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WASHINGTON – The Trump administration executed Corey Johnson on Thursday for a series of seven murders in 1992. He was the 12th federal inmate to be put to death under President Trump.
Mr Johnson committed the murders in the Richmond, Va. Area to promote a drug company that trafficked large amounts of cocaine. Among his crimes were the shooting with a semi-automatic weapon of a rival drug dealer, the murder of a woman who had not paid for crack cocaine and the shooting of a man at close range whom Mr Johnson suspected to cooperate with the police.
Mr Johnson, 52, was pronounced dead by lethal injection at 11:34 p.m. at the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Indonesia, the Bureau of Prisons said.
Asked by an executioner if he had any final words, Mr Johnson replied, “No, I’m fine,” according to a report by a reporter present. A few seconds later, he said quietly, “I love you,” looking at a room reserved for his family members.
In a statement released by a spokesperson for his defense team, Mr Johnson apologized to families who were victims of his actions and listed the names of the seven murder victims, asking that they be recalled.
“In the street, I was looking for shortcuts, I had good models, I was on the side, I was blind and stupid,” he says. “I’m not the same man I was.”
Mr Johnson thanked the chaplain, his minister, his legal team and the staff of the special detention unit. He noted that “the pizza and strawberry shake were wonderful,” but that he had never received the jelly-filled donuts he ordered, a reference to his last meal request. “What is that? he added. “This should be fixed.”
Mr Johnson tested positive for coronavirus last month, shortly after the government scheduled his execution, during an outbreak in the Federal District of Death at Terre Haute prison. At least 22 of the men held in the death row have tested positive, lawyers for the prisoners and others familiar with their cases have said. Madeline Cohen, who represents two of the men, said she was aware of 33 cases.
In a request to delay Mr Johnson’s execution, his lawyers said the virus had caused significant lung damage. They argued that his execution would violate the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment, as he could experience a sensation of suffocation or drowning if put to death with the federal government’s method, which uses a single drug, pentobarbital. Instead, his lawyers suggested, Mr Johnson could be executed by a firing squad or the Prisons Office could administer an anesthetic pain reliever before the pentobarbital injection.
Specifically, Mr Johnson’s lawyers argued that the combination of the coronavirus and the government’s lethal injection protocol would place him “particularly at risk of suffering from flash pulmonary edema while remaining susceptible.” Flash pulmonary edema, a condition in which fluid builds up quickly in the lungs, has been at the center of some challenges to the federal government’s enforcement protocol. The courts have been largely unresponsive to these requests.
But briefly, it looked like the coronavirus would provide Mr Johnson with reprieve. A U.S. District Court judge for the District of Columbia has suspended Mr Johnson’s execution and another execution scheduled for at least Friday until March. Shortly thereafter, a panel of judges from the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit overturned that order.
Joined by another panel judge, Court of Appeal Judge Gregory G. Katsas cited Supreme Court precedent that the Eighth Amendment “does not guarantee a prisoner a painless death – which, of course, is not guaranteed to many. people.'”
In a Supreme Court case, the government opposed its lethal injection protocol to death by hanging, saying hanging could cause suffocation for several minutes. Even if coronavirus infections made prisoners’ executions more painful, the government argued, the “brief duration of pain”, most likely measured in seconds or at most two minutes, would be much less than that of inmates executed by hanging .
Mr Johnson “is a convicted serial killer who has murdered and mutilated several people on different occasions, and whose victims have included innocent bystanders,” the government said in a separate Supreme Court file. “Their families have waited decades for the sentence to be carried out and are now in Terre Haute, Indonesia, for execution.”
A majority of the Supreme Court sided with the government in denying Mr Johnson’s stay requests.
Mr Johnson’s lawyers have also sought to challenge his execution arguing that he was intellectually disabled, which made it illegal.
His claims of intellectual disability were dismissed on the grounds that an IQ of 77 was deemed too high to merit the diagnosis, his lawyers said. But they argued that results from other IQ tests and an adjusted version of the same score indicated that he was classified as intellectually disabled.
But refuting the allegations, the Justice Department argued that the murders were planned, not impulsive acts by someone incapable of calculated judgments. For example, when the pharmaceutical company was operating in Trenton, NJ, Mr Johnson beat people with a metal bat to protect the company, the government said.
Lawyers for another man executed by the Trump administration – Alfred Bourgeois in December – also argued that their client was intellectually disabled. In both cases, a majority of the Supreme Court rejected the prisoners’ claims.
Two of Mr Johnson’s attorneys still argued their client lacked the capacity to be a drug mainstay, as the government described it. In a statement, they said he could barely read or write, struggled with basic tasks of daily living and was “a follower, in desperate need of approval, support and guidance.”
“No court has ever held a hearing to consider the overwhelming evidence of Mr. Johnson’s intellectual disability,” said lawyers Donald P. Salzman and Ronald J. Tabak. “And the leniency process has failed to play its historic role as a safeguard against violations of due process and the rule of law.”
Mr Johnson was convicted in 1993 of seven capital murders, among a host of other charges relating to drug trafficking and acts of violence. His lawyers have argued unsuccessfully that he should be granted a stay under the First Step Act, a bill signed by Mr. Trump that allowed, among other things, shortened sentences for some drug offenders.
Two other people involved in the conspiracy – Richard Tipton and James Roane – who together trafficked large amounts of cocaine in the Richmond area in the early 1990s, were also sentenced to death.
Mr. Tipton and Mr. Roane remain in the federal penitentiary of Terre Haute. The Ministry of Justice did not schedule their executions.
President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., whose term begins Wednesday, has signaled his opposition to the federal death penalty, so their executions are unlikely to take place any time soon. Mr Biden has pledged to work to pass legislation to end the federal death penalty as part of his criminal justice platform.
The Trump administration intends to execute its last inmate, Dustin J. Higgs, on Friday. Mr. Higgs was sentenced to death for the murders of three women in Maryland in 1996. If his attorneys fail in their appeals and Mr. Trump does not grant clemency, Mr. Higgs’ death will be the 13th federal execution in just over six months and the third this week. Lisa M. Montgomery, the only woman sentenced to death by the federal government, was put to death on Wednesday.
Since July, the number of prisoners sentenced to death by the federal government has fallen by around 20% following the wave of executions carried out by the Trump administration, according to data from the Information Center on the Death Penalty . That month, the administration resumed the use of the federal death penalty after a 17-year hiatus.
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