A man who spent nearly 25 years on Missouri’s death row was executed Tuesday for the kidnapping, rape and stabbing death of a 15-year-old girl in 1989 during a cocaine binge with a friend who has already paid the ultimate price.

Roderick Nunley, 50, became the sixth death row inmate to be put to death in Missouri this year after he was pronounced dead at 9:09pm CDT.

During the execution, his breathing became labored for a few seconds and he briefly opened his mouth before becoming still.

‘Despite openly admitting his guilt to the court, it has taken 25 years to get him to the execution chamber,’ Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster said in a statement.

‘Nunley’s case offers a textbook example showing why society is so frustrated with a system that has become too cumbersome.’

Ann Harrison’s disappearance and death haunted the Kansas City area in March 1989.

She was waiting for a school bus on her driveway, 20 yards from her front door, when Nunley and Michael Taylor drove by in a stolen car and made the spur-of-the-moment decision to abduct her.

Her body was found in the trunk of the abandoned car three days later.

Both men were sentenced to death in 1991. Taylor was executed last year.

Missouri Gov Jay Nixon on Tuesday denied a clemency request for Nunley, filed by death penalty opponents, asserting that racial bias played a role in the case because a prosecutor refused a plea deal that would have given Nunley life in prison without parole.

Nunley was black, as was Taylor, while the victim was white.

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The Missouri Supreme Court has denied the latest legal challenges from a man scheduled to be executed Tuesday for raping and killing a 15-year-old Kansas City girl in 1989.

The judges ruled Friday to overrule a motion that sought a stay of execution for Roderick Nunley.

The court also rejected his request for a writ of habeas corpus, which allows prisoners to challenge their convictions on constitutional grounds.

Nunley was one of two men who pleaded guilty and received the death penalty in the death of Ann Harrison. She was waiting for a school bus in front of her home when she was abducted.

Michael Taylor was executed for the same crime in 2014.

The state Supreme Court has set an execution date for Michael Taylor, one of two men who pleaded guilty to the 1989 murder of a 15-year-old girl. The Court has ordered that he be executed February 26.

Taylor and Roderick Nunley both admitted to abducting Ann Harrison from the Kansas City bus stop where she was waiting to go to school. Taylor had raped the girl with Nunley’s help in the basement of Nunley’s mother’s home before fatally stabbing her and abandoning her body in the trunk of a car.

Taylor turns 47 January 30.

Nunley is also sentenced to death. The Court in December ordered attorneys for Nunley, Taylor and two other condemned men, Jeffrey Ferguson and David Barnett, to present their arguments why it should not set dates for their executions. Taylor is the first of those four to have such a date set. The Corrections Department is set to carry out its next execution Wednesday. Herbert Smulls is 56 and has been on death row for 21 years. He was sentenced to death in 1991 for the fatal shooting of Stephen Honickman, a St. Louis County jewelry store owner.Taylor was to have been executed February 1, 2006, but it was halted while the Supreme Court considered the constitutionality of lethal injection. The Court denied his appeal in 2008.