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| - The US state of Missouri is set to execute a death row inmate by lethal injection on Tuesday, the first execution in the United States after a two-and-a-half-month hiatus because of the coronavirus pandemic. Walter Barton, 64, was convicted in 2006 of the 1991 murder of Gladys Kuehler, an 81-year-old woman who was stabbed to death in Ozark, Missouri. Barton, who maintains his innocence, was one of three people who discovered Kuehler's body at the trailer park which she operated. The main evidence against him were bloodstains found on his clothes and the testimony of a jailhouse informant. Barton is to be executed on Tuesday evening at a prison in Bonne Terre, Missouri, in what would be the first execution in the US since March 5. Executions have been postponed in Ohio, Texas and Tennessee because of virus concerns related to large gatherings. A Missouri Department of Corrections spokeswoman said that everyone entering the prison has their temperature checked and there have been no COVID-19 cases among staff or inmates at the facility. She said there were three separate viewing areas for execution witnesses and they would be divided among the rooms to allow social distancing. Barton's lawyers have sought to delay his execution but their appeals have been denied by the courts and Missouri Governor Mike Parson. Opponents of the death penalty have proclaimed his innocence. "Walter is likely innocent," a group called Missourians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty said in a tweet. "Peoples health and safety will be put at risk, just to make a spectacle." In a last-ditch bid to stop the execution, Barton's lawyers have appealed to the US Supreme Court, citing concerns about the evidence against him and other grounds. They pointed out that his first trial ended in a mistrial, the second in a hung jury and convictions in the next two were overturned. Barton was finally convicted and sentenced to death at a fifth trial in 2006. Michael Wolff, a former chief justice of the Missouri Supreme Court, was among those expressing doubts about Barton's guilt. Writing in the St Louis-Post Dispatch, Wolff said the blood spatter evidence against Barton was "utterly inconclusive" and the jailhouse informant's testimony "strains credulity." "Before Missouri moves forward with Barton's execution, (Governor) Parson should exercise his authority to convene an independent board of inquiry to determine whether the judiciary has ordered the execution of an innocent man," Wolff said. chp/cl/dw
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