Ernest Lee Johnson (Image via Missouri Department of Corrections)
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Ernest Lee Johnson, a Black man who was born with fetal alcohol syndrome and lost one-fifth of his brain tissue, has been executed by lethal injection in his home state of Missouri.
Johnson was pronounced dead at 6:11 p.m. local time, at the Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center in Bonne Terre, according to the Associated Press. His death marks the first execution for the state since May 2020. He was 61-years-old.
“I am sorry and have remorse for what I do,” Johnson reportedly wrote in his final statement. “I want to say that I love my family and friends. I am thankful of all that my lawyer has done for me. They made me feel loved as if I was family to them.”
In the months leading up to Tuesday, Johnson had received a surge of support from members of Congress, faith and prisoner advocacy groups and even a retired Missouri Supreme Court judge who once heard his case. They all agreed that Johnson’s intellectual disability made executing him in violation of the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment—as well as morally wrong.
“Mr. Johnson’s execution would be a grave act of injustice,” Reps. Cori Bush and Emanuel Cleaver wrote in a letter to Missouri Gov. Mike Parson last week. “Killing those who lack the intellectual ability to conform their behavior to the law is morally and legally unconscionable.”
Just hours before Johnson’s execution, scores of local residents and members of the local anti-capital punishment group Missourians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (MADP) protested outside of Missouri Gov. Mike Parson’s office in Jefferson City, according to local ABC outlet KMIZ. Demonstrators also appeared outside the Bonne Terre prison where Johnson was killed.
Thtoughout his life, Johnson had repeatedly been diagnosed as intellectually disabled, stemming from having fetal alcohol syndrome at birth. Tests conducted in the last 20 years showed that he had an average IQ of 69, a figure that places him in the range of someone with a mental impairment. In 2008, Johnson also had surgery to address a brain tumor that resulted in the removal of 20 percent of his brain tissue, which further damaged his mental capacity.
“Every expert that has testified, that has done an evaluation for purposes of trying to determine whether he’s intellectually disabled has unequivocally said that he is,” Jeremy Weis, Johnson’s public defender, told VICE News Monday.
The Missouri Supreme Court, however, disagreed over speculation that Johnson may have faked his disability as well as testimony that he planned his crime in advance.
Weis had exhausted just about every option to try and stay his death sentence, including filing for clemency with the governor, who has ultimate control over executions in Missouri, as well as appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court.
But Gov. Parson released a statement Monday afternoon that made it clear he had no intention of changing course and that the state would carry out the death sentence as planned. And just an hour before his execution, the U.S. Supreme Court denied the request for a stay of execution.
Johnson had been sentenced to death for the 1994 murders of three convenience store workers: Mary Bratcher, 46, Fred Jones, 58, and Mable Scruggs, 57. Johnson beat, stabbed, and shot the three employees during a closing-time robbery and hid their bodies in a walk-in cooler.
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