(Missourinet) – Missouri’s senior senator is still weighing whether she’ll vote to support President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, and she says that’s okay.

Senator Claire McCaskill (D) said she is still ascertaining what would happen if the U.S. pulls out of the deal to get Iran to limit its nuclear program for ten years. She’s said that for a couple of weeks, and told Katie Couric that’s what lawmakers were meant to do.

“Everybody says, ‘Why aren’t you deciding?’ The Republicans insisted on 60 days, and it looked like to me that most of them made up their mind in about five minutes,” said
McCaskill. “I’m taking the time that we were given in Congress to really explore every inch of this deal and what the alternative is.”

She said there are parts of the deal that she doesn’t like, including that it wouldn’t completely shut down Iran’s nuclear development.

“That they’re going to allow to develop a domestic power, nuclear capability, which could be transitioned to the capability years down the line,” said McCaskill.

She also doesn’t like its outline for inspections, including that they could be delayed up to 24-days.

“They’re assuring us that they can still see what has occurred even if it is 24-days, but that’s troubling,” said McCaskill.

McCaskill has been finding out whether other countries would honor sanctions if the U.S. backed out of the deal.

“China was very clear with me when I talked to them that they do not believe they have to recognize U.S.-imposed sanctions, only those sanctions imposed by the security council of the United Nations,” said McCaskill. “I haven’t talked to Japan or South Korea or India yet.”

(Missourinet) – The state Senate will hold a hearing Thursday as part of its investigation of whether Planned Parenthood is breaking any laws in Missouri, and some of its attention will be on Columbia.

The newly-formed Senate Committee on the Sanctity of Life will hear from the Department of Health and Senior Services about the resumption of abortions at the Planned Parenthood facility in Columbia.

Co-Chairman David Sater (R-Cassville) says he and other Republicans want to ask questions about the permit process, “to make sure that it was done according to the rules and regulations of the Department of Health. It seemed to us as though it happened awfully quick.”

Sater says the committee will also investigate whether the illegal sale of fetal tissue was taking place in Missouri, as some allege Planned Parenthood has done in other states.

“We will be asking the Department of Health and Senior Services what their take is on it, and what kind of investigation that they’re going to be doing on this.”

Those allegations have been based on videos released by an organization that opposes abortion. Critics of those videos say they are misleading and the committee is purely political. Sater says it’s anything but.

“I would respond that this is life and death,” Sater told Missourinet. “When you’re talking about an unborn child that is having … the skull cracked and the body parts harvested, I think this is obnoxious to any person.”

University of Missouri political science professor Peverill Squire says on that issue, the committee is not likely to find anything.

“What we’ve learned at the state level … is that most Planned Parenthood organizations are not involved in this particular activity,” said Squire.

(Missourinet) – The St. Louis County Police Department has released surveillance video it says shows the man its officers shot Sunday night, carrying a gun shortly before that shooting.

The Department says Tyrone Harris, Junior can be seen pulling a handgun from his waistband after shots were fired near the protest on West Florissant. It was shortly after that gunfire that, police say, that Harris fired at an unmarked police SUV. Police say plainclothes detectives in the SUV returned fire, pursued Harris past a building, and shot him after he shot at them a second time.

(Missourinet) Jeff Mizanskey will be released from prison in approximately two weeks, after serving more than two decades in prison for marijuana charges. He said getting paroled has revitalized his faith in human kind.

“From my years of sitting here for marijuana was a sense of death. It’s life without but that’s basically a death sentence in prison,” Mizanskey said. “Seeing these guys raping kids, and doing murders and stuff getting out on parole the only thing I could thing of is what is this world come to.”

Governor Nixon commuted Mizanskey’s sentence in May. His parole hearing was last Thursday and Mizanskey expected the parole board to take four to six weeks before making a decision on his fate.

Mizanskey will be a free man in 10-25 days. Mizanskey said doing drugs again isn’t worth going back to prison.

“A promise I made my mother before she passed away was that I would never break the law intentionally again,” he said. “To me I take that to heart and that’s just the way it’ll be.”

The 62-year-old Sedalia man said he looks forward to spending time with family.

“There’s a lot of my family I’ve never even met. Like my grand children, and my nephews and my nieces I’ve never even seen,” Mizanskey said. “Some of them I’ve never even talked to. So it’s going to take some time to get acquainted with everybody but it’s going to be a joyous occasion.”

Mizanskey was the only person serving a life sentence in Missouri for marijuana charges.

(Missourinet) – The Missouri Supreme Court has for the second time this year set an execution date for a man sentenced to death for hiring another man to murder his ex-wife 15 years ago.

51-year-old Kimber Edwards is scheduled to die by lethal injection between 6 p.m. October 6 and 5:59 p.m. October 7 at the state prison in Bonne Terre. Earlier this year the Court had set his execution for May 12, but it later lifted that order. It did not explain that action, but his attorneys had asked for a stay on the grounds that both had other clients with pending court proceedings that would have conflicted with their being able to work on his case.

Edwards’ wife, Kimberly Cantrell, was fatally shot in the head in her University City apartment in August, 2000. Witnesses said Ortell Wilson had been knocking on her door prior to the shooting. Wilson told police Edwards had paid him to kill Cantrell and gave him a key to her apartment.

Wilson, who is now serving life in prison for the murder, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch earlier this year that he, alone, was responsible for the murder and that he had lied when he implicated Edwards.

Court documents say Edwards had been facing a felony charge for not paying a year’s worth of child support when Cantrell was shot. Prosecutors said he wanted his wife killed because of the ongoing child support dispute.

Missouri is set to next carry out the execution of Roderick Nunley for his role in the murder of 15-year-old Ann Harrison of Kansas City 26 years ago. His execution is scheduled for the 24-hour period beginning at 6 p.m. September 1.

(Missourinet) – St. Louis-area civic leaders are expressing frustration after peaceful protests devolved into unrest on the one-year anniversary of the shooting of Michael Brown, Junior, Sunday. One man was shot by St. Louis County police near the scene of a protest last night after, police say, he fired multiple times at plainclothes detectives in an SUV.

A man told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch the man is his son, 18-year-old Tyrone Harris, Junior. He was reported to be in critical and unstable condition early this morning.
St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar said a 9mm Sig Sauer was recovered from the scene. It had been stolen in Cape Girardeau, last year. The four detectives involved in the shooting have been placed on administrative leave, as is standard practice after an officer-involved shooting.

Belmar called the shooting a tragedy for all involved.

He said the exchange between detectives and Harris at about 11:10 Sunday night followed a shootout between two groups in which, he estimated, 45 to 50 shots were fired in a span of about 45 seconds.

Belmar was quick to distinguish those responsible for violence from protesters.

“No, they’re criminals. They weren’t protesters. Protesters were people that were out there that were talking about a way to effect change, whatever that may be,” said Belmar. “There is a small group of people out there that are intent on making sure that we don’t have peace that prevails.”

Early this morning state and local police began to order protesters off the streets.

“Failure to disperse the area immediately may result in your arrest, detention, and/or exposure to chemical and less-lethal munitions,” authorities ordered. Smoke bombs were later fired into the crowds.

Planned events earlier in the day marked the anniversary with discussions of what progress has been made in dealing with civil rights and policy issues and what remains to be resolved, and a gathering of hundreds around the site on Canfield Drive in Ferguson where Brown was fatally shot a year ago by a Ferguson police officer.

During a heavy rain storm around 9 p.m., someone broke into a beauty supply store and tried to get away with the cash register, but ended up leaving it in front of another store. A short time later a Post-Dispatch reporter was robbed and assaulted.

Belmar said one officer was taken to a hospital after being struck in the face with a brick, but did not know that officer’s condition.

(Missourinet) – Thursday night’s debate between 10 Republican presidential candidates offered voters a useful discussion, according to a University of Missouri professor.

Professor Mitchell McKinney said the prime-time debate highlighted differences between the ten candidates, and between the Republican and Democrat parties, while not quite being stolen by frontrunner Donald Trump as some has expected.

“Even when the Fox journalists were inviting his opponents on the stage directly attack him, to take him on, several of them passed on that opportunity so we didn’t hear a lot of response from Mr. Trump,” said McKinney.

McKinney says former Florida governor Jeb Bush, meanwhile, was too quiet as the assumed closest contender to Trump.

“Throughout that long debate, at certain times, Trump maintained his presence but I felt throughout the two-hour debate at certain times we sort of forgot that Jeb Bush was on the stage,” said McKinney.

The prime time debate was between the ten of the 17 Republican presidential candidates that were polling the highest at the beginning of the week. McKinney says it was candidates among the remaining seven, who participated in a debate earlier in the evening, who did the best job of going after Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton.

“Certainly from Carly Fiorina, from Lyndsey Graham, Rick Perry, and we didn’t see that level of attack of the presumed frontrunner of the Democratic party on the main stage,” said McKinney.
“As a matter of fact although there were some passing references to Clinton, some of it was even lighthearted in nature, there wasn’t a lot of attack of her, certainly at the level that we saw in the earlier debate.”