Stanley Dewaine Lingar (April 16, 1963 – February 7, 2001) was a prisoner executed for the January 6, 1985, murder of 16-year-old high school junior Thomas Scott Allen in Ripley County, Missouri.

[1][2] On the evening of January 5, 1985, Lingar and his friend, Dave Smith, were drinking alcohol and driving around Doniphan, Missouri.

[4] Dave Smith, in exchange for testifying against Lingar and pleading guilty to second-degree murder, was sentenced to ten years in prison.

[4][8] Organizations and publications including Queer Watch, the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International, Village Voice and The Advocate supported Lingar's appeal and suggested that he was a victim of homophobia;[1][9][10] they believed that the prosecutors prejudiced jurors against the defendant by introducing evidence of Lingar's homosexuality.

The prosecutors denied these accusations and said that testimony about Lingar's sexual orientation was meant to establish motive for the murder, and that he was sentenced to die because of the brutality of his crime.

[5] Approximately forty demonstrators gathered outside of Potosi Correctional Center on February 6, 2001, to protest Lingar's execution.