From [HERE] A 19-year-old Black woman is too young to witness Missouri authorities execute her father, who was sentenced to death for killing a white police officer when he was a teen, a federal judge ruled.

Khorry Ramey requested to be present for Kevin Johnson’s final moments, but US District Judge Brian Wimes, who is Black, said in a ruling that execution witnesses need to be at least 21 years old, NBC News reported.

Missouri and Nevada are the only states that require witnesses to be 21, Ramey’s attorneys argued.

“I’m heartbroken that I won’t be able to be with my dad in his last moments,” Ramey said in a statement, adding that he “has worked very hard to rehabilitate himself in prison. I pray that [Gov. Mike] Parson will give my dad clemency.”

Johnson, now 37, is scheduled to die by lethal injection Nov. 29 for the 2005 killing of Kirkwood Police Officer William McEntee, a crime he committed when he was 19 and Ramey was 2.

He selected his daughter as one of the five people permitted to witness his death, but the Missouri Department of Corrections rejected the request, a move the ACLU argued violates both the First and Fourteenth amendments.

“Missouri executes people, like Mr. Johnson, for crimes committed as adults but before their 21st birthday illustrates the irrationality of the statute’s requirement that execution witnesses not only be adults but also at least 21 years old,” the filing states.

Missing her father’s execution will cause Ramey “irreparable harm,” her attorneys said.

Last week a 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. It asked the court to vacate his conviction due to the pervasive racism in his trial. His trial was prosecuted by Robert McCulloch, the same racist suspect liberal DA who sabotaged the Michael Brown grand jury and declined to file any charges against the white cop who murdered him the street. A white judge denied the request.

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.