Supreme Court won't halt the execution of Missouri man missing part of his brain

Late Tuesday, the Supreme Court denied a stay of execution to Cecil Clayton, a 74-year-old Missouri man convicted of the 1996 killing of a sheriff's deputy.

Part of Clayton's brain was removed following a sawmill accident in 1972, and his attorneys say because of that he is intellectually disabled and suffers from mental illness. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Stephen G. Breyer would have granted the stay of execution in the request related to ongoing litigation over the state of Missouri's lethal injection process.

UPDATE: Clayton was executed at 9:13 p.m. and pronounced dead at 9:21 p.m., according to the Missouri Department of Corrections.

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