Missouri to Execute Intellectually Disabled Black Man This Evening

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

This evening at 6:00 p.m.  (CDT) Ernest Lee Johnson, a 61-year-old intellectually disabled black man, will be put to death in Bonne Terre, Missouri.   Johnson killed three individuals in a Columbia, Missouri, quickstop more than a quarter of a century ago.  His lawyers maintain that his execution would be a violation of the Eighth Amendment which they contend prohibits the execution of people who are intellectually disabled.

Missouri's governor, Mike Parson, a former rural county sheriff and a self-proclaimed "pro-life" politician, has the ability to grant Ernest Lee Johnson clemency and change his punishment to life in prison, and two Missouri members of Congress, Cori Bush of St. Louis and Emanuel Cleaver of Kansas City, have asked him to do that.  In a letter to Governor Parson last Friday, the congressmen wrote:

“Mr. Johnson’s execution would be a grave act of injustice. Killing those who lack the intellectual ability to conform their behavior to the law is morally and legally unconscionable."

The two black congressmen, both Democrats, also brought up the fact that capital punishment has a long history of being applied on a racial basis:

“Like slavery and lynching did before it, the death penalty perpetuates cycles of trauma, violence and state-sanctioned murder in Black and brown communities. We urge you to correct these injustices using every tool available, including the power to grant clemency.” 

Also last week a representative of the Vatican wrote a letter to Governor Parson on behalf of His Holiness, Pope Francis.  In the letter the church official stated that the Pope

"wishes to place before you the simple fact of Mr. Johnson’s humanity and the sacredness of all human life.” 

But the pleas of Missouri's only two black congressmen and the leader of the world's Catholics did not budge the Baptist Republican politician whose home county is over 97% white and less than half-of-one-percent black. And Parson continues his strong defense of life right up until the moment of birth.

(Parson has used his power as governor to intervene in court decisions in the past. A few weeks ago he pardoned a white husband and wife pair of lawyers from St. Louis when they brandished weapons at a Black Lives Matter protest that was marching down the street past the couple's gated community.)

But Governor Parson said as late as yesterday that he will not intervene in the Johnson case.

Johnson's lawyer has asked the US Supreme Court to stay the execution. If the Court does not act, ErnestLee Johnson will become the 91st person to die in a Missouri death chamber since the Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976.

His death will occur before the sun sets this evening.