‘I have suffered so much’: The teen desperate to attend her father’s execution

In October, 19-year-old Corionsa “Khori” Ramey took her newborn son to visit her grandfather, Kevin Johnson, in Missouri. “My father was able to hold his grandson, and we were able to take a picture together,” she later wrote about the meeting in court documents. “It was a beautiful but bittersweet moment for me, because I realize this may be the only time my father gets to hold my son.”

Johnson is scheduled to be executed on Tuesday, November 29, after being sentenced to death for the 2005 murder of Police Sergeant William McEntee. A month after Johnson met her grandson, a federal court ruled that, under state law, Khoury would not be allowed to witness her father’s execution because she is under 21.

Ramey wrote in another court filing, “I’ve suffered a lot in my life — first I lost my father in prison when I was two, and then I witnessed my mother’s ex-boyfriend murdered when I was only four. was years old.” “It hurts to know that I’m about to lose my father again.”

On any death row in America, you will find stories of unimaginable loss, injustice, and trauma for those affected on all sides. The death penalty is often meted out to people who have struggled through overwhelming violence in their lives, and inflicted that same violence on others. To understand what it means to see the final chapter of The Death Penalty, one must begin at the very beginning of the story.

Kevin Johnson grew up in dire circumstances, with a father who was imprisoned for most of his childhood and a mother who was addicted to crack. Johnson and his siblings were often left, sometimes for days at a time, to fend for themselves. Social services records show case workers once found Johnson and a brother living among cockroaches, which Johnson said he would chase for food. His brother, Joseph “Bam Bam” Long, was born with a congenital heart defect after being exposed to cocaine in utero. By age 14, Johnson was living in and out of group homes, and attempted suicide.

In 2005, Johnson, who was then 19 years old, broke the terms of his parole for a previous offense involving a domestic dispute with Khoury’s mother. He was warned that the police were looking for him. Thinking the authorities might impound his car, Johnson sends Bam Bam a few houses to deliver the keys to his grandmother, to make it appear as if she is the owner of the vehicle.

In a tragic turn of events, just as officers arrived at Johnson’s home in the suburbs of St. Louis, Bam Bam went into cardiac arrest. Watching from Nextdoor, Johnson says she saw officers fail to provide prompt assistance to her baby brother, and scuffled with his worried mother, nearly getting knocked off a porch. (The department said that as soon as it became clear that Bam Bam was dying of heart failure, it began life-saving measures for the child, and refused to have physical relations with Johnson’s mother.)

The experience sent Johnson into a kind of blind rage, he later testified. He blamed himself and the police for his brother’s death. When he confronted Sergeant McEntee – one of the policemen present during the encounter with Bam Bam and his mother – later that day, Johnson fired several shots at the officer’s face at close range, killing him instantly.

“He didn’t try to help [Bam Bam] Because they were looking for me,” Johnson told the jury during his 2007 trial. “I passed out, and I pulled out my gun, and I started shooting … I was just in a trance.” McEntee He is survived by his wife, a daughter, two sonsand a NIece With a heart problem and a feeding tube for which he helped care for his sister.

The case, in which a young black man killed a white police officer, quickly became a sensation in Kirkwood, Missouri, a largely white suburb where a police officer had not been killed in more than 100 years. . The local prosecutor, Robert McCulloch, had a reputation for getting the death penalty. At age 12, Officer’s own father, a St. Louis police officer, was killed in the line of duty by a black man.

Johnson’s first trial ended in a mistrial in 2007. The jury members could not reach an agreement on what was the young man’s state of mind during the murder: whether it was a premeditated murder or a sudden outburst of violence. A retrial later that year, where the jury pool changed from a racially diverse group to majority white panelists, found Johnson guilty and called for the death penalty.

Khoury managed to maintain a relationship with his father while he was on death row. After her mother was killed in front of her by an ex-boyfriend, Johnson was the only parent she had left. The two kept in touch with regular calls, emails and visits, where they would play scrabble and take polaroid pictures together,

By all accounts, Johnson was as involved a father as possible. She worked with state officials and secured an academic contact to help keep track of Khoury’s grades as she became interested in nursing. When Khoury graduated from high school, she wore a T-shirt under her gown that featured photos of Johnson, her mother, and her maternal grandmother, along with the text: “i did it for you all,

Khoury, whose case is taken up by the American Civil Liberties Union, argues that the state of Missouri is violating her constitutional rights by denying her the opportunity to be present at her father’s execution: specifically, with her father. his First Amendment right to associate, and his Fourteenth Amendment guarantees equal protection under the law (in this case, equal treatment for those 21 and older Huh able to watch the execution of family members.) Given that both the 19-year-old and the 21-year-old are legal adults, “there is no legitimate state purpose to prevent Ms. Ramey from watching her father’s execution, simply because she an adult under the age of 21 – because none exists,” ACLU argued in a brief of,

Earlier this month, US District Judge Brian Vimes acknowledged the brutality of the situation. Nevertheless, he held that the loss suffered by Khoury for not being able to witness the execution was not a constitutional violation. “The court does not exempt [Ms Ramey’s] Allegations and disputes of emotional harm do not, they are irreparable in a personal sense and in a legal sense,” he wrote Friday, though he ultimately concluded that the state “may continue to bar him from the execution chamber to protect its sovereignty.” Criminal law enforcement” policies.

The ACLU argues that this is an “illogical and irrational” conclusion. Corinne Kendrick, deputy director of the ACLU’s National Prison Project and one of Remy’s attorneys, said, “Alleviating his pain and grief by preventing him from being with his father will do nothing to bring closure or healing to anyone else.” ” Told In a statement after the verdict. “If 19 is not old enough to see an execution, then the State should spare Mr. Johnson’s life, as he did when he was 19.”

“I am heartbroken that I will not be able to be with my father during his final moments,” Rami said in the release. “My dad is the most important person in my life. He has been there for me my whole life, even when he has been imprisoned. He is a good father, the only parent I have.

Critics say there are other problems with the case as well, pointing to The death penalty disproportionately affects black men – especially when the victim of the crime is white, As of Monday afternoon, a hearing was underway in the Missouri Supreme Court to stay the killing.

Late last year, Johnson’s legal team asked St. Louis County’s newly created Conviction and Incident Review Unit to investigate allegations of racial bias hanging over the case. This year, Special Prosecutor Edward Keenan announced that the 2007 death sentence was tainted by “improper racial factors” and asked for the sentence to be vacated.

The Kansas city attorney said, “These facts and others leave no serious doubt that Mr. McCulloch’s office has discriminated.” wrote about his findings, “The judgment must be set aside so that a valid trial and sentencing can proceed.”

The special prosecutor described how local officials had declined to seek the death penalty for Trenton Dorster, a white man accused of crimes similar to Johnson’s. The officer also said they uncovered a memo showing a deliberate attempt to selectively kill black gamblers based on their race, which is illegal.

In fact, during the trial itself, jurors reported that race divided the hearing room, with one black juror describing African-Americans as “you guys” to a pair of white jurors. and warned everyone else that a sentence less than death would mean Johnson would “go out and hunt them down”. Another Black juror said a friend of hers had driven her to the trial because she felt too intimidated by the large police presence in the courtroom, and was afraid she would be pulled over improperly or find herself arrested for parking. Will be done

a study University of North Carolina researchers found that McCulloch, the prosecutor who sentenced Johnson to death, was 3.5 times more likely to seek the death penalty in homicide cases involving a white victim, which matches a large body of evidence that the death penalty is applicable. along racist lines, (McCulloch denied the allegations of racism in a recent interview with local Riverfront Times, Saying“There’s no question that you couldn’t do the job I did as long as I did and some people don’t think you’re a terrible person.”)

Johnson’s appeal was unsuccessful. Earlier this month, a county court dismissed the special prosecutor’s findings without a hearing, even though state law requires it. Then, on Monday, the Missouri Supreme Court denied Johnson’s appeal to stay the execution while the review process was underway.

“Mr. Johnson has received every protection afforded by the Constitutions of Missouri and the United States, and Mr. Johnson’s conviction and sentence remain for his horrific and heinous crime. The Missouri State Court orders Mr. Johnson’s sentence Will fulfill and do justice.” Governor Mike Parson Told In a statement on Monday, Johnson’s request for clemency was denied. “The violent murder of any civilian, let alone a Missouri law enforcement officer, should only be met with the full punishment that state law allows. Through Mr. Johnson’s own heinous actions, he stole the life of Sergeant McEntee and Left a family unhappy, a wife widowed, and children orphaned.”

Khori will also be rendered fatherless on Tuesday.

independent and non-profit Responsible Business Initiative for Justice (RBIJ) has launched a joint campaign to end the death penalty in the US. The RBIJ has attracted over 150 well-known signatories with its Business Leaders’ Declaration Against the Death Penalty being the latest on the list – The Independent. We join high-profile executives like Arianna Huffington, Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg and Virgin Group founder Sir Richard Branson as part of this initiative in pledging to highlight the injustice of the death penalty in our coverage.