A death row inmate who died by lethal injection on Tuesday evening penned a chilling final statement before his execution.
Michael Tisius's execution went ahead on Tuesday (June 6) despite several former jurors saying they hoped his sentence would be commuted to life imprisonment.
The double murder convict fatally shot two jail guards – Leon Egley and Jason Acton – on June 22, 2000, during a botched plot to free his former cellmate.
The 42-year-old – who was 19 at the time of his crime – was said to have been neglected as a child and was homeless by the time he was in his early teenage years, KCTV5 reports.
The jury spent hours deliberating in July 2010 when asked to sentence Tisius for the murders. Ultimately, they decided on the death penalty.
More recently, six jurors, including two alternates, gave sworn affidavits saying they would either support or decline to oppose if Tisius' sentence was commuted to life in prison.
However, Tisius's execution ultimately took place on the scheduled date.
Per The Mirror, he shared in his final statement: "I am holding tightly to my faith. It’s all I have to take with me. I am sorry it had to come to this in this way. I wish I could have made things right while I was still here.
"I really did try to become a better man. I really tried hard to give as much as I could to as many as I could. I tried to forgive others as I wish to be forgiven. And I pray that God will forgive those who condemn me.
"Just as He forgave those who condemned Him. I am sorry. And not because I am at the end. But because I truly am sorry. And I need to say that I love you Truffle. Seacrest Out!"
"I feel angry and remorseful," former juror Jason Smith told The New York Times ahead of Tisius's execution. "I feel that I wronged Michael. I hated having a part in somebody dying."
Another former juror revealed that during the time of the 2010 death sentence, he was unable to read English – a requirement for jury duty in the state of Missouri. A federal court stayed Tisius' execution so that an investigation into the claim could be carried out, but an appeals court overruled that decision last week.
Tisius' lawyers are arguing that because Tisius was a teenager at the time of the murders, his brain was not yet fully developed and he was more susceptible to manipulation.
Roy Vance – the former cellmate who Tisius tried to free at the time of the killings – once bragged that the death row inmate was a "a kid in a grown man’s body and I knew I could manipulate him into what I wanted him to do," per the Kansas City Star.
In June 2000, Tisius was sent to the Randolph County Jail to serve a 30-day probation violation sentence for theft. He had previously met his cellmate, 27-year-old Roy Vance, through mutual friends. Vance was facing a 50-year sentence at the time.
