Appeals Court Halts Missouri Execution of Johnny Johnson

The Valley Park man, who murdered a 6-year-old girl in 2002, suffers from severe mental illness

Jul 26, 2023 at 10:24 am

[
          {
            "name": "GPT - Leaderboard - Inline - Content",
            "component": "41932919",
            "insertPoint": "5th",
            "startingPoint": "3",
            "requiredCountToDisplay": "3",
            "maxInsertions": 100
          }
          
        ]

click to enlarge

TYLER GROSS

Missouri has executed four people in the last eight months.

A St. Louis man scheduled to die next Tuesday received a last-minute stay of execution yesterday — with the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals saying the state of Missouri cannot yet proceed with the execution of Johnny Johnson.

Johnson was sentenced to death in 2005 for the murder of six-year-old Casey Williamson in suburban Valley Park.

In their petition for relief filed June 30, Johnson's attorneys state the case simply: "Because Mr. Johnson does not rationally understand the reason for his execution and believes Satan is using the State of Missouri to execute him to bring about the end of the world, which the voice of Satan has confirmed to him, he is not competent to be executed and carrying out the execution would violate the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution."

Before he was elected to the U.S. Senate last fall, then-Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt had moved to commence the execution of six people on death row. Johnson, in many ways, is among the least sympathetic among them — a man who lured a six-year-old girl to a sunken pit in an abandoned glass factory, where he attempted to rape her and then bashed in her head with a brick, killing her. He has never argued he is innocent. The name of local filmmaker Ben Scholle's documentary about the case, The Worst Crime, says it all.

But Johnson has suffered from both "severe mental illness and cognitive impairments all his life," according to the latest brief from attorneys Kent Gipson and Daniel Kirsch. "His beliefs about why he is to be executed are rooted in delusional thinking, the product of a severe psychotic mental illness and a cognitively impaired brain," they write.

The evidence supporting that claim is lengthy. Johnson was first admitted to a psychiatric clinic at age 14, and had already been suffering suicidal ideations for six months. He disclosed being sexually abused at age five or six. He was hospitalized repeatedly for mental illness and spent 10 years on anti-psychotic medications before Williamson's murder. He was on no less than five different medications for schizophrenia at the time of her death.

After being arrested for Williamson's death, Johnson reported hallucinations and hearing voices. He also made multiple suicide attempts, once by swallowing razor blades.

The attorneys argue that the 8th Amendment bars the execution of someone who is incompetent and cannot "rationally understand the reason for it." They say he's entitled to a hearing regarding his competency — and by not granting him one, the Missouri Supreme Court violated his legal rights.

"Here, the state court confronted a set of facts that are materially indistinguishable from at least two decisions of the Supreme Court and arrived at a result different from the Court’s precedent," they write — necessitating federal intervention.

In a one-page ruling yesterday, the U.S. District Court for the 8th Circuit put a hold on the execution. They've now set a briefing schedule that begins with Johnson's lawyers making their case September 5, with the state attorney general's office answering in 30 days, and Johnson's lawyers then responding to that in 21 days. That means Johnson's reprieve will last, at minimum, through November — and almost certainly into 2024.

The state of Missouri has executed 96 people in the so-called modern era of capital punishment, which began when the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. Former AG Schmitt's push has added three more people from St. Louis County to that list since November: Kevin Johnson, Amber McLaughlin and Leonard Taylor.

Missouri Executes Amber McLaughlin, 49, for 2003 Slaying: McLaughlin, 49, was the first openly transgender woman to be executed in the U.S.

Missouri Executes Leonard ‘Raheem’ Taylor for 2004 Quadruple Murder: Advocates decry the lethal injection, while his ex’s sister says “justice was served”

Missouri Executes Kevin Johnson, 37, for 2005 Slaying of Kirkwood Officer: Prosecutor Bob McCulloch was in Bonne Terre to witness the execution

Tags:

About The Author

Sarah Fenske

Sarah Fenske is the executive editor of the RFT and its sister papers. She is the former host of St. Louis on the Air and continues to host its Legal Roundtable, as well participating as an occasional panelist on Nine PBS' Donnybrook. She lives in St. Louis.

Email Sarah Fenske