FEMALE JURY CHOOSES DEATH PENALTY FOR CONVICT

Michael Owsley jammed the barrel of a sawed-off shotgun against the
teen-age drug dealer's head and pulled the trigger.

"Nobody cares anyway," Owsley later told his accomplice.

Owsley didn't count on retribution from an all-female jury -- which his
defense attorney had chosen in the hope that women would be less likely to
recommend the death penalty in the gruesome murder.

The ploy backfired. On Oct. 28, 1994, the panel became the first all-female
jury in Missouri history to send a convict to death, experts said.

Owsley, 40, of Kansas City, is scheduled to be executed Wednesday morning
in Potosi for the murder of Elvin Iverson, 18.

His current attorney, George Winger, has filed a petition asking Gov. Bob
Holden to commute Owsley's sentence to life imprisonment. Holden is
considering the request, his spokesman said.

Iverson's killing climaxed an evening of torture in an east Kansas City
home on April 19, 1993.

Owsley and his accomplice, Marion Hamilton, had gone there to demand more
than $5,000 in drug money they thought Iverson had. Each brandishing a gun,
they tied up Iverson and a female companion, Ellen Cole.

Owsley beat and kicked Iverson, and put a black garbage bag over his head,
demanding to know where the money was, Cole told the jury.

When Iverson, in tears, kept saying he didn't know where the money was,
Owsley shot him, using a pillow to muffle the shotgun blast.

Cole, in a bid to save her own life, lied to her captors and said she knew
where the money was. They took her in a car to get it. Cole escaped by
jumping out of the moving vehicle, and called police.

Owsley's defense attorney portrayed the shooting as an accident. He also
tried to play on the jurors' notions of compassion in the penalty phase of
the trial.

"There's been enough blood in this case, my God," defense attorney James L.
McMullin told the jury as he begged them, teary-eyed, to spare Owsley. "He
killed a drug dealer who was selling drugs and poisoning our society."

The jury deliberated about six hours before returning the recommendation of
death. Owsley also was sentenced to 15 years for kidnapping and 15 years
for armed criminal action.

Hamilton is serving a 20-year sentence for second-degree murder.

Capital punishment opponents point to that sentencing disparity in
condemning Owsley's pending execution. They also say that Owsley's abusive
childhood should have been a part of his defense.

"Jurors never would have sentenced Michael to death if they had been shown
the entire picture," said Steven W. Hawkins, executive director of the
National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.

Scott Holste, spokesman for Attorney General Jay Nixon, disputed that
sentiment.

"Michael Owsley is a cold-blooded killer," Holste said. "The jury rightly
found he should be executed for the crime."