MISSOURI. STANLEY HALL EXECUTED

Stanley Hall, a man convicted of throwing a woman to her death off a Mississippi River bridge, was executed by the state of Missouri. Hall, 37, was pronounced dead at 12:06 a.m. following an injection of lethal chemicals at the Potosi Correctional Center.
It was the 12th execution in the United States this year and the 956th since the country brought back capital punishment in 1976.
Hall was convicted of the January 1994 killing of Barbara Jo Wood, 44, who he kidnapped at gunpoint in a shopping mall parking lot as she arrived for work. Hall and an accomplice went to the mall to steal a car to use in a planned revenge attack on a rival. The courts rejected Hall's final appeals that he was ineligible for the death penalty because he was mentally retarded based on 30-year-old intelligence test scores. More recent tests showed he scored above the threshold, prosecutors said.