A former US soldier sentenced to death for the 2009 murder of a woman with whom he had an affair was executed Tuesday in Missouri, in the central United States. David Hosier, 69, was executed by lethal injection and pronounced dead at 6:11 p.m. local time.
This is the second execution since the start of the year in Missouri and the seventh in the United States, in addition to the one canceled at the last minute on February 28 in Idaho (northwest), due to failure to administer to the condemned the lethal solution within the legal time limit.
David Hosier, a former firefighter who served in the US Navy, was convicted in 2013 for the murder of Angela Gilpin, of which he always said he was innocent.
24 executions last year in the United States
The state’s Republican governor, Mike Parson, rejected final appeals for clemency, notably from Democratic lawmakers in Missouri, arguing that David Hosier was suffering from brain injuries at the time of the crime that the jury had not been aware of.
David “Hosier killed Angela and Rodney Gilpin in their Jefferson City, Mo., apartment during a fit of jealousy,” the governor said in a statement Monday, specifying that although he had not been convicted of the husband’s murder, the jury had considered him to be the perpetrator of both crimes. “No court has ever found an error in his conviction,” he added.
A total of 24 executions were carried out in the United States in 2023, all by lethal injection. The death penalty has been abolished in 23 out of 50 American states. Six others (Arizona, California, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee) observe a moratorium on executions by decision of the governor.
