The Marshall Project Analysis Finds Missouri Executes at One of the Nation’s Highest Rates

Missouri has car­ried out exe­cu­tions at one of the high­est rates of any state since the U.S. Supreme Court allowed cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment to resume 50 years ago, accord­ing to a new analy­sis of death sen­tences issued between 1972 and 2025. The Marshall Project, draw­ing on data com­piled by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Professor Frank Baumgartner and the Death Penalty Information Center, found that Missouri has exe­cut­ed more than half of the peo­ple it has sen­tenced to death. Nationally, about 18% of death sen­tences have end­ed in exe­cu­tion. Among states that have sen­tenced at least 10 peo­ple to death, Missouri’s rate of exe­cu­tions trails only Virginia, which abol­ished the death penal­ty in 2021.

Vincent McFadden, who has spent more than two decades on Missouri’s death row while con­tin­u­ing to chal­lenge his con­vic­tion in fed­er­al court, told The Marshall Project that state offi­cials have been will­ing to defend con­vic­tions even when prob­lems with a case are appar­ent, adding that, ​“Missouri has a lot they need to grow out of and a lot they need to grow in.” Mr. McFadden and oth­er crit­ics of the death penal­ty point to recur­ring issues in Missouri’s cap­i­tal cas­es: racial dis­par­i­ties in jury selec­tion, incon­sis­tent deci­sions by pros­e­cu­tors about when to seek death, and what they describe as turn­ing ​“a blind eye” to fac­tors like a ​“defendant’s mental capacity.”

Even though Missouri has car­ried out exe­cu­tions at a high rate rel­a­tive to oth­er states, the num­ber of new death sen­tences imposed in the state has been falling since the 1990s, mir­ror­ing the larg­er nation­al trend. Missouri’s death row peaked at 96 peo­ple in the late 1990s and has fall­en to nine peo­ple. Nationally, about 41% of death sen­tences have ulti­mate­ly been reduced to life or anoth­er less­er sen­tence through suc­cess­ful appeals. In Missouri, that fig­ure is 28%. Of Missouri’s 198 death sen­tences, 41 came from St. Louis County, many of which were secured dur­ing the 28-year tenure of for­mer pros­e­cu­tor Bob McCulloch, whose office faced repeat­ed alle­ga­tions of racial bias in jury selec­tion. A 2022 study from Professor Baumgartner found that, under DA McCulloch, cas­es involv­ing white vic­tims were 3.5 times more like­ly to result in a death sen­tence than cas­es involv­ing Black victims. 

Mr. McFadden and two oth­er men sen­tenced to death in St. Louis County — Kevin Johnson and Marcellus ​“Khaliifah” Williams — unsuc­cess­ful­ly raised claims that pros­e­cu­tors in DA McCulloch’s office exclud­ed prospec­tive jurors because of their race, vio­lat­ing the U.S. Supreme Court’s rul­ing in Batson v. Kentucky (1986). State offi­cials in the prosecutor’s office lat­er acknowl­edged a broad­er pat­tern of racial dis­crim­i­na­tion in jury selec­tion in both cap­i­tal and non-cap­i­tal tri­als. Mr. Johnson was exe­cut­ed in 2022; Mr. Williams was exe­cut­ed in 2024. Mr. McFadden’s death sen­tences have twice been over­turned and he was twice recon­vict­ed. In 2007, Missouri Supreme Court Judge Stephen N. Limbaugh Jr. remarked on the recur­ring absence of Black jurors in Mr. McFadden’s case, stat­ing, ​“It’s dis­ap­point­ing that there’s no African Americans on the jury, again, in St. Louis County. That’s trou­ble­some.” Fellow Judge Michael A. Wolff replied, stat­ing, ​“An awful lot of our Batson cas­es come from there.” Federal pub­lic defend­er Larry Komp, who has rep­re­sent­ed both Mr. McFadden and Mr. Williams, not­ed the ​“obvi­ous” pat­tern of strik­ing Black jurors in St. Louis County, telling The Marshall Project that ​“the Missouri record on this is not some­thing to be proud of.”

In March 2026, Missouri law­mak­ers held a floor debate on a bill that would abol­ish the death penal­ty, spon­sored by Republican Representative Jim Murphy of St. Louis County. Rep. Murphy, who once sup­port­ed the death penal­ty, said he changed his posi­tion after hear­ing from a con­stituent whose par­ents were mur­dered; the years of appeals in that case, his con­stituent told him, left him wish­ing pros­e­cu­tors had sought a life sen­tence. ​“It’s just not con­sis­tent and we make mis­takes, we make mis­takes over and over again,” he said. Matthew Crowell, direc­tor of the Missouri State Public Defender sys­tem, tes­ti­fied that cap­i­tal cas­es, which account­ed for 11 of his office’s more than 91,000 cas­es at the time, require spe­cial­ized divi­sions cost­ing $2.5 mil­lion a year in salaries alone, with total case costs rang­ing between $1 mil­lion and $4 mil­lion. Rep. Murphy’s bill ulti­mate­ly failed to move out of the Senate. Other Republican law­mak­ers pushed unsuc­cess­ful­ly to expand death-eli­gi­ble crimes to include rape of a child, or to short­en the appeals process.