WASHINGTON – The Trump administration executed Corey Johnson on Thursday for a series of seven murders in 1992. He was the 12th federal inmate sentenced to death under President Trump.
Mr. Johnson committed the murders in the Richmond, Va. Area, to promote a drug company that smuggled large quantities of cocaine. Among his crimes are the shooting with a semiautomatic weapon by a rival drug dealer, the murder of a woman who did not pay for crack and the point-blank shot of a man Mr. Johnson suspected of cooperating with the police.
Johnson, 52, was pronounced dead by a lethal injection at 11:34 pm at the federal correctional facility in Terre Haute, Indiana, the Bureau of Prisons said.
When asked by an executioner if he had any last words, Johnson replied, “No, I’m fine,” according to a report by a journalist present. Several seconds later, he said softly, “I love you,” looking at a room designated for members of his family.
In a note released by a spokesman for his defense team, Mr. Johnson apologized to the families who were victimized for his actions and listed the names of the seven murder victims, asking them to be remembered.
“In the streets, I was looking for shortcuts, I had some good models, I was a side tracker, I was blind and stupid,” he said. “I am not the same man I was.”
Mr. Johnson thanked the chaplain, his minister, his legal team and the staff of the special containment unit. He noted that “the strawberry pizza and milkshake were wonderful,” but that he never received the jam-filled donuts he ordered, a reference to his final meal order. “What is up with that?” he added. “This must be fixed.”
Johnson tested positive for coronavirus last month, shortly after the government scheduled his execution, during an outbreak on federal death row in Terre Haute prison. At least 22 of the men housed on death row had positive results, said prisoners’ lawyers and others with knowledge of their cases. Madeline Cohen, who represents two of the men, said she knew of 33 cases.
In a request to delay Johnson’s execution, his lawyers said the virus had caused significant lung damage. They argued that his execution would violate the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishments, because he could experience the feeling of suffocation or drowning if performed using the federal government’s method, which uses a single drug, pentobarbital. Instead, his lawyers suggested, Johnson could be executed by a firing squad or the Bureau of Prisons could administer an analgesic anesthetic before the pentobarbital injection.
Specifically, Johnson’s lawyers argued that combining the coronavirus with the government’s lethal injection protocol would put him “especially at risk of having instantaneous pulmonary edema while he is still sensible.” Instantaneous pulmonary edema, a condition in which fluid accumulates rapidly in the lungs, has been at the center of some challenges to the federal government’s implementation protocol. Courts have been unwelcoming to these claims.
But, briefly, it looked like the coronavirus would give Mr. Johnson a relief. A US District Court judge for the District of Columbia suspended Johnson’s execution and another execution scheduled for Friday until at least March. Shortly thereafter, a panel of judges from the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit overturned that order.
Accompanied by another panel judge, Judge Gregory G. Katsas of the Court of Appeals cited Supreme Court precedent that states that the Eighth Amendment “does not guarantee a prisoner painless death – something that obviously is not guaranteed to many people.'”
In a lawsuit before the Federal Supreme Court, the government compared its lethal injection protocol to death by hanging, claiming that the hanging can cause asphyxiation that lasts several minutes. Even if coronavirus infections made executions of prisoners more painful, the government argued, the “brief duration of pain”, probably measured in seconds or at most two minutes, would be much less than that of prisoners executed by hanging.
Johnson “is a convicted serial killer who has murdered and mutilated several people on different occasions, and whose victims included innocent passers-by,” the government said in a separate Supreme Court case. “Their families have waited decades for the sentence to be carried out and are currently in Terre Haute, Indiana, for execution.”
The majority of the Supreme Court sided with the government in rejecting Johnson’s postponement requests.
Johnson’s lawyers also sought to challenge his execution, arguing that he was mentally disabled, making it illegal.
His claims of intellectual disability were dismissed on the grounds that an IQ score of 77 was considered too high to warrant diagnosis, his lawyers said. But they argued that the results of other IQ tests and an adjusted version of the same score indicated that he qualified as an intellectual disabled.
But refuting these claims, the Justice Department argued that the murders were planned, not impulsive acts by someone incapable of calculated judgments. For example, when the drug organization operated in Trenton, NJ, Johnson beat people with a metal stick to protect the company, the government said.
Lawyers for another man executed by the Trump administration – Alfred Bourgeois in December – also argued that his client was mentally handicapped. In both cases, the majority of the Supreme Court rejected the prisoners’ claims.
Two of Johnson’s lawyers still claimed that his client did not have the capacity to be a drug lord, as portrayed by the government. In a statement, they said he barely knew how to read or write, struggled with the basic tasks of daily life and was “a follower, desperate for approval, support and guidance”.
“No court has ever held a hearing to consider the overwhelming evidence of Johnson’s intellectual disability,” said lawyers Donald P. Salzman and Ronald J. Tabak. “And the clemency process has failed to fulfill 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 series of other charges related to drug trafficking and acts of violence. His lawyers argued unsuccessfully that he should be pardoned under the First Step Act, a bill signed by Mr. Trump that, among other things, allowed shorter sentences for certain drug offenders.
Two others involved in the conspiracy – Richard Tipton and James Roane – who together trafficked large quantities 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 in Terre Haute. The Justice Department did not schedule its executions.
President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., whose term begins on Wednesday, has signaled his opposition to the federal death penalty, so his executions are unlikely to take place anytime soon. Biden pledged to work to pass legislation to end the federal death penalty as part of his criminal justice platform.
The Trump administration plans to execute its last inmate, Dustin J. Higgs, on Friday. Mr. Higgs was sentenced to death for the 1996 murders of three women in Maryland. If his lawyers are unsuccessful in his appeals and Trump does not grant clemency, Higgs’s death will be the 13th federal execution in just over six months and the third this week. Lisa M. Montgomery, the only woman on federal death row, was sentenced to death on Wednesday.
Since July, the number of prisoners sentenced to federal death has fallen by about 20% as a result of the flood of executions carried out by the Trump administration, according to data from the Death Penalty Information Center. That month, the government resumed the use of federal capital punishment after a 17-year hiatus.