About book Almost Midnight: An American Story Of Murder And Redemption (2005)
Almost Midnight, by Michael W. Cuneo, is a well researched investigative documentary centering on a little known local boy turned outlaw whose execution is miraculous commuted by intervention from Pope John Paul II and Missouri Governor Mel Carnahan.For anyone outside the southwest Missouri Ozarks, or not an advocate for the abolition of capital punishment, this journalistic gem might go unnoticed. Having lived in Greene, Taney and Stone Counties, where much of the saga unfolds, I found it intriguing.Pentecostal reared, backwoods country boy, Darrell Mease, returns from Viet Nam addled by paranoia, alcohol and drugs, then by default or choice ends up working for local methamphetamine drug lord Lloyd Lawrence. Feeling betrayed and used by Lawrence, and with a $10,000 bounty on him imposed by Lawrence, Mease plots and carries out the cold blooded execution of Lawrence, Lawrence's wife and disabled grandson.On the lam with his accomplice girlfriend Mary, they roadtrip through the southwest United States eventually being caught and returned to southwest Missouri to stand trial. Mease is convicted of first degree murder, placed on death row and issued an execution date of January 27, 1999, coincidently the date Pope John Paul II, famously opposed to the death penalty, is to make an unprecedented visit to St. Louis. Had the State of Missouri deliberately tried to insult the Pope, they could not have done a better job. Then, feeling the need to reset Mease's lethal injection date, the Pope's attention was drawn to Darrell Mease. Mease who had early on had a jailhouse, born-again, religious experience and maintained God as his lawyer and that God would literally set him free!So, prophet; divine intervention; conspiracy of circumstance? We are left to decide, while Darrell Mease remains incarcerated for life still waiting God to set him free.
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