This Man Lost 20% of His Brain Tissue. Missouri Still Wants to Execute Him.
As a result of having fetal alcohol syndrome and a brain tumor, Ernest Lee Johnson has an IQ around 69, according to various tests. But the state of Missouri plans to execute the intellectually disabled Black man Tuesday night anyway, a move that civil rights advocates have decried as a grave abuse of the law.
“Killing those who lack the intellectual ability to conform their behavior to the law is morally and legally unconscionable,” Missouri U.S. Reps. Cori Bush and Emanuel Cleaver wrote in a letter to Missouri Gov. Mike Parson last Friday. “The fact of the matter is that these death sentences are not about justice. They are about who has institutional power and who doesn’t. Like slavery and lynching did before it, the death penalty perpetuates cycles of trauma, violence, and state-sanctioned murder in Black and brown communities.”
Johnson was sentenced to death for the February 1994 murders of three convenience store workers: Mary Bratcher, 46, Fred Jones, 58, and Mable Scruggs, 57. Johnson beat, stabbed, and shot the three employees during a closing-time robbery and hid their bodies in a walk-in cooler.
But as heinous as his crimes are, Johnson’s mental disability should make his execution morally and constitutionally wrong, experts say. The now 61-year-old was born with fetal alcohol syndrome due to his mother’s battle with addiction, which impedes cognitive development in children. And in 2008, Johnson had surgery for a brain tumor that resulted in the removal of 20 percent of his brain tissue, which further impacted his mental capacity. Tests show that his IQ is well below 90, the average for most people, according to the Washington Post.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/wx5vpy/ernest-lee-johnson-execution-missouri
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Another in the long litany of reasons why I am against the death penalty. Lord have mercy.
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