Missouri has paid state exe­cu­tion­ers $284,551.84 in cash since November 2013, with­out pro­vid­ing noti­fi­ca­tion of the pay­ments to tax author­i­ties, accord­ing to a BuzzFeed News inves­ti­ga­tion. The pay­ments, most­ly in envelopes filled with $100 bills, were intend­ed to keep the iden­ti­ties of exe­cu­tion team mem­bers hid­den from the pub­lic by lim­it­ing the paper trail. However, Missouri’s Department of Corrections failed to file 1099 forms with the IRS for the cash pay­ments, poten­tial­ly con­tribut­ing to tax eva­sion and vio­lat­ing fed­er­al tax law that requires issuance of 1099s for con­trac­tor pay­ments of $600 or more. George Lombardi, direc­tor of the Department of Corrections, con­firmed that Missouri paid exe­cu­tion team mem­bers in cash with­out issu­ing 1099s, but defend­ed the prac­tice to the Missouri leg­is­la­ture, say­ing, ​“It is my under­stand­ing that giv­ing 1099s to these indi­vid­u­als would reveal who they were, and would mean the end of the death penal­ty, because these indi­vid­u­als wouldn’t do it.” A February 2015 audit by the Missouri Auditor’s Office found that prison offi­cials also failed to com­ply with state admin­is­tra­tive pro­ce­dures con­cern­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion of the pay­ments. The audi­tors report­ed that “[t]he DOC did not record the amount of the cash pay­ments on receipt forms signed by exe­cu­tion team mem­bers and did not always require the exchange of the cash pay­ments to be acknowl­edged by a wit­ness sig­na­ture, as required by DOC pro­ce­dures.” Discrepancies in state doc­u­men­ta­tion of the pay­ments con­tin­ued even after the audit, as some state forms — called ​“con­fi­den­tial exe­cu­tion team mem­ber receipts” — were left entire­ly blank, oth­ers lacked a wit­ness sig­na­ture, and many of the wit­ness­es signed the receipts on dif­fer­ent days than did the prison employ­ee who is believed to have deliv­ered the cash envelopes. BuzzFeed found evi­dence that Arizona and Oklahoma also make cash pay­ments to exe­cu­tion­ers in the inter­est of con­ceal­ing their iden­ti­ties, but Arizona has sup­plied the appro­pri­ate tax forms and Oklahoma’s pay­ments may be below the thresh­old required for issuing 1099s.

(C. McDaniel, ​“Missouri Paid Executioners $250,000 In Cash, Possibly Violating Tax Law,” BuzzFeed News, January 28, 2016; C. McDaniel, ​“Missouri Corrections Head Defends Cash Payments Before State Legislature,” BuzzFeed News, February 1, 2016.) See Lethal Injection.

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