Execution Stay Granted For Missouri Inmate With Rare Illness

ST. LOUIS, MO — The U.S. Supreme Court voted 5-4 to grant a stay of execution for a Missouri inmate scheduled to die by lethal injection. The vote came hours before Russell Bucklew was scheduled to be executed at 6 p.m. Tuesday.

Bucklew, 49, was sentenced to death for the murder of his former girlfriend's new boyfriend in 1996. His attorneys had argued that execution would be "gruesome and painful" due to a rare medical condition that affects Bucklew's veins and has caused him to develop numerous tumors on his head and throat, including a grape-size tumor on his lip.

Bucklew received a similar last-minute reprieve from the Supreme Court in 2014 amid concerns over cavernous hemangioma, an illness causing weakened and malformed blood vessels and blood-filled tumors in the nose and throat.

Attorneys for Bucklew say that due to the illness, the execution by lethal injection could cause blood-filled tumors in his head to burst.

More than 20 years ago, Bucklew shot and killed Michael Sanders, suspecting that he was the new boyfriend of Bucklew's former girlfriend. After killing Sanders in front of his then-6-year-old son, he fired the weapon at the child but missed, according to the Kansas City Star. The Southeast Missourian reported that Sanders' 4-year-old son was also present at the time of the murder. Bucklew then handcuffed his former girlfriend and dragged her to a car before raping her. Bucklew was reportedly arrested in St. Louis but later escaped from the Cape Girardeau County jail and attacked his ex-girlfriend's mother and the mother's boyfriend with a hammer before he was recaptured.

He was convicted of Sanders' murder in 1997.

The Associated Press contributed to this article.

Photo of Russell Bucklew via the Missouri Department of Corrections