Ernest Lee Johnson Wiki – Ernest Lee Johnson Biography
Ernest Lee Johnson, who was convicted of a murder in 1994, is growing more frenzied ahead of his scheduled execution by lethal injection in Missouri on Tuesday after the Pope and two members of the United States Congress issued calls for it to be overturned. sentence.
In a statement last week, Pope Francis requested clemency for Johnson in a letter to Missouri Governor Michael Parson. The letter did not deny that “serious crimes like yours deserve serious punishment” but asked Parson to consider “the simple fact of Mr. Johnson’s humanity and the sanctity of all human life.” If carried out, it will be Missouri’s first execution since May 2020. The Pope’s plea for clemency was joined by two of Missouri’s Democratic members of Congress, Cori Bush and Emanuel Cleaver II, who asked the governor to detain the execution.
Pleas for clemency grow ahead of Ernest Lee Johnson’s execution
Ernest Johnson, a Missouri man convicted of killing three convenience store workers during a robbery some 28 years ago, is preparing for his execution scheduled for Tuesday, October 5. Johnson, 61, will be executed by injection at the state prison. in Bonne Terre, about 50 miles south of St. Louis, making it the seventh execution in the United States this year.
Jeremy Weis, Johnson’s attorney, claimed that executing him would lead to a violation of the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which prohibits the execution of people with intellectual disabilities. Weis asked the Supreme Court to stay the execution on Monday, October 4. “This is not a closed case, Mr. Johnson has an intellectual disability,” the court record indicates.
However, the Missouri Supreme Court has continued to refuse to intervene despite the fact that Johnson has a history of very low scores on IQ tests since he was a child. Weis noted that Johnson was born with fetal alcohol syndrome. During a benign tumor operation in 2008, he apparently lost about a fifth of his brain tissue.
Despite appeals from several people, including the Pope himself, Governor Michael Parson refused on Monday, October 4, to grant clemency. In a letter to Parson, a representative of Pope Francis wrote last week that the Pope “wishes to introduce you to the simple fact of Mr. Johnson’s humanity and the sacredness of all human life.” Parson later clarified that he would not intervene.
This is not the first time that a pope has intervened in execution in Missouri. In 1999, Pope John Paul II had persuaded Democratic Governor Mel Carnahan to grant clemency to Darrell Mease, who was later sentenced to death for a triple murder. Several other people have also come out in favor of Johnson, who is black, including racial justice activists and two members of Congress from Missouri: Democratic United States Representatives Cori Bush of St. Louis and Emmanuel Cleaver of Kansas City.
What was Johnson’s crime?
On February 12, 1994, Johnson borrowed a .25 caliber pistol from his girlfriend’s 18-year-old son, planning to rob Casey’s General Store to obtain money to buy drugs. He was a frequent customer of the store.
Johnson claimed that he waited for the last customer to leave the store at closing time and said that he was high on cocaine. At the time, there were three workers in the store: manager Mary Bratcher, 46, and employees Mabel Scruggs, 57, and Fred Jones, 58. Johnson said he was infuriated when Bratcher, claiming not to have a key Sure, she tried to flush it down the toilet.
Johnson shot the victims and then attacked them with a hammer. He also stabbed Bratcher in the hand with a screwdriver. Two victims were discovered in the store’s bathroom and the third in an ice chest. “This was a heinous crime,” said Kevin Crane, the Boone County prosecutor at the time. “It was traumatic and intense.”
Johnson was sentenced to death in his first trial and also on two other occasions. The second death sentence came in 2003 after the US Supreme Court ruled that executing a mentally ill person was unconstitutionally cruel. The second death sentence was issued by the Supreme Court of the United States. In 2006, Johnson was sentenced for the third time.
Read Also: Who is Tara Wickman? Wiki, Biography, Age, Gabby Petito’s Stepmother