ST. LOUIS (AP) 鈥� A Missouri man facing the death penalty for sexually assaulting and killing a child was a frequent victim of physical and sexual abuse in his youth and has a 鈥渟tructurally abnormal鈥� brain that impairs his judgment, according to a clemency petition filed on his behalf.
, 49, is scheduled to die by an injection of pentobarbital Tuesday evening at the state prison in Bonne Terre. It would be the 23rd execution in the U.S. this year and the fourth in Missouri.
Collings was convicted of killing 9-year-old Rowan Ford, a fourth-grader from the tiny southwestern Missouri town of Stella, on Nov. 3, 2007. Her body was found in a sinkhole six days later. She had been strangled. Collings confessed to the crimes.
Republican Gov. Mike Parson was still weighing the clemency petition on Monday, but history is not on Collings' side: Parson, a former county sheriff, has overseen 12 executions and has never granted clemency.
Collings' attorney, Jeremy Weis, said another appeal is pending before the U.S. Supreme Court, but various courts have rejected several of his previous appeals.
The clemency petition states that the abnormality of Collings鈥� brain causes him to suffer from 鈥渇unctional deficits in awareness, judgment and deliberation, comportment, appropriate social inhibition, and emotional regulation.鈥� It also notes that he suffered from frequent and often violent abuse as a child.
鈥淭he result was a damaged human being with no guidance on how to grow into a functioning adult,鈥� the petition states.
The petition also challenges the fairness of executing Collings when another man charged in the crime, Rowan's stepfather, David Spears, also confessed but was allowed to plead to lesser crimes. Spears served more than seven years in prison before his release in 2015.
Collings told authorities that he drank heavily and smoked marijuana with Spears and another man in the hours before the attack on Rowan, according to court records. Collings said he picked up the sleeping child from a home and took her to the camper where he lived, where he assaulted her. He said he strangled the child with a rope when he realized she recognized him.
Collings told investigators that he took the girl's body to a sinkhole. He burned the rope used in the attack, along with the clothes he was wearing and his blood-stained mattress, prosecutors said.
Spears also implicated himself in the crimes, according to court documents and the clemency petition. A transcript of Spears鈥� statement to police, cited in the petition, said he told police that Collings handed him a cord and that he killed Rowan.
鈥淚 choke her with it. I realize she鈥檚 gone. She鈥檚 ... she鈥檚 really gone,鈥� Spears said, according to the transcript. It was Spears who led authorities to the sinkhole where her body was found, according to court documents.
No phone listing could be found for Spears.
The clemency petition and the Supreme Court appeal both challenge the reliability of the key law enforcement witness at Collings' trial, a police chief from a neighboring town who had four AWOL convictions while serving in the Army. Failure to disclose details about that criminal history at trial violated Collings鈥� right to due process, Weis contends.
鈥淗is credibility was really at the heart of the entire case against Mr. Collings," Weis said in an interview.
Three men have been executed in Missouri this year 鈥� on April 9, on June 11 and on Sept. 24. Only Alabama, with six, and Texas, with five, have performed more executions than Missouri in 2024.
Jim Salter, The Associated Press
