Impending Skillicorn execution subject of New York Times article

Lawyers for convicted killer Dennis Skillicorn have appealed his case to the U. S. Supreme Court, according to an article in today's New York Times.

The nation's highest court has already rejected a Skillicorn appeal.

The Times article again concentrates on Skillicorn, almost to the exclusion of his victim, Excelsior Springs businessman Richard Drummond. The article includes this passage about Skillicorn:

People here are deeply split over Mr. Skillicorn. His supporters say that while he participated in robbing Mr. Drummond and was convicted of murder, another man (now also awaiting execution) was the one who fired the gun that killed Mr. Drummond. They point to Mr. Skillicorn’s work in prison leading a hospice program, editing a magazine for death row inmates, and, in the view of even some prison workers, helping to create a calmer, safer atmosphere behind bars.

“He is not the one who actually killed the person, and that just says to me: ‘Whoa! Let’s take a step back,’ ” said State Representative Steven Tilley, the Republican leader. “Look, I’m not soft on crime, but we can’t redo this once we’ve executed this person,” Mr. Tilley said, adding that he has been a supporter of the death penalty, but fears it is flawed as it is being carried out.

One difference in the Times article, as compared to those which have been published by the Kansas City Star, is it offers coverage of those who favor Skillicorn's execution:

But State Representative Bob Nance of Excelsior Springs, the community not far from Kansas City where Mr. Drummond had lived, said Mr. Skillicorn “should hardly be held up as a poster child for what’s wrong with the death penalty.”

Mr. Skillicorn was implicated for his involvement in other murders — though never, he says, as the gunman. He was convicted of second-degree murder in a 1979 burglary with accomplices in which a farmer was killed. And in the days after Mr. Drummond’s death, he and his accomplice went on a cross- country spree and, the authorities say, his accomplice shot and killed an Arizona couple. Mr. Skillicorn pleaded guilty to murder in that case.

“When we look back on our lives, it is the sum of all the stories,” Mr. Nance said, “and frankly, it’s hard to believe someone would be at the wrong place at the wrong time so many different times.”