BREAKING NEWS: Disappointing, but this being Missouri, hardly surprising. Associated Press reported earlier this afternoon that Governor Mike Parson has denied clemency to Ernest Johnson who is scheduled to be executed tomorrow. (Tuesday October 5); HL;
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PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "A landmark 2002 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court decided it was cruel and unusual to execute people with intellectual disabilities no matter how heinous the crime. Crucially, the court’s ruling left the task of determining who met the criteria of “intellectually disabled” to the states. Missouri’s law broadly defines intellectual disability as a person having “substantial limitations in general functioning,” which can manifest in a range of ways, including low IQ scores, communication struggles and challenges with self-care and independent living. Missouri’s Supreme Court in August declined to halt Johnson’s execution and wrote in its decision that Johnson’s own recollections of the crime that he later relayed to a doctor “illustrate Johnson’s ability to plan, strategize, and problem solve — contrary to a finding of substantial subaverage intelligence.”
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PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: "It is unclear whether Parson will intervene in Johnson’s case. The Kansas City Star’s Editorial Board, which has called for clemency in the case, took a critical view of the governor in a September op-ed for his unwillingness to use his power to convene a board of inquiry that could subpoena witnesses and conclusively determine Johnson’s intellectual disability. The editorial contrasted Parson’s inaction in Johnson’s case with his quickness in pardoning Mark and Patricia McCloskey, a White St. Louis couple who pleaded guilty to assault after waving guns at Black Lives Matter demonstrators during a protest that wound through their neighborhood last year."
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STORY: "Missouri is slated to execute Ernest Johnson. Lawmakers and the pope want his life to be spared," by Reporter Kim Bellware, published by The Washington Post on October 2, 2021. (Reporter Bellware covers national breaking news and features,)
GIST: Two members of Congress from Missouri and the Pope have raised a last-minute clemency plea on behalf of a death row prisoner who, despite his claims of an intellectual disability, is to be executed Tuesday in the state’s first since May 2020.
Reps. Cori Bush and Emanuel Cleaver II, both Democrats and members of the Congressional Black Caucus, on Friday petitioned Missouri Gov. Michael L. Parson (R) to halt the execution of 61-year-old Ernest Lee Johnson. Bush and Cleaver wrote the governor to argue that killing Johnson perpetuates the same cycles of trauma and violence against Black people as “slavery and lynching did before it.”
Their plea comes as the United States is at a crossroads with the death penalty. Though 27 states still have capital punishments on the books, Missouri is among only four — the others being Alabama, Oklahoma and Texas — to have resumed executions a year after many were derailed by the coronavirus pandemic.
Use of the death penalty in the United States has slowed dramatically, with the country executing fewer prisoners in 2020 than at any time since 1991. A growing number of leaders, including President Biden, support halting or disincentivizing executions at the state and federal level. Still, a Pew Research Center survey released earlier this year found 60 percent of U.S. adults support execution for those convicted of murder.
Johnson was sentenced to death for killing three people while robbing a Columbia, Mo., convenience store in 1994. His lawyers and advocates argue his intellectual disability makes his execution unconstitutional and noted he also had roughly one-fifth of his brain tissue removed during a 2008 operation for a brain tumor.
Jeremy Weis, Johnson’s public defender, has said Johnson “meets all statutory and clinical definitions” of intellectual disability and has scored between 67 and 77 in IQ tests over the years, a range that is below and within the threshold generally recognized as intellectually disabled.
Bush and Cleaver urged the governor to acknowledge “the moral depravity of executions” and use his clemency power to spare Johnson.
“The fact of the matter is that these death sentences are not about justice. They are about who has institutional power and who doesn’t,” they wrote. “Like slavery and lynching did before it, the death penalty perpetuates cycles of trauma, violence and state-sanctioned murder in Black and brown communities.”
A landmark 2002 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court decided it was cruel and unusual to execute people with intellectual disabilities no matter how heinous the crime. Crucially, the court’s ruling left the task of determining who met the criteria of “intellectually disabled” to the states.
Missouri’s law broadly defines intellectual disability as a person having “substantial limitations in general functioning,” which can manifest in a range of ways, including low IQ scores, communication struggles and challenges with self-care and independent living.
Missouri’s Supreme Court in August declined to halt Johnson’s execution and wrote in its decision that Johnson’s own recollections of the crime that he later relayed to a doctor “illustrate Johnson’s ability to plan, strategize, and problem solve — contrary to a finding of substantial subaverage intelligence.”
Johnson was convicted of murder in 1995, one year after prosecutors said he brutally beat three people to death with a claw hammer inside Casey’s General Store as he robbed it during closing for drug money. His victims included Mary Bratcher, 46; Mable Scruggs, 57; and Fred Jones, 58. Authorities said that after the killings, Johnson hid their bodies in a walk-in cooler.
Advocates for Johnson, including Bush and Cleaver, acknowledge the severity of his crime while noting he has had developmental delays since birth, when he was born with fetal alcohol syndrome to a mother who battled addiction.
Johnson also underwent surgery in 2008 to remove most, but not all, of a brain tumor. The operation required removing as much as 20 percent of his brain tissue, the AP reported, which his advocates say has further reduced his intellectual capacity.
In May, Johnson unsuccessfully petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to allow him to be executed by firing squad rather than lethal injection, which lawyers argued could cause painful seizures that he now experiences as a result of his surgery.
In addition to the members of Congress, Pope Francis on Monday requested clemency for Johnson in a letter to Parson via Archbishop Christophe Pierre, the Vatican’s ambassador to the United States. Pierre wrote the that Pope’s request did not deny that “grave crimes such as his deserve grave punishment” but urged the governor to consider “the simple fact of Mr. Johnson’s humanity and the sacredness of all human life.”
Pope Francis sent a letter requesting clemency for #ErnestJohnson to @GovParsonMO this week through the Vatican's ambassador to the U.S. The Pope "wishes to place before you the simple fact of Mr. Johnson's humanity and the sacredness of all human life."
It is unclear whether Parson will intervene in Johnson’s case.
The Kansas City Star’s Editorial Board, which has called for clemency in the case, took a critical view of the governor in a September op-ed for his unwillingness to use his power to convene a board of inquiry that could subpoena witnesses and conclusively determine Johnson’s intellectual disability.
The editorial contrasted Parson’s inaction in Johnson’s case with his quickness in pardoning Mark and Patricia McCloskey, a White St. Louis couple who pleaded guilty to assault after waving guns at Black Lives Matter demonstrators during a protest that wound through their neighborhood last year.
In July, Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a moratorium on federal executions, ordering a review of death penalty policy changes made during the Trump administration. Thirteen federal inmates were put to death in the final months of the Trump administration, following years without any federal executions. The federal government’s capital punishment policies, however, do not apply to death sentences issued in state courts."
The entire story can be read at:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/10/02/ernest-johnson-cori-bush/
