotted the body of 14-year-old Alex Schachter, who had been fatally shot at his desk.

"That's when I saw it wasn't a drill," she said. Two 14-year-old girls also died in the classroom: Alaina Petty and Alyssa Alhadeff.

When police arrived and evacuated her students, Hass said she did not want to leave but officers convinced her.

"I wanted to stay with the students who couldn't go," she said, referring to Schachter, Petty and Alhadeff.

One student in her class, Alexander Dworet, said he originally thought the loud bangs were the school's marching band, but then he felt a "hot sensation" on the back of his head where he had been grazed by a bullet and "I realized I was in danger."

Dworet's 17-year-old brother, Nick, was across the hall in his Holocaust studies class. Cruz fired into that classroom, too, killing him.

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Jury selection

The jurors currently on the main panel are two banking executives and two technology workers, a probation officer, a human resources professional and a Walmart store stock supervisor. Also included are a librarian, a medical claims adjuster, a legal assistant, a customs officer and a retired insurance executive.

The jury selection was filled with setbacks and possible mistrials over the questioning of possible jurors and COVID-19 cases on the defense.

The defense asked to delay the trial because of the recent school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, that left 21 dead. McNeill’s team argued that the shooting has again raised emotions in Broward County and makes it impossible for Cruz to get a fair trial currently.

Many of the possible jurors were not able to hold seat because of the time commitment for the lengthy process.

Full Recap: Jury sworn in to sentencing trial for Parkland high school shooter

Pleading guilty to all charges

Cruz pleaded guilty in October 2021 to 17 counts of murder and 17 counts of attempted murder in the deadly shooting.

Legal analysts said Cruz’s plan to plead guilty to all charges in the Parkland shooting — along with the guilty plea in a battery on a jail guard charge — is a calculated move by his attorneys for him to avoid the death penalty.

Video below: Cruz pleads guilty in court

By pleading guilty to killing 17 people and attempting to kill 17 more in 2018, legal experts said Cruz is hoping to convince the jury that he is taking some responsibility for his actions.

"He’s trying to save his life, and the only way to do that is to take responsibility and not put all these poor people through a trial," criminal defense attorney Marc Shiner said.

Death penalty trials in Florida and much of the country often take two years to start because of their complexity, but Cruz's was further delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic and extensive legal wrangling.

If Cruz is sentenced to death, that will still not be the end of the process. Death sentences in Florida are given automatic priority review by the Florida Supreme Court.

Trial preparations

Trial preparations were extensive for what was expected to be the biggest murder trial in Broward County history for one of the most infamous crimes in Florida history.

Cruz was arrested about an hour after the attack with an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle on Valentine's Day 2018.

Video below: Body camera of arrest of Nikolas Cruz released

His lawyers repeatedly offered to plead guilty in return for a guaranteed sentence of life in prison, but prosecutors refused to drop their pursuit of the death penalty.

Video below: Cruz interrogation video released

Much of the penalty phase is expected to focus on Cruz’s mental condition at the time of the slayings, with prosecutors emphasizing their horrific nature and Cruz’s intensive planning beforehand.

Victims of the Parkland school shooting

Seventeen students and staff were killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14, 2018. Seventeen others were injured.

Can't see the graphic? Click here.

Settlement with Broward School District

The Broward County School District will pay more than $26 million to the families of the victims.

Board members approved the two legal settlements on in December 2021.

A total of $25 million will be shared by 51 plaintiffs, including families of the 17 dead as well as students and staff who were injured. Another $1.25 million will be paid in one lump sum to Anthony Borges, who suffered some of the most severe injuries.

Video below: Nikolas Cruz outlines shooting plan in video recording

Four years after shooting

For many families, they said there will never be closure for the loss of their loved ones.

Students and families turned into activists.

'I still can't believe this is my reality': Parkland parent creates way to track school violence after son is killed in school shooting

Jim Gard, a math teacher that day, said they were all victims.

"These kids that were in the class, just because they weren't hit doesn't mean they weren’t hit," he said.

And since that day, so many of those victims have refused to just sit back and do nothing. In the days following the shooting, a movement called March For Our Lives was born.

David Hogg was one of the founders.

"When we started doing the march, we thought there would be about 90 people that we could get up to D.C.," Hogg said. "We got near a million."

Video below: Father of Parkland victim hangs banner in view of White House four years after shooting

Four years later, March For Our Lives is still going strong with chapters across the country.

They’ve helped pass state laws designed to keep guns away from violent offenders. They’ve worked to get more federal funding to control gun violence.

'I have to accomplish her dream': Hunter Pollack changes career path after sister is murdered in Parkland massacre

It's become a full-time job nobody wants.

"We want our job to be done so we can go back to being college students or high school students and young people and young professionals," Hogg said.

When they watched the Parkland shooter plead guilty to the murders he committed, both Hogg and Gard are pleased to see this chapter end.

Video below: School safety changes made following Parkland school shooting

They just ask you not to call it closure.

"It's the parents of the kids, the parents who lost their children, I don’t know if there can ever be closure on that," Gard said. "I know for a lot of the people that I talked to, families that I talked to, there is not closure that can come. There’s nothing that will ever bring their kids back, their siblings back, their best friends back."

If you or someone you know needs help with mental health, call 211 or the National Suicide Hotline at 988.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz walked casually into a sandwich shop minutes after he murdered 14 students and three staff members at Parkland's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School four years ago, showing no signs of stress or nervousness, video played at his penalty trial Thursday showed.

Cruz then walked to a nearby McDonald's, where, by coincidence, he unsuccessfully sought a ride from the brother of a girl he had seriously wounded. The boy did not know who Cruz was.

Thursday's abbreviated court session focused on Cruz's attempted escape after the Feb. 14, 2018, shooting and his arrest, about an hour after he fled the campus. The mostly low-key testimony and evidence stood in contrast with the previous three emotional days, which covered the seven minutes Cruz stalked a three-story classroom building firing his AR-15 semi-automatic rifle into crowded classrooms and hallways.

After the shooting, Cruz fled the building, dressed in a burgundy shirt from the Stoneman Douglas Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps — he had been a member when he attended the school — and a New York City Police Department cap.

The former Stoneman Douglas student blended in with students who were evacuating campus and went to a nearby Walmart, where security video shows that 25 minutes after he stopped shooting, he turned into the Subway sandwich shop inside the entrance.

Store manager Carlos Rugeles testified that Cruz ordered a cherry and blue raspberry Icee. The video shows that when Cruz got his drink and change, he tossed the coins into the tip jar, stuck a straw into the lid and walked out.

Eight minutes later, Cruz entered a nearby McDonald's, still drinking his Icee, store video shows. He climbed into a booth with then-Stoneman Douglas freshman John Wilford, who did not know him.

Wilford testified that he didn't know exactly what had happened at the school, but after evacuating, he had been trying to call his older sister Maddy — he didn't know she had been seriously wounded by this stranger. When he couldn't reach her, he called his mom, who said she would pick him up.

He then tried to make small talk with Cruz.

"I told him, 'This is so chaotic, it's crazy with all these helicopters and squad cars. What do you think this could be?'" Wilford recalled. "He didn't say much. He had his head down."

A minute later, Wilford went to meet his mother in the parking lot. Cruz followed and asked for a ride, but Wilford said no.

"He was pretty insistent on it. I wasn't really thinking much of it. I just wanted to get home and my sister wasn't answering her phone," Wilford said.

Cruz walked away. He was arrested about a half-hour later by Michael Leonard, an officer with the neighboring Coconut Creek Police Department. Leonard testified he was driving through neighborhoods looking for anyone matching the shooter's description.

The officer was 3 miles from the school and about to drive back toward it when he spotted Cruz walking on a residential street. He said he stopped and Cruz looked at him. He pulled his gun and ordered Cruz to the ground. Cruz complied.

A search found $350 in Cruz's pocket.

Cruz, 23, pleaded guilty in October to 17 counts of first-degree murder. The jury must only decide if he should be sentenced to death or life without parole for the nation's deadliest mass shooting to go before a jury.

Nine other gunmen who killed at least 17 people died during or immediately after their shootings, either by suicide or police gunfire. The suspect in the 2019 slaying of 23 people at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, is awaiting trial.

When jurors eventually get the case, probably in October or November, they will vote 17 times, once for each of the victims, on whether to recommend capital punishment.

For each death sentence, the jury must be unanimous or the sentence for that victim is life. The jurors are told that to vote for death, the prosecution's aggravating circumstances for that victim must, in their judgment, "outweigh" the defense's mitigators. A juror can also vote for life out of mercy for Cruz. During jury selection, the panelists said under oath that they are capable of voting for either sentence.

---

Jury selection

The jurors currently on the main panel are two banking executives and two technology workers, a probation officer, a human resources professional and a Walmart store stock supervisor. Also included are a librarian, a medical claims adjuster, a legal assistant, a customs officer and a retired insurance executive.

The jury selection was filled with setbacks and possible mistrials over the questioning of possible jurors and COVID-19 cases on the defense.

The defense asked to delay the trial because of the recent school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, that left 21 dead. McNeill’s team argued that the shooting has again raised emotions in Broward County and makes it impossible for Cruz to get a fair trial currently.

Many of the possible jurors were not able to hold seat because of the time commitment for the lengthy process.

Full Recap: Jury sworn in to sentencing trial for Parkland high school shooter

Pleading guilty to all charges

Cruz pleaded guilty in October 2021 to 17 counts of murder and 17 counts of attempted murder in the deadly shooting.

Legal analysts said Cruz’s plan to plead guilty to all charges in the Parkland shooting — along with the guilty plea in a battery on a jail guard charge — is a calculated move by his attorneys for him to avoid the death penalty.

Video below: Cruz pleads guilty in court

By pleading guilty to killing 17 people and attempting to kill 17 more in 2018, legal experts said Cruz is hoping to convince the jury that he is taking some responsibility for his actions.

"He’s trying to save his life, and the only way to do that is to take responsibility and not put all these poor people through a trial," criminal defense attorney Marc Shiner said.

Death penalty trials in Florida and much of the country often take two years to start because of their complexity, but Cruz's was further delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic and extensive legal wrangling.

If Cruz is sentenced to death, that will still not be the end of the process. Death sentences in Florida are given automatic priority review by the Florida Supreme Court.

Trial preparations

Trial preparations were extensive for what was expected to be the biggest murder trial in Broward County history for one of the most infamous crimes in Florida history.

Cruz was arrested about an hour after the attack with an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle on Valentine's Day 2018.

Video below: Body camera of arrest of Nikolas Cruz released

His lawyers repeatedly offered to plead guilty in return for a guaranteed sentence of life in prison, but prosecutors refused to drop their pursuit of the death penalty.

Video below: Cruz interrogation video released

Much of the penalty phase is expected to focus on Cruz’s mental condition at the time of the slayings, with prosecutors emphasizing their horrific nature and Cruz’s intensive planning beforehand.

Victims of the Parkland school shooting

Seventeen students and staff were killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14, 2018. Seventeen others were injured.

Can't see the graphic? Click here.

Settlement with Broward School District

The Broward County School District will pay more than $26 million to the families of the victims.

Board members approved the two legal settlements on in December 2021.

A total of $25 million will be shared by 51 plaintiffs, including families of the 17 dead as well as students and staff who were injured. Another $1.25 million will be paid in one lump sum to Anthony Borges, who suffered some of the most severe injuries.

Video below: Nikolas Cruz outlines shooting plan in video recording

Four years after shooting

For many families, they said there will never be closure for the loss of their loved ones.

Students and families turned into activists.

'I still can't believe this is my reality': Parkland parent creates way to track school violence after son is killed in school shooting

Jim Gard, a math teacher that day, said they were all victims.

"These kids that were in the class, just because they weren't hit doesn't mean they weren’t hit," he said.

And since that day, so many of those victims have refused to just sit back and do nothing. In the days following the shooting, a movement called March For Our Lives was born.

David Hogg was one of the founders.

"When we started doing the march, we thought there would be about 90 people that we could get up to D.C.," Hogg said. "We got near a million."

Video below: Father of Parkland victim hangs banner in view of White House four years after shooting

Four years later, March For Our Lives is still going strong with chapters across the country.

They’ve helped pass state laws designed to keep guns away from violent offenders. They’ve worked to get more federal funding to control gun violence.

'I have to accomplish her dream': Hunter Pollack changes career path after sister is murdered in Parkland massacre

It's become a full-time job nobody wants.

"We want our job to be done so we can go back to being college students or high school students and young people and young professionals," Hogg said.

When they watched the Parkland shooter plead guilty to the murders he committed, both Hogg and Gard are pleased to see this chapter end.

Video below: School safety changes made following Parkland school shooting

They just ask you not to call it closure.

"It's the parents of the kids, the parents who lost their children, I don’t know if there can ever be closure on that," Gard said. "I know for a lot of the people that I talked to, families that I talked to, there is not closure that can come. There’s nothing that will ever bring their kids back, their siblings back, their best friends back."

If you or someone you know needs help with mental health, call 211 or the National Suicide Hotline at 988.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla. — The Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board voted 3-1 to recommend clemency for Julius Jones in a hearing on Monday.

They also recommended Jones’s sentence be commuted to life in prison with the possibility of parole. The issue will now go to Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt for his decision.

“Governor Stitt is aware of the Pardon and Parole Board’s vote today," Stitt's office said in a statement to KJRH on Monday.

"Our office will not offer further comment until the Governor has made a final decision,” the governor's office added.

Jones is currently serving time and has been sentenced to death for the 1999 killing of an Edmond man, Paul Howell. Over the two decades since his sentencing, Jones and his supporters have long advocated that he is innocent.

In September, with three out of five votes, the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board voted to approve a recommendation to commute the death sentence for Jones. Approval of commutation would downgrade Jones's sentence to life in prison.

However, despite the board's vote, Jones was set an execution date in the month of November. Attorneys for Jones filed objections saying that setting an execution date is "inappropriate" without a decision from the governor.

Stitt has since stated that he won't make a decision on commuting Jones's death sentence until after a clemency hearing is held.

According to the Associated Press, inmates on death row, including Jones, had their execution dates put on hold after a botched lethal injection left an inmate writing in pain on a gurney in 2014 and a mix-up in drugs in 2015.

After a six-year hiatus, the Oklahoma Department of Corrections announced in October they would continue with executions in the state. But many are questioning the agency's execution process when John Marion Grant "convulsed" and vomited after receiving the first lethal injection drug on Oct. 28.

This story was originally published by Emily Farris at KJRH.

DENVER (AP) — A former high school student convicted of killing a teenager and injuring eight others at a Denver-area school in 2019 has been sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Devon Erickson was sentenced Friday after victims and families gave emotional testimony about the lasting trauma from the shooting at STEM School Highlands Ranch.

Erickson, now 20, was convicted of partnering with another student in the attack on a classroom of high school seniors watching a movie.

Because he was 18 at the time of the shooting, Erickson faced a mandatory sentence.

One former student who helped stop the attack said Erickson killed their classmate and “didn’t care.”