The Latest on Missouri execution: State Supreme Court denies inmate’s appeal

This December 1, 2013 photo provided by the Missouri Department of Corrections shows David Zink, who was convicted of abducting and killing 19-year-old Amanda Morton in 2001.

Attorneys for 55-year-old David Zink say he has appeals pending Monday with Missouri Supreme Court, the U.S. Supreme Court and an appeals court.

The nation’s high court is still weighing Zink’s case, and Gov. Jay Nixon is reviewing Zink’s clemency request.

Zink is the named plaintiff in a lawsuit brought by a group of death row inmates in Missouri against state officials alleging its lethal-injection protocol is unconstitutional and creates a substantial risk of severe pain. Neither these AP materials nor any portion thereof may be stored in a computer except for personal and non-commercial use. He said his truck rear-ended Morton’s vehicle on an exit ramp. Zink had been released by authorities in Texas after serving 20 years of a 33-year sentence for kidnapping and raping a woman there.

Zink said he took her to a remote cemetery near the woods.

An autopsy later showed that Morton had eight broken ribs and 50 to 100 blunt-force injuries.

Zink also described killing Morton in a recent TV interview with Fox affiliate KTVI in St. Louis.

Phone and Facebook messages left Monday with Morton’s mother and sister were not immediately returned. He said he gave Morton no choice but to get in his truck, but that she willingly went with him after she was in the truck.

Zink said in his confessions that he took Morton to the cemetery and tied her to a tree.

He then buried her in a shallow grave. Zink said.

Anxious that Morton might regain consciousness, Zink admitted, he used a knife to sever her spinal cord at the neck and covered her body with leaves before retrieving from his home a shovel he used to bury her. The attorneys who now represent him argue that he should not have been allowed to represent himself. There also were several whispered conferences between those parties with the jury in the courtroom.