White Judge Denies Gov Request to Stop Kevin Johnson's Execution for Killing White Cop. The Same White Liberal DA from Michael Brown's Case Struck Black Jurors and Sought Death on the Basis of Race

**HARD TO FORGET THE WHITE, LIBERAL DA WHO sabotageD HIS OWN GRAND JURY TO AVOID FILING CHARGES AGAINST THE WHITE COP WHO MURDERED MICHAEL BROWN?** **WHITE LIBERAL DEMOCRATS HAVE DOMINATED ST. LOUIS AREA POLITICS FOR DECADES - THEY DON’T DO SHIT FOR BLACK PEOPLE.** [MORE]

From [HERE] On Tuesday, Kevin Johnson’s daughter Khorry Ramey pleaded for her father’s death sentence to be vacated during a press conference in Jefferson City.

She was 2 when her father shot and killed a Kirkwood police officer in 2005, and was later sentenced to death.

Ramey recalled how her imprisoned father recently had the opportunity to meet and hold his 2-month-old grandson.

“It was the most beautiful moment in my life. My dad was so happy,” said Ramey, “He’s not a bad person. He just made a terrible mistake.”

Johnson’s execution date is Nov. 29, 2022, and one of his final appeals was coldly crushed on Wednesday morning.

At the press event, held at the Missouri State Capitol Rotunda in Jefferson City, advocates for Johnson’s life delivered 20,000 signatures asking Parson to commute Johnson’s death sentence to life without parole.

In a terse, two-sentence opinion Presiding Judge Mary Elizabeth Ott (pictured top left) wrote:

“This Court has received a pleading [from a special prosecutor] entitled Motion to Vacate Judgement. The Court enters the following judgment: The Motion to Vacate Judgement is DENIED.”

Johnson’s attorneys were swift in blasting the ruling and former St. Louis County Prosecutor’s racially biased history when it comes to pursuit of the death penalty.

“On Tuesday night, the Special Prosecutor appointed to review death row inmate Kevin Johnson’s case filed a motion to vacate Johnson’s death sentence – a highly unusual move in a system where prosecutors always push to uphold convictions and sentences. On Wednesday morning, only several hours after the motion was filed, the Circuit Court of St. Louis County denied the motion. Kevin Johnson’s execution date is less than two weeks away.”

Shawn Nolan, attorney for Kevin Johnson, said, “The Special Prosecutor’s investigation and motion to vacate raise serious concerns about whether Mr. Johnson received the death penalty because he is Black.”

“That should concern everyone about the integrity of this sentence, but it should especially disturb judges tasked with protecting the integrity of the legal system, a responsibility that is at its apex when a death sentence is on the line. Instead, the motion was summarily denied in just a few hours.”

Nolan said Johnson’s appeals have not ended.

“Our hope is that the court will reconsider that ruling or that the Supreme Court of Missouri will order the evidentiary hearing that is required by law in this circumstance. There is no reason for this execution to go forward without this process,” Nolan said.

“To do so would make a nullity of the statute authorizing prosecuting attorneys to file such motions when the facts at their disposal compel them to do so.”

According to Nolan, the State argued that “at every stage of the capital prosecution overseen by former Saint Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch, race played a decisive factor. The Special Prosecutor concluded that as a result, the State’s prosecution violated the Equal Protection clause.”

The Special Prosecutor also included these facts:

-Of the five police-killing cases that occurred during his tenure in office, McCulloch sought the death penalty for four Black defendants and declined to seek it against the one white defendant charged with killing a police officer.

-In that case, McCulloch’s office sent a written invitation to defense counsel to submit mitigating evidence and granted the defense nearly a year to prepare their arguments against the death sentence. However, in the cases with Black defendants, McCulloch never issued an invitation to submit mitigating evidence that might convince him to not seek death.

According to the motion to vacate, the Special Prosecutor attempted to contact McCulloch several times during his investigation into the case during the past month. McCulloch did not acknowledge any attempts at contact “all while giving a two-hour news media interview.”

The Special Prosecutor’s investigation also showed that no one on Mr. Johnson’s prosecution team could justify their actions to pursue death for cases with Black defendants and not in a case with a white defendant.

The Special Prosecutor also argued that Mr. Johnson’s prosecutors “intentionally discriminated against Black jurors,” based on his discovery of a prosecution memo that revealed an intent to impermissibly strike jurors based on race.

McCulloch and his team’s racial discrimination against jurors only highlights the pervasive racism underlying the entirety of Mr. Johnson’s trial.

On Tuesday, November 14, religious leaders, the Missouri State Conference of the NAACP, Missourians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty [MADPMO] and others held a press conference in Jefferson City calling for Gov. Mike Parson to cancel the scheduled execution of of convicted murderer Kevin Johnson.

Nimrod Chapel Jr., president of the Missouri State Conference of the NAACP, said, “No one is here today saying Kevin Johnson needs to go home. Our culture of death has got to stop.”

“Johnson is scheduled to be executed by the state of Missouri on November 29, 2022, for the 2005 murder of police officer William McEntee. It was a crime, according to MADPMO, Johnson “committed at just 19 years old, just hours after watching his baby brother die in front of his eyes.”

Johnson’s defenders also said his childhood-dominated physical and mental abuse-should have been a mitigating factor when jurors sentenced him to death. The execution, they said, should be called off because Johnson was 19 at the time he shot and killed McEntee.

Additionally, his defenders claim that he was only sentenced to die because of a racially biased prosecution bent on convicting a Black man for killing a white cop.

“We don’t believe killing Kevin will solve anything,” said Michelle Smith, community spokesperson for MADPMO.

Earlier this month, Johnson’s lawyers appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to halt the execution. It was filed a day after the Missouri Supreme Court declined to grant a stay.

In a press release announcing the press conference, Chapel, the NAACP President of the Missouri State Conference of the NAACP summarized the appeal for Johnson’s life.

“We all recognize the inherent injustice that is the death penalty and what it does particularly to people of color and poor people. It’s one thing to punish someone, and another thing to take their life away,” Chapel said.

“Looking at the inherent bias in our criminal justice system, we must stop the execution of Kevin Johnson and abolish the death penalty, there is no reason for it at this time.”