Missouri death: Court’s denial of racial bias claim

• Black man Kevin Johnson was found guilty of killing a Missouri police officer in 2005. At the time, Johnson was 19 years old, and his daughter, who is now 19 years old, had requested mercy.
• A allegation that the case was contaminated by racial bias was rejected by Missouri’s highest court on Tuesday evening, allowing the execution of a Black death row inmate to go forward.
• Legal challenges would probably result in the claim being rejected.

After Missouri’s top court dismissed a claim that the case was contaminated by racial bias and ruled that the argument would most likely not be successful in legal appeals, the execution of a Black death row convict can now continue as scheduled on Tuesday evening.

The state’s early treatment of Kevin Johnson’s case, according to special prosecutor Edward Keenan, was replete with “racial prosecution practises,” which contributed to his conviction and death sentence for the 2005 murder of a Missouri police officer. Johnson was 19 when he was taken into custody.

The state is free to carry out its predetermined lethal injection execution of Johnson, 37, thanks to the Missouri Supreme Court’s ruling, which was announced late on Monday. It followed Republican governor Mike Parson’s declaration that he would not pardon him “for his heinous and cruel crime.”

The majority concluded that Keenan’s arguments “are mainly just re-packaged versions of claims Johnson had raised (and seen rejected) many times before,” and the vote was 5-2.

The majority concluded that “nothing in the Special Prosecutor’s motion fundamentally modifies these claims or provides any higher probability of success than those claims have previously enjoyed.”

The decision is a further setback for Johnson after a federal judge on Friday barred his 19-year-old daughter from attending his execution on the grounds that Missouri law mandates that witnesses be at least 21 years old.

In a court filing, Keenan, who was appointed as a special prosecutor by the St. Louis County Circuit Court in October, said that he had discovered instances of discrimination in the office of longtime county prosecutor Robert McCulloch, who lost his bid for reelection in 2018.

In five cases involving the murder of police officers, McCulloch’s office pursued the death sentence in four of them involving Black defendants, but not in the one involving a White defendant whose “behaviour was more extreme,” according to Keenan.

Furthermore, according to Keenan, McCulloch “largely reserved the death penalty” for defendants whose white victims were the victims of their crimes, and his comments to other prosecutors “show a particular animosity towards young Black males like Mr. Johnson, viewing them as a population that ‘we had to deal with,’ and portraying them as stereotypical criminals.”

On Monday, it was impossible to immediately reach McCulloch for comment.

Keenan stated in a court document that he also requested a stay of execution for Johnson since the prosecution team throughout his trial had refused to comply with his inquiry.

Despite making lengthy statements to the news media about this and other instances, “Mr. McCulloch has declined to even answer correspondence from the Special Prosecutor asking him about the matter,” Keenan stated.

McCulloch told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that Johnson was given the death penalty particularly for a “brutal, violent, unprovoked assassination of a police officer” when the execution date for him was set in August.

Nothing to do with my race, his race, or anyone else’s, McCulloch remarked.

During arguments before the Missouri Supreme Court, Assistant Attorney General Andrew Crane reaffirmed that Johnson received the death penalty because he killed a police officer, and that any additional circumstances surrounding the case ultimately did not matter.

In connection with the killing of Kirkwood Police Officer William McEntee in a St. Louis suburb, Johnson was taken into custody in July 2005.

McEntee and other law enforcement personnel were executing an arrest warrant for Johnson, who was thought to have broken the terms of his probation after beating his girlfriend.

When he raced next door to his grandmother’s home, his 12-year-old brother, who had a congenital heart condition, experienced a seizure. At the hospital, he passed away. At his trial, Johnson stated that McEntee shoved his mother when she came on the scene and that he was upset by the officer’s behaviour because he was concerned for his brother’s wellbeing.

When Johnson went back to his area that evening for a separate call regarding a fireworks incident, he claims to have run across McEntee. Prosecutors claim that he shot McEntee many times before escaping. Three days later, he turned himself in.

According to Johnson’s supporters, he has changed during his jail and has been a loving father to his daughter Khorry Ramey, who was 2 at the time of his arrest. After an ex-boyfriend killed her mother when she was four, she claimed that he had been the only parent she had ever known.

“The most significant person in my life is my father. Even though he is in prison, he has always been there for me “Ramey declared in a statement on Friday following the denial of her petition. He is a decent father and the last remaining parent I have.

Johnson has used up all available legal options. If he is executed on Tuesday, it will be the sixth state execution this month—the busiest month for capital punishment in the United States in 2022—barring any unforeseen delays.

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