[Authorities Rule Over Us and Can Take Our Lives When They Deem it Necessary] Missouri Orderlies Murder Intellectually Disabled Black Man, as Former Governor, Court Justice, and Leaders Sought Mercy
/
From [HERE] As the execution date for a Black man widely regarded to be intellectually disabled, a former Missouri Governor, Supreme Court Justice, and papal envoy joined faith and civil rights leaders, and the prisoner’s lawyers in efforts to spare his life.
Ernest Johnson was executed on October 5, 2021. Despite significant evidence supporting Johnson’s claim that he is ineligible for the death penalty because of intellectual disability, the Missouri Supreme Court rejected his claim and denied a stay of execution on August 31, 2021. Johnson’s lawyers have filed a motion, as yet not ruled upon, seeking rehearing of that issue. If the court does not grant the motion, Johnson’s sole chance of survival rests on the Application for Executive Clemency his lawyers have filed with Governor Michael Parson.
On Monday, the governor said in a statement that Mr. Johnson would be executed on Tuesday as scheduled. “The state is prepared to deliver justice and carry out the lawful sentence Mr. Johnson received in accordance with the Missouri Supreme Court’s order,” Mr. Parson said.
On October 1, former Missouri Governor Bob Holden, who allowed 20 executions to proceed while he was in office, called on Governor Parson to exercise clemency. “Nothing excuses what Johnson did,” Holden wrote in a commentary in the Missouri Independent. “But if our state is to be guided by the rule of law, we must temper our understandable anger with reason and compassion for the most vulnerable among us, including Ernest Johnson.”
“A review of pertinent documents has prompted me to concur with advocates that Johnson is most certainly intellectually and developmentally disabled (IDD), and thus constitutionally barred from execution by the Atkins v. Virginia U.S. Supreme Court decision,” Holden wrote.
In an August 23 op-ed in the Missouri Times, Former Missouri Supreme Court Judge Michael Wolff also called for clemency, noting its purpose as a failsafe when the judicial system fails to correct its mistakes. “When I heard Mr. Johnson’s appeal as one of the seven judges of the Supreme Court of Missouri 13 years ago, the evidence was strong that Mr. Johnson was ineligible for the death penalty on account of intellectual disability …. The trial court process to determine Mr. Johnson’s intellectual disability was unreliable and inconsistent with medical science and legal precedent,” Wolff wrote.
“Mr. Johnson,” Wolff said, “is a person with intellectual deficits so significant that a reasonable jury would not have recommended execution. Under constitutional standards, his execution would constitute cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Constitution as interpreted for decades in U.S. Supreme Court decisions.”
On October 1, Pope Francis, through Vatican diplomatic representative Archbishop Christophe Pierre, called on Parson to exercise mercy. Halting Johnson execution, Pierre wrote, would be a “courageous recognition of the inalienable dignity of all human life.”
