Calling on relatives and friends, attorneys for convicted killer Ernest Lee Johnson portrayed him as a slow child who showed signs of mental deficiency while growing up in rural Missouri — a portrait they hope will convince a jury that Johnson is retarded and, therefore, shouldn’t be put to death.
Johnson faces sentencing for the third time in the 13th Circuit Court for killing three Columbia convenience store employees in 1994. He was sentenced to death by lethal injection in 1995 but was granted an appeal three years later when the Missouri Supreme Court ruled that his attorney failed to call an expert witness to testify about Johnson’s mental capacity.
In that sentencing retrial in 1998, he was again sentenced to die. He appealed again. But in 2003, the state high court granted Johnson a new sentencing trial based on a 2001 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that made it illegal to execute someone with a diminished mental capacity.
As the defense began its case on the second day of the new sentencing retrial, his attorneys, Tim Cisar and Elizabeth Carlyle, called witnesses who described Johnson’s childhood as one filled with drug use and sexual abuse, both encouraged by his mother.
Tensions were high in Johnson’s home in Charleston, in the southeast part of the state. Johnson’s older brother, Bobby, testified that arguments and violence were common in the home and that in one incident, Johnson’s alcoholic father fired his shotgun in the air and threatened to kill members of the family.
Bobby Johnson said his parents fought often, and as children he and Ernest and their sister were forced to move around among family members.
Ernest Johnson also had trouble learning in school and preferred to hang out with children younger than himself, his brother testified.
In cross-examination, Boone County Prosecutor Kevin Crane tried to show that although the brothers were raised in similar circumstances, Bobby Johnson managed to overcome his upbringing.
“You were motivated in school to get good grades?” Crane asked.
Bobby Johnson answered that he had role models, such as school principals and sports coaches, who helped him graduate from high school and college.
The extensive testimony about Ernest Johnson’s troubled childhood came after a morning of grisly descriptions of the triple murder at Casey’s General Store on Ballenger Road and statements from survivors who talked about how the murders permanently altered their lives.
Ernest Johnson said he had originally intended to rob the store to pay for drugs when he arrived there at closing time on the night of Feb. 12, 1994.
According to testimony presented Monday, Ernest Johnson was friendly with Casey’s General Store employees and had visited the store multiple times that day. He returned that night wearing a stocking cap to prevent store employees from recognizing him, Crane said.
In a video presented to the court Monday, Johnson said he wanted the key to a safe in the store. Johnson said after store manager Mary Bratcher tried to flush a key down a toilet, he lost it.
Earlier Tuesday, a former medical examiner’s testimony about the killings was read in court.
Multiple blunt injuries to the head killed all three victims, according to testimony by Jay Dix, former Boone County medical examiner, that was read in court Tuesday. He said many of the injuries were consistent with the use of a hammer.
Dix said that although he couldn’t determine whether the victims were conscious after the initial blow, it would have been “terrifically painful” for the victims if they had been conscious.
On Tuesday, Rob Bratcher said he had to call his family to tell them about the slaying of his mother and then helped arranged her funeral.
“That was the toughest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life,” Bratcher said. “She was my best friend.”
Jerry Blakey said his cousin, victim Fred Jones, was a family man whose idea of a good time was heading down to the local Casey’s to chat with employees.
“That was his outlet,” Blakey said.
Berry Scruggs described his mother, victim Mabel Scruggs, as a woman who enjoyed taking trips to visit family with her only son.
At the time of her murder, Berry Scruggs said, his mother had been working three jobs to earn extra money to take care of his grandmother, who lived in a nursing home.
“I was very devastated, much as I am today.”