Missouri inmate asks for appeals as execution nears
ST. LOUIS -- A Missouri inmate who abducted and killed a 19-year-old woman in 2001 is asking state and federal appeals courts to spare him from execution.
Attorneys for 55-year-old David Zink has appeals pending Monday with the Missouri Supreme Court, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and the U.S. Supreme Court. A clemency request was also in Governor Jay Nixon's hands.
Zink is scheduled to face lethal injection Tuesday.
He was sentenced to death in 2004 after being convicted of tying Amanda Morton of Strafford to a cemetery tree and snapping her neck before slicing her spinal cord to make sure she would not survive.
Zink served as his own attorney at trial but was assisted by a public defender during the trial's punishment phase.