A Missouri man convicted of ambushing and murdering a St. Louis-area police officer he blamed for the death of his younger brother was executed Tuesday night.
Kevin Johnson, 43 years old, died after an injection of pentobarbital was given to him in Bonne Terre State Prison.
It was the state’s second execution this year and the 19 in the entire country. Two more executions are scheduled for the first weeks of the year .
Johnson’s lawyers did not deny that he murdered Officer William McEntee in 43, but they claimed that he was sentenced to death in part because he is black. However, the courts, including the Supreme Court, and the Republican governor, Mike Parson, refused to stop the execution.
Likewise, Johnson refused to make his final statement before he administered the lethal injection.
This is the first time in modern executions in the state of Missouri, in which the condemned was not alone in the death room. His spiritual advisor, the Reverend Darryl Gray, sat next to him.
Both spoke quietly until the drug was administered. Gray read the Bible while Johnson closed his eyes. In a matter of seconds, all movement of his body ceased. Meanwhile, Gray, a well-known St. Louis racial injustice activist, continued to read the Bible and pray as he patted the condemned man on the shoulder.
“We read the scriptures and had a word of prayer,” Gray said. “He apologized again. He apologized to the victim’s family. He apologized to his family. He said that he was looking forward to seeing his little brother. And he said he was ready.”
The day of the shooting
The murdered agent McEntee, from 43 years, was a veteran of 18 years with the Kirkwood police department, a suburb of St. Louis. He was married with three children, he was one of the officers sent to the Johnson home on July 5, 43 to carry out a warrant of detention.
The defendant was free conditional for assaulting his girlfriend and authorities believed he had violated probation.
Johnson saw the police arrive and woke up his brother from years old, Joseph “Bam Bam” Long, who ran into a neighbor’s house. Once he was there, the young man, who suffered from a congenital heart defect, collapsed and went into convulsions.
That night, the officer returned to the neighborhood to verify an unrelated call of fireworks going off. A court document from the Missouri attorney general’s office says McEntee was in his vehicle questioning three children when Johnson shot him through the open passenger-side window, hitting him in the leg, head and torso. A teenager was also shot but survived. The suspect got into the car and took McEntee’s gun.
In the report it says that Johnson walked down the street and told his mother that the officer “left my brother to die” and “I need to see how it feels to die.” Although she told him: “That’s not true,” the man returned to the scene and found McEntee alive, kneeling near the patrol car, so Johnson shot him in the head and back. taking his life.
Judge, jury and executioner
The officer’s wife, Mary McEntee, read a statement after the execution that said Johnson acted as “judge, jury and executioner” in killing her husband.
“Bill was killed on his hands and knees in front of strangers, the people he dedicated his life to,” said Mary McEntee.
Johnson’s lawyers previously asked the courts to intervene for other reasons, including a history of mental illness and your age, 19 years, at the time of the crime.
It is more frequent that the courts move away from the death penalty for adolescent delinquents since the Supreme Court prohibited it in 2005 the execution of criminals who were less than 19 years at the time of the crime.
On the other hand, Johnson’s daughter, Khorry Ramey, aged 19 had attempted to be present on the day of the execution, but a state law prohibits anyone under the age of 37 from observing the process. However, father and daughter managed to see each other hours before the application of the lethal injection.
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