Missouri inmate executed for 1995 rape, murder of college student

BONNE TERRE, Mo. -- A Missouri man was put to death Wednesday for raping and killing a college student in 1995, in the first execution in the U.S. since one in Arizona last month in which an inmate took nearly two hours to die after getting a lethal injection.

The Missouri Department of Corrections said Michael Worthington was executed by lethal injection at the state prison south of St. Louis and was pronounced dead at 12:11 a.m., 10 minutes after the process began. He is the seventh Missouri inmate executed this year.

Worthington had been sentenced to death for the attack on 24-year-old Melinda "Mindy" Griffin during a burglary of her Lake St. Louis condominium.

Before the execution began, while strapped to a gurney and covered with a sheet, Worthington spoke with his witnesses - some of them his relatives - through the glass, raising his shaved head.

When the drugs began flowing, his head lowered back to the pillow and he appeared to breathe heavily for about 15 seconds before closing his eyes for good. Some of his witnesses began crying after he fell unconscious. A Bible had been placed on his chest at his request.

The U.S. Supreme Court and Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon had declined on Tuesday to block the execution.

Worthington, 43, had predicted that he would not be spared, insisting in a telephone interview with The Associated Press that he had accepted his fate.

"I figure I'll wake up in a better place tomorrow," Worthington, formerly of Peoria in central Illinois, had said Tuesday. "I'm just accepting of whatever's going to happen because I have no choice. The courts don't seem to care about what's right or wrong anymore."

In his final statement, just six sentences long, he offered no apologies, blamed his death on the politics of capital punishment and "revenge," and said, "I'll no longer have to suffer."

"May God forgive those who call this justice," his written statement read.

Griffin's mother watched Worthington die.

"I feel I'm glad he's dead," Carol Angelbeck, 76, told reporters while seated next to her husband, Jack. "I won't have to deal with him, with our legal system. It's just about Mindy now."

Jack said in a statement, "Tonight we watched the quiet, peaceful death of Worthington, who murdered our Mindy. His peaceful death was in stark contrast to the violent and painful death that Mindy suffered at his HANDS. ... After 18 long and painful years for our family and friends, we have reached justice. These 18 years were the longest roller coaster ride, with many ups and downs, but now it is time to get off the roller coaster and get on with the rest of our lives."

Worthington's attorneys had pressed the Supreme Court to put off his execution, citing the Arizona execution and two that were botched in Ohio and Oklahoma, as well as the secrecy involving the drugs used during the process in Missouri.

Those three executions in recent months have renewed the debate over lethal injection. In Arizona, the inmate gasped more than 600 times and took nearly two hours to die. In April, an Oklahoma inmate died of an apparent heart attack 43 minutes after his execution began. And in January, an Ohio inmate snorted and gasped for 26 minutes before dying. Most lethal injections take effect in a fraction of that time, often within 10 or 15 minutes.

Arizona, Oklahoma and Ohio all use midazolam, a drug more commonly given to help patients relax before surgery. In executions, it is part of a two- or three-drug lethal injection.

Texas and Missouri instead administer a single large dose of pentobarbital - often used to treat convulsions and seizures and to euthanize animals. Missouri changed to pentobarbital late last year and since has carried out executions during which inmates showed no obvious signs of distress.

Missouri and Texas have turned to compounding pharmacies to make versions of pentobarbital. But like most states, they refuse to name their drug suppliers, creating a shroud of secrecy that has prompted lawsuits.

In denying Worthington's clemency request, Nixon called Worthington's rape and killing of Griffin "horrific," noting that there "is no question about the brutality of this crime - or doubt of Michael Worthington's guilt."

Worthington was sentenced to death in 1998 after pleading guilty to Griffin's death, confessing that in September 1995 he cut open a window screen to break in to the college finance major's condominium in Lake St. Louis, just west of St. Louis. Worthington admitted he choked Griffin into submission and raped her before strangling her when she regained consciousness. He stole her car keys and jewelry, along with credit cards he used to buy drugs.

DNA tests later linked Worthington to the slaying.

Worthington, much as he did after his arrest, insisted to the AP on Tuesday from his holding cell near the death chamber that he couldn't remember details of the killing and that he was prone to blackouts due to alcohol and cocaine abuse. He said a life prison sentence would have been more appropriate for him.

"In 20 years, no one's seen or heard from me," he said. "If I'm the one who did it, what do they think life without parole is - a piece of cake?

When asked what he would say to Griffin's parents, Worthington directed his comments to her mother.

"If my life would bring her peace and bring Mindy back, I'd be fine with that. But it won't," he said. "It doesn't bring peace or closure. She's still going to have her broken heart."