Time to Admit What we Know About the Death Penalty and who Receives it
COMMENTARY

July 9, 2021 by Mary Sanchez
Time to Admit What we Know About the Death Penalty and who Receives it
Ernest Lee Johnson

His mother began drinking as a ten-year-old.

Her prepubescent cocktail of choice was half beer and half soda. As a young teen out partying with the man who’d father her children, she drank pints of gin and whiskey.

Jean Ann Patton was an addict who drank through her pregnancy with Ernest Lee Johnson and abused sedatives too, doctors testified in depositions.

Patton reached the fourth grade. Her IQ was noted by doctors as 61. Her history of suicidal ideation, doctor’s assessments of chronic depressive neurosis, a passive aggressive personality and moderate mental retardation are also chronicled.

She died of cirrhosis and cancer in 1997. By then her son was on Missouri’s death row, found guilty of three horrifically violent murders.

Considering what happened to him in the womb, other early traumas of physical and sexual abuse, and his own addictions you might conclude that Ernest Lee Johnson never stood much of a chance.

He abused marijuana, alcohol and crack cocaine. He had depression diagnosed as dysthymia, couldn’t function as an adult, and had a similarly low IQ to his mother’s.

The family background is part of a flood of files released recently by the Missouri Attorney General’s office in response to a petition on Johnson’s behalf. The state, in a departure from the moratorium on the death penalty at the federal level, recently set Johnson’s execution for October 5.

Missouri has long been extra committed to its death penalty. It fought for years to keep the protocols of its lethal injection drugs secret, which drugs were being used and where they were purchased.

And it’s fighting to execute Johnson.

The stand is curious in a state that is also so adamantly “pro-life.”

Here is a case where what’s being argued is whether or not Johnson, 60, should be spared the death penalty because he has fetal alcohol effect, which at least one doctor agreed to as a diagnosis. Another said Johnson probably has a congenital learning disability.

Missouri is a state that believes in the rights of the unborn when it suits its purposes.

There’s nothing noble about those conflicts. It’s merely politicians as shape shifters.

The Biden administration isn’t much better right now. On July 1, it decreed a moratorium on federal executions to study the issue more.

Study it? As if we don’t already know that the death penalty is not a deterrent to crime? As if we don’t already know it’s far more expensive to try such cases, as opposed to seeking a sentence of life in prison? There are examples of cases where people were executed, then later found to be innocent.

And despite those points there’s one more. Maybe it’s time for states and the Department of Justice to admit what is even more commonly known. That Johnson’s story is illustrative of who ends up in jail and on death row.

Prisons are filled with people who have generational addictions and mental health disorders. Many inmates had childhoods of sexual violence and physical abuse. And that those who are poor and Black, like Johnson, more often wind up on death row.

Johnnson’s story isn’t the type of case that gets made into a true crime podcast. It’s gory; a hammer was used and there was no forensic mystery to unravel. And neither the victims, nor Johnson led glamorous lives. They were three middle-aged workers at a Casey’s store in the middle of Missouri.

Mary Bratcher, 46, Fred Jones, 58 and Mabel Scruggs, 57 knew their killer. He had been a regular at the Columbia, Missouri store.

Most people with addictions don’t murder. The argument for Johnson is that he never planned the murders, just the robbery to buy more drugs. And that when things didn’t go as planned, locking the people in a walk-in and getting one to open the safe, the drugged-up Johnson couldn’t recalibrate, reason and back down, partly due to his congenital issues.

Executing him doesn’t bring the victims back. In respect to them, it’s not my place to question the wishes or feelings of grieving families.

My place is to question why the state and the federal government won’t quit hiding and admit what we know about addiction as an escalating way to self-medicate and drug and alcohol’s links to crime.

Let’s stop feigning ignorance when convenient and invoking rights when convenient.

©2021 Mary Sanchez. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

A+
a-

In The News

Health

Voting

Opinions

Jones Act Reform Is Not a Party Issue

Many political disagreements divide neatly along party lines, but the protectionist Jones Act isn’t one of them.  In Congress and... Read More

Many political disagreements divide neatly along party lines, but the protectionist Jones Act isn’t one of them.  In Congress and state Capitols across America, politicians from the two major political parties can be found arguing for and against the law, which requires that all goods shipped between... Read More

Protect American Data Instead of Bailing Out Mega Stores

The recent announcement of the Capital One-Discover merger has been escalating public attention on the ever-changing credit card payments industry. As consumer... Read More

The recent announcement of the Capital One-Discover merger has been escalating public attention on the ever-changing credit card payments industry. As consumer and lawmaker attention to this issue grows, proponents of a harmful new credit bill are using this opportunity to insert their own legislative agendas. The bill, the Credit... Read More

Part D Redesign Could Threaten Organ Transplant Recipients’ Second Lease on Life

For more than 40 years, Glenda Daggert has lived with Type 1 diabetes and resulting kidney failure. She finally received... Read More

For more than 40 years, Glenda Daggert has lived with Type 1 diabetes and resulting kidney failure. She finally received her second chance — a simultaneous kidney and pancreas transplant — in 1999. She is one of the lucky ones. As we celebrate World Kidney Day... Read More

Alabama’s Embryo Ruling and the Links to Adoption in America

This February the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are children and thus need to be protected. When embryos are... Read More

This February the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are children and thus need to be protected. When embryos are destroyed, which is inevitable during standard in vitro fertilization procedures, this now constitutes murder in the state of Alabama. In the wake of the Alabama ruling... Read More

Biden Is Taking Aim at the Wrong 'Junk'

Imagine this: a president was elected with a razor thin majority of the vote. He then spent the ensuing three... Read More

Imagine this: a president was elected with a razor thin majority of the vote. He then spent the ensuing three years reducing the production of domestic energy while spending newly created money at historic levels, causing catastrophic and painful inflation. This is, by all accounts, bad... Read More

A Convicted Felon Can Run but He Can’t Vote

Although the U.S. Constitution does not positively guarantee a right to vote, the Supreme Court has identified voting as a... Read More

Although the U.S. Constitution does not positively guarantee a right to vote, the Supreme Court has identified voting as a fundamental right. The 15th, 19th and 26th Amendments have, respectively, further prohibited voting restrictions on the basis of race (1870), sex (1920) and age over 17 (1971). All... Read More

News From The Well
scroll top