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It took a couple of hours but I think what finally got everybody to agree was one guy
who was not the foreman, stood up and said, "We all agree that he did it, we agree that
it was premeditated. Can you think of any worse crime that could have been committed?
It was a six year old girl who was taken from her home and essentially tortured
and then brutally killed."
And we all agreed on that. Then he said, "Well,
if this is the worst crime that's been committed, the worst penalty that we can give is the
death penalty. Don't you think this is what this case deserves?"
Neske: Today's date is July 26, 2002, and the time is 8:33 p.m. I am in the offices of
the Division of Criminal Investigation speaking with
Johnny Johnson, in reference to St. Louis
County Police report #02-70076
Neske: Okay, Johnny. For the record, will you verify that
this tape is being done with your permission? Johnny: Yes.
Neske: Okay. We are going to start with
early this morning. You were sleeping on the couch.
Neske: Was anybody else in the room with you sleeping?
Johnny: Nobody was in the room sleeping,
but then Cassie came down - or Casey.
Neske: Casey? And that would be
Cassandra, but they call her Casey?
Johnny: Yeah
Neske: Okay. Then what happened?
Johnny: I got up and went to the door.
Neske: And where were you going to go?
Johnny: I was going to the glass factory.
Neske: Okay. So you're going out the front door. Okay.
Johnny: Casey asked me where I was going,
and I told her to the glass factory, and she
said, "What's the glass factory?"
And I told her it's a place that I go to hang out.
And then I started walking out the door, and she asked if she could come.
And we go up the hill, and there
is this wall, real short, and there's
the ruins of the old glass factory are right there.
Neske: Okay. I have this, uh, paper in front of me
where we had done a drawing when we
just talked to you a few minutes ago,
and you, uh, kind of indicated that there was
two ways to enter this, as you are calling it a silo.
Johnny: Yes.
Neske: Okay. So now you get to the edge of the silo. So what happens then?
Johnny: She, uh, sits down and she scoots herself off and hops down on the ground.
Neske: And then what do you do? Johnny: I follow right behind her.
Neske: And you in your words
said that she was "freaking out?"
Johnny: Yes.
Neske: Okay. Can you explain what her physical
actions were what you mean by "freaking out?"
Johnny: She kept on - she was saying she was sorry
and started screaming for help and,
and then I panic out because I see her panicking out,
and I pick up a brick, and I throw it at her head...
Before you right now lies the body of a precious little girl.
Casey. Casey. Say one? Look. One?
Are you going to be one today? Are you one?
The man police say confessed to the crime,
24-year-old Johnny Johnson, made his first
appearance in court yesterday, where he did not
enter a plea. He has been charged with
murder, armed criminal action,
kidnapping, and attempted forcible rape.
Happy Easter, Aunt Della
Casey, did the Easter Bunny come? He did?
I put the website together pretty quickly after
we lost her, mainly just because I wanted
there to be a place where we could,
you know, remember her. There is no mention of what
happened to her on the website.
It's just for her. Because, like I said, I don't want
her to be remembered just for the terrible thing that
happened to her, because she was such a cool little kid.
That's why I put - - there's a picture on there that I put
one of her smiling really big, and I put "Casey is happy,"
and then I put one when she was like having a little pouting
fit and said, "Casey not so happy," because just like
every little kid, she had her moments.
So just these are some of the pictures that we have of us growing up. It's Kristen and
Chelsea because they were close in age, and
then it's you know me and Casey. And then just like,
with Christmas, obviously we were doing a silly picture, and I took it way to another level.
And then this, this picture I have mixed feelings about, because that's
the picture the news had all over the place.
I think we'll go down to Leonard Park, where there is a memorial bench for Casey that the
city put in, and when we used to do the memorial walk, we always used to end our walk there.
There's a little plaque over here.
I thought it was really nice of the city to do this.
Like I said, everybody was impacted.
So, this is just a little side story, but this is actually the second bench, because
it had to be replaced, because the first one had like just little circles in it, which
was really cute. It kind of looked like polka
dots, except for a little girl that was actually
a friend of Chelsea's, I think, got her finger stuck in it, so they had to cut the
bench off of her finger, so they had to get a new bench. So this is actually the second
purple bench for Casey here.
Chelsea was Casey's sister, and she was eleven when Casey died, and her and her friend
had come over here to the park the day before. Johnny Johnson followed them over here, and
it kind of freaked her out. So they went home, and they told the friend's mom, and she
said, "Well, you girls just stay away from him." And they did, but she didn't tell
Angie, and Chelsea blamed herself for that for the whole rest of her life, because she
said if she had told her mom, you know, that she would have kept her away.
So that was just something that she carried with her.
Neske: Going back to earlier this morning, where were you at let's say 6:00 a.m.?
Johnny: Laying on the couch. Neske: And were you living there with them?
Johnny: I was staying at their house for a couple days.
Neske: And how many days have you been staying there? Johnny: Three.
Neske: So you have been sleeping there at night. You're not really living there.
Neske: You're just laying your head at night, sleeping. Johnny: Yes.
So this was my brother's house. This is where Angie was staying with the kids, because her
and Ernie were not technically together. They were kind of working things out. And then
that's the house where they were staying. Casey was crying for her dad, so they stayed
over there that night. And then so that's why when Ernie got up in the morning and Casey
got up with him, when he came out of the shower and
he couldn't find Casey, his original thought
was she ran over to Grandpa's. She's gonna be in trouble because she crossed the street
by herself, but then he went over there to my brother's house and she wasn't there, so
then they immediately started looking and had called the police within a half an hour.
Neske: And you walked from the house down Benton,
and then you make a left turn on the
first street? Johnny: Yeah.
Neske: And then you come to an alleyway?
Johnny: And then we started walking down the alleyway,
and then she started complaining
'cause her feet hurt, because she had no shoes on.
Neske: Okay. Then what happened?
Johnny: Then I asked her if she wanted a piggyback
ride, and she said yes.
I remember getting a phone call,
I think it was from my sister, Debbie. Telling me that
they couldn't find Casey.
I remember calling my husband at work, and he just had to run
out of work. He works right over in Fenton
and he just told them, "I gotta go. I can't
understand a word she's saying except for that
Casey's missing." I remember I felt really panicked
because there are many places that she could have been.
But the police were going
door to door. They were searching people's houses.
The people had pulled together and
were forming search parties and were going through the woods.
I, I have a very clear recollection of first
learning about Johnny's case. I think I had
worked several hours on a case and so I was taking some time off to get caught up at home,
and I had the news on, and as soon as I came home and I turned on the news, there was the
story of a missing girl in Valley Park. And it was just all day -- the news feed on
this was all day, and I couldn't look away.
The media was there and we kind of all learned that day that the media can either be your
best friend or they cannot be.
Because at that point, they were our best friend.
They were putting her picture out there. They were putting her name out there. They were
saying "If you know anything, please call."
Yeah, I remember hearing that a little girl was missing in Valley Park, around lunch time,
getting ready to go to lunch, and hearing helicopters, seeing them fly over the area.
On the way to lunch, we drove through Valley Park, and there was somebody, a man, walking
on the side of 141 who the police seemingly came out of nowhere and pulled over and tackled
this guy 'cause they were just trying to find anybody who knew anything about
what was going on.
He took her off into the, this wooded area, it was an old abandoned factory that was there
where he did what he was going to do, and he killed her and he buried her in this pit
with all the rocks around her.
Neske: Okay. Now you have buried the body? Johnny: Yes.
Neske: What do you do? Johnny: I leave the silo.
Neske: Okay. Johnny: And then I make a left out of there,
and I keep going the same way that we came when we went in there. But as soon as I got
out of the glass factory over the wall, I made the left and started walking down the
trail towards the river. Neske: Okay.
Kneib: Did you know that the trail headed to the river?
Johnny: Yes. I went down the boat ramp, and I, uh, took my shirt off and took my wallet
out to clean off the blood that I had on my leg.
...then walked down to a nearby river and cleaned all the blood off of him and washed
himself off, and then walked back to the house and everybody
is searching all over for this little girl
and acted like he had no idea what anybody was doing.
It wasn't long after I got down there
that Johnny Johnson came walking back up the street.
Soaking wet, from the river.
I guess he thought he could just get back before anybody realized
she was gone. I don't know.
Truthfully, I remember them whisking him away from there
because, there were a lot of people who
wanted to get their hands on him 'cause there were
pretty sure that he had done something to her.
They whisked him out of there.
I was at work, and my oldest son called
and told me that they were holding Johnny. And
he told me that they couldn't find Casey, and they thought
Johnny had something to do with it.
I can remember when I heard what happened. I fell, I cried. I said, "I can't believe it.
There's no way I can believe this." He spent so many hours with my sons and my brother's
daughters, his nieces, and never, never in a million years.
Angie was my best friend in eighth grade. I have known them since we were young.
My boys used to go over and play with their kids.
My nickname for Casey was "Dimple-Ella," 'cause she had one dimple.
I got a call too, and I could not believe it, I could not believe it at all. And then,
you know, we found out that they had found John, and they
kept him in there until, I think, basically he
confessed. They kept him in there that long.
Then later that day they were reporting that
they had statements from the suspect, and
I think even before the end of the news cycle that day,
I had heard information indicating
that the person they had in custody
who turned out to be Johnny - had had a history
of mental health issues.
They were in such a hurry to announce that they had found her body, that they announced
it before the family was formally notified. And so, many people in the family, including
her own sister found out about it on the TV, 'cause they showed the image of them bringing
her out which we all could have done without.
Everything in the media was, basically he was guilty. You know, it was switched
around, you're supposed to be innocent before proven guilty. The media already had it set.
Yeah, I know if he had not said that on live TV,
it would have been a little bit easier on us,
a little easier on us, but he said it on live TV, and it was devastating.
Everything was devastating.
It was hard going back to work. I remember...
I was even thinking about quitting my job,
I thought about never leaving the house again.
In fact, there were signs coming down 44
up into Eureka that my mom had to see every day,
that said, "Kill Johnny."
That someone had put up. Just the aggression, the hatred. Not
knowing this young man by any means to come out and just say hateful things about him
and to never know him. It makes me as a person look at the media so differently.
And I think that sensationalism drives the prosecutor to go further.
There was some people who when we contacted,
did have very strong reactions. As a matter of fact, one of the nurses said,
"Call me when they're ready to put the needle in. I'll do that."
"If you need me to help that's what I'm willing to do."
Honestly when it first happened, when I first heard the news, I said I hate him, which I
don't, I love him. Someone took me aside and talked to me, and said, "Look, there is someone
in my family that made a mistake, that was mentally ill, and we had to forgive him. And
you have to think right now, everybody in the world is hating him. So sit down and write
him a letter, and send it to him, 'cause you're gonna be the only one that's gonna reach out
to him right now. Your mom is probably in too much shock to even think about it." This
lady actually sat there with me and wrote the letter, and helped me mail it off.
Overall I've been trying capital cases since 1994. So, I was in a phone conference yesterday
with a judge and a prosecutor, and the judge was talking about the fact that he had not
tried a capital case ever, and the prosecutor I think has tried maybe one or two, and
I was sitting there mentally calculating I
think I've tried maybe 27 or 28 of them. And that's
not talking about the other homicide cases that I've tried.
I'm talking about full-on capital cases with a death
qualified jury and a penalty phase. Yeah. It's a lot.
I didn't know it was going to come to me,
but I knew it was going to come to our office.
And it did. We knew the prosecutor was going
to seek death on it, and based on caseload numbers,
I would be one of the attorneys assigned to it, and I was.
Beth and I were teamed up and I, I remember meeting Johnny and just thinking how pitiful
he was how he was not this monster that had been depicted in the stories of the case
that he was just this scared small clearly mentally ill person.
And some visits with Johnny were better than
others, because sometimes Johnny's schizophrenia, because that's what he has, would be in
full swing. Then other times, the symptoms of his schizophrenia would be more
withdrawn, and so those were some more productive meetings with him.
I think very early on, though, we realized this wasn't a case that we could claim
he didn't kill Casey. That was pretty evident by all of the evidence, and Johnny never tried
to say anything other than that.
He was charged with murder in the first degree. It was one where I went through the whole
process and made the determination that this
was a case where the aggravating circumstances
exist - he'd committed other felonies,
the kidnapping, the attempted rape, this excessive
violence involved in this case.
The plea always remained not guilty.
It was not guilty of murder first, conceding that
Johnny did this, Johnny killed Casey,
but that he wasn't coolly reflecting on the matter,
which is what the law requires for a murder first degree.
That was our strategy.
Well, theoretically anybody can plead not guilty by reason of insanity or mental defect.
But it almost never works, I mean it's very, very rare that it works.
If we'd had a doctor say that he's not guilty by reason of insanity, uh, and we didn't
have a doctor to say that, um, and if a jury would've agreed with that, which would have
been a huge battle, uh, Saint Louis County juries notoriously reject NGRI defenses, but
the best outcome for Johnny would be that he needed to be in a mental hospital.
I think people don't understand mental illness, they're scared of it, they shy away from it,
they have some pretty medieval notions, about it. Even if they do understand, what they
hear, in terms of how the legal system works, is that this person can be released at any
point, and that terrifies them. And usually these crimes are horrific enough that they
want this person locked up forever, and they want a guarantee of that.
In St Louis County no jury since the very late 50s has ever found an individual not
guilty by reason of insanity. It just has not happened.
We argued that this was certainly homicide that he was responsible for, but that this
was not in fact first-degree murder and in fact it was second degree murder. And so the
question really became was, there was no dispute
he had mental illness, even the prosecutors
essentially conceded that,
so the question was what role did that mental illness play
in the events of killing Casey?
We were never trying to send a message that
what happened to Casey wasn't you know,
anything other than what it was. It was horrifying.
Johnny was horrified by it.
Once Johnny realized what had happened,
he was as horrified by himself as anybody
was horrified by him.
We had doctors look at him,
we gathered as many records as we could find to sort of put
together the pieces of Johnny's life, and
ultimately that his mental illness, his schizophrenia
essentially prevented him from coolly reflecting
on his conduct. That he was just not somebody who
thought through conduct,
coolly reflected on anything in his life.
I think the primary purpose of the
psychiatric information and testimony was to
avoid a death sentence in the case.
The day my mom brought him home, I told her she brought the wrong child home. At five
years old, I didn't understand that you didn't have a choice of a boy or a girl. But when
I held him, I fell in love with him instantly.
We did a lot of skateboarding together. I used to pose him. I loved photography when
I was younger, and I used to pose him and dressed him up and gave him
skateboards and different things in the yard, props. We spent a lot of time together. I
remember a lot of times he thought he was The Incredible Hulk. One time I can remember
he jumped off the concrete steps and landed on his head. A pretty traumatic experience.
My mom had to rush him to the ER. I guess I was about eight years old, so I didn't quite
understand the severity of it. He'd done this quite a few times in his life. He thought
he was a super hero and [chuckle] didn't work out too well.
He had imaginary friends when he was little. His imaginary friends were... Their names
were Eric Rock, Katie Rock, Bob Rock. It was his brothers and sisters, [laughter].
He would make sure that we had room for them in the car. He was very sweet, very caring
about other people. The teacher said the he would take up for her in class. It was a classroom
with kids with special needs. And she would always talk about, if she had a problem with
a fellow student, Johnny would always take up for her and say, "You're giving her a hard time."
So he did start doing some cutting, he was self-mutilating at times, he would
cut his arms, and he would come to me and he'd say, "I cut myself again and I don't
know why I'm doing it. I can't seem to control myself.
What struck me about the case and what I wrote
about was that Johnny Johnson had been diagnosed
with depression and then
schizophrenia and had been sent to an agency that deals with
people with mental health issues. And shortly
before the murder, they dropped Johnny Johnson
from the rolls. I remember thinking
when it came up, when the murder came up, and found
out about that background and just thinking,
"Well, how odd that is."
I worked for a mental health case management agency,
which is contracted by the Department of Mental Health
and Deparment of Corrections.
Johnny was my youngest. When I met him,
he had just been released from prison
for I think stealing a lawnmower or something.
The contract with the Department of Corrections
was for me to see him three times a week.
We had a great relationship.
Meeting with him, he was abiding by everything.
And then, after a while,
he would not show up at his appointed places.
I went to his grandmother's home.
Grandmother said he wasn't there.
I had his girlfriend's number.
Girlfriend said he was sick, not feeling well - just excuses.
And then there was silence.
I couldn't find him.
Knowing what I had known about his possibly drinking with his
medications and his possibly not taking his medications,
I wrote a letter to his home
and sent the letter also to the probation officer.
He didn't want to go.
Then they would make him take his medication, and
he would say he didn't like the way it made him feel.
That's very common with people with mental illness the side effects for anti-psychotic
medication are terrible, and
many people choose to medicate themselves on the street and
not take the prescribed meds,
or they get a little bit better, and they think their issues are
resolved and they go off their meds.
And that was clearly the case with Johnny.
The reason why I wrote the letter was to
trigger the Department of Corrections or Department
of Mental Health to find him and bring him back into the fold.
and I was sure the Department of Corrections probation
officer would see that letter and definitely say, "uh uh."
"Put an APB out. Go pick him up wherever
you see him, and bring him back."
I sent the letter because I needed to
make everybody aware that I can't find him,
I haven't seen him, and there- fore I'm not providing care.
So they dropped Johnny Johnson at the end of
June as I remember, and the murder was in July.
It was July. I was having surgery. I was in the hospital.
And there was this news story about a young girl going missing.
And I remember laying in the bed at the hospital,
and there was Johnny Johnson on the news -
his face. My heart dropped.
And I called my office,
talked to my supervisor, and I checked my messages.
And the probation officer had
left her first message about the letter I sent saying,
"Hey, this is so and so.
I'm calling about the letter you sent."
Forensic psychiatrists like myself are often hired by either the defense or prosecution,
meaning the state. Jurors, for the most part,
find it, I think, difficult to follow medical
testimony. I think the - in my opinion,
the more scientific we become in psychiatry,
the harder it has become to digest it because
what has happened is we still lack a litmus
test, a laboratory test, a blood test,
an x-ray that we can hold up or show on paper
that someone has XYZ mental illness.
And so those are very difficult, and especially when,
the person has a history of drug and alcohol use. He could
have been just high, and if
they hear that kind of evidence or they start to think that,
that's a real nail in the coffin.
Jurors don't wanna be hoodwinked
by someone who's claiming mental illness.
One thing about psychiatry and the law is that it's not a good fit for the legal system,
which likes to have you find things beyond a reasonable doubt. Because in psychiatry,
it's so subjective, so many times, because for instance, if you have cancer, you can
open up the body and there are the cancer cells, there's the tumor right there. So you
can say beyond reasonable doubt, "This guy has cancer." If you have a broken leg and
the bone is sticking out of your thigh, then beyond a reasonable doubt, that guy has a
broken leg. In the law, you start out with the presumption that every person is sane,
and the burden becomes on the defense to convince
the jury that the person had a mental disease.
And it's not like you can do an X-ray
and say, "Here's the broken bone."
And that becomes very difficult for jurors to understand,
especially when the jury pool today might be somewhat sterile
to these issues. They might not have ever encountered
someone who's mentally ill.
They may not have a family member who's mentally ill.
Yeah, a lot of the public don't have mental
illness in their families.
That's a shame. If they would try to raise a
mental ill person for six months in their house, they could
understand maybe.
When Beth and I would meet with Johnny, and he would sometimes describe these hallucinations -
which were clearly real to him.
Um, and yet even our listening to it were like, you know
a skeptic would think he was making it up,
even when he had no reason to make them up.
He said he was hearing voices. He didn't know how to explain
it, so he drew that picture
to try to show what it feels like. He said it felt like bugs
was crawling underneath his skin
and in his brain, and I thought the picture was pretty telling.
John drew this? Look at all the...
So feeling... Feeling of being eaten alive.
Voices... Hurt yourself. Voices, hurt yourself.
Vision, shadows. Vision, shadows, and then visions.
That he has these kind of feelings.
I can't even imagine what that thought process is.
I think the old movie theater version of the schizophrenic as a raving maniac who talks
to themselves all the time, and rips off their clothes, or attacks people on the streets.
I think that's what people think it looks like, and it very, very, very rarely looks
like that. The jury wants to see somebody who is talking to themselves, and not making
sense, and snapping their heads around to
look at hallucinations. Because short of that,
they're not convinced or they don't believe.
The demeanor, or what we call in psychiatry the affect, of the defendant is all important.
Their behavior, the jury is constantly watching
the defendant. They're looking for all sorts
of things, including, in a murder case, if the
person shows any remorse.
And the medications
that are often used to get that person competent so that they can then stand trial will blunt
that affect, they blunt that emotional response. It's a side effect of those medicines.
In fact pretrial we were so concerned because he was moving
between facilities and anytime that happens you're gonna see
adjustments in medications, and I mean he was so docile, to
the point of not being able to stay awake. Some of it I think just right before the trial
we had some really serious concerns over whether he
was competent. Because he was so medicated
that, um, he was just almost robotic.
A case that I was involved in is a stark reminder of
that, where a lady, who was severely psychotic,
that killed her husband. I was getting ready to go in and testify and there happened to
be a judge that was standing there outside with me watching, he was in a different courtroom.
And he said... To me, he said, "If you get a chance, will you please tell the client's
attorney to take the pen away from her client, because her client is sitting there taking
notes. She doesn't look quote-unquote
crazy." So appearance is extremely important, and
this judged recognized that. It wasn't even anything that I picked up on, because here
I'm armed with this knowledge that this is, in my opinion, a very psychotic woman who
did a psychotic act, but the jury is sitting,
watching her taking notes, which, to the jury,
suggests she's not mentally ill, 'cause she can take notes.
And I think the thing I also learned in working on Johnny's case more than any other case,
and I've seen it since then, is that we could find a medication that helped with some
of the symptoms of schizophrenia, like keeping
the hallucinations at bay or keeping the voices
at bay, but then the effectiveness of that
medication of will wear off and then they're
kind of back to square one in finding
what will work for Johnny or what will work for
anybody who is presenting
with as many symptoms as Johnny presents with.
I think he was medicated almost immediately,
which was a big argument that we made in the trial.
The prosecutor and the psychiatrist who testified
for the government wanted to claim that his
hallucinations were the result of drug abuse
and yet he continued to hear voices while
he was confined and was receiving
anti-psychotic medication for that very problem.
I mean the evidence that he did it was overwhelming. There just wasn't any question about that.
There was no doubt about it. Reasonable or otherwise, there was no doubt about what he did.
The question was how is he going to be punished for this. Is it going to be death,
or is it going to be life without parole. These are not easy decisions, and they're
not meant to be. They're meant to be incredibly difficult decisions. The whole system was
designed that way. I think we end up with cases where if somebody's sentenced to death
around here, they justly deserve it.
I mean some of it made no sense to me, you take a little girl in her nightgown and you
walk down the main street in Valley Park, and they used that to show he knew that
it was deliberate conduct, I mean to me it was kind of crazy conduct, um, and then the
repeated blows to her head, and then the concealing of her body, but covering her under rocks,
and then Johnny went to the river and washed her blood off of him, and came back to the
house and, you know, at least for a very short time pretended nothing had happened.
And prosecutors very effectively, used that kind
of conduct, deliberative conduct, efforts to conceal,
to show that the person knew right from wrong, um, and that their conduct wasn't just crazy,
that it was... deliberative.
Whether it's a physical or organic problem in their head, a tumor or whether it's a
mental... There's a problem there. But you have to look beyond that. Does that problem
that he had make him not responsible for what
he did? That's the real question in the case.
Yes, there's something wrong with him.
Don't you think that anybody that could take
a six-year-old to a pit and try to do disgusting
things to her and then kill her...
How could anybody who's capable of doing that, not have
some kind of mental problem?
So, I've just always said, you would have to have some
kind of mental problem to do something like
that, because most people could never be
capable of that.
I just feel like there are certain people who we just don't need here on Earth anymore,
because I still honestly really believe that you're either capable of doing something like
that or you're not. It's either in there or it's not in there.
I guess you could sit around and we could talk
about good versus evil and the philosophical
difference and all that, but we deal with the reality for the most part, and the reality
is this. When somebody picks up a gun and goes in and robs a gas station and kills the
clerk, I don't particularly care why they did it. You know, once you pick up a gun and
go rob somebody, I don't care what kind of a childhood you had. I don't care how
badly your mother treated you. It doesn't matter to me.
The very first case that was called, my number came up, so, I went up to the court room and
walked in and Bob McCulloch gave us an introduction
of what to expect, what was going to happen.
And they announced the case, and I immediately knew.
I recognized the girl's name.
Yeah, it was quite a shock.
It's a tough decision to make, and that's pounded into the jury.
This is going to be a tough decision. Even if you think this guy should be executed for
this, it's still going to be difficult to make that decision. So, jurors agonize over
these decisions, and they weigh that carefully. They don't just go back and say "Ahh,
forget it, this guy deservers it, this is what he did, give him death." They agonize
over these decisions.
We had a really interesting thing happen. We were contacted by a particular juror
after the case, and Bevy and I went and met with him, and he talked about why, you
know, he found the verdict the way he did. He talked about the fact that the jury really
didn't like the, what I call the battle of the experts, they didn't like the battling
back and forth. Umm, he talked about the fact
that they believed that Johnny had schizophrenia,
but there was no consensus among the jury of whether it was the schizophrenia or whether
Johnny was you know making a rational decision.
Now, I once had a judge remind me in chambers that it's government of the people, by the
people, and for the people, that it's not government of the judge or government of the
doctor. It's not the doctor that's gonna decide.
It's not the judge, it's gonna be the people.
And the people have decided in these cases that, despite a mental illness, the person
should be punished for what they did. And so the people decide,
despite what the doctor may think.
Well, they tried to say that he was hearing voices,
but that was offset by the prosecution's
expert witnesses that said that they
believed that he was making that up. And also the thought
was, well he'd been prescribed anti-psychotics,
but he opted to not take that medication and
do meth instead.
And, then, this situation arose and he did what he did.
You know, and the aggravating factors, which, you know, would have been the way he murdered
Cassandra and the fact that Cassandra was a
child outweighed. I mean, the jury, they're
normal people, they're capable of feeling outrage in something like this.
And the victim's family is there in the
courtroom and it's easy to see why jurors would do it.
Well, it came to the time when they were gonna show the jury crime scene photos.
And the victim's advocate said,
"I don't really want any of you guys to go in for that."
And I have to say that's one of the moments in my life when I
was so proud of Angie because Angie said, "No, I'm gonna be
in there," and she said, "Well, I don't think that's a good
idea," and she goes, "Well, I'm gonna be in there,
because I need for those people on
that jury to remember that those pictures
that they're looking at are my baby.
Because what they were gonna see was so devastating.
you almost would have to disconnect yourself
to what you're looking at and she wasn't gonna allow that to happen. So she said,
"No, I'm gonna be in there."
So they said, "Well, if you're gonna be in there,
then we have to prepare you for that."
So they took her in this room and they showed her
the pictures and all you could hear was
Angie crying and retching in the trash can, and she came out
when she finally collected herself and she said to us,
"None of you are ever gonna see those pictures, 'cause I don't
ever want you to carry that in your mind. But I can't do
anything for Casey anymore, but I can do this.
I can make sure that they remember that she
was a real little girl." And so she went in there.
She was born on Thanksgiving Day.
I know. That's what I'm saying. That was quite a day, wasn't it?
She was born on Thanksgiving Day. I fixed a big dinner, set you, just told you all sit
down, and I was headed to the hospital.
Yep, and we all ate and gave thanks for a new baby.
So Thanksgiving we always think of Casey.
She was a little booger, wasn't she Mom?
Yeah, she was my charm. With a little frog in her hand, in the yard. She said, "Grandma,
can I keep this?" I said, "I think it would rather be outside." But it stuck around.
Yeah, she wanted to bring it into the kitchen.
We still remember her. We still cherish her. She will always be in our life.
Yep. And she deserves that. She doesn't deserve to just be remembered for that little
girl that something horrible happened to. She needs to be remembered for bringing frogs
into the kitchen and for, you know, having her little moments once in a while.
In the guilt phase, when the jury was given the case to decide, it was pretty, pretty
quick. We did ask for the audio tapes of the confession which they supplied to us. So,
we replayed them a couple of times, but that really wasn't to determine guilt. It was just
making sure everybody was on the same page as far as the first degree murder.
He planned it out. If he had a mental disease, he still knew what he was doing and did it.
He knew enough to take the little girl and be quiet leaving the house, so that's an
indication he knew it was wrong. That he got out of sight as quick as he could the first
chance he got, ducking off the street, around a corner, and then down an alley and then
took her to an incredibly secluded place. And then he, he buried her after he killed
her, which again indicates, and it's a pretty good indication that he knew that something
was wrong. And then went down and did his very best to you know to clean any evidence
off of him and so it was pretty clear he knew exactly what he was doing. Not to say he didn't
have some issues, but he knew what he was doing, and he knew it was wrong.
To me the mental illness part, and his upbringing,
and everything else that was brought by the
defense really kind of flew out the window when he admitted that he did all of these
things, and he admitted that he planned it. And according to the law,
you're guilty when you do that.
I've never seen a psychiatrist, let me put it this way, whose been able to back up a
claim that absolutely, positively, one hundred
percent this individual suffers from schizophrenia
for example and that that schizophrenia absolutely,
positively, one hundred percent prevented
him from understanding that what he did was wrong.
It's usually pretty easy to shoot 'em down in court because you can just walk through
the details to show that mind working, and it becomes harder and harder for them to be
believable, when they're saying the person didn't understand the nature and consequences
of what they're doing.
I think, the lack of success of a psychiatric defense is due in in great part to the to
the inability of the psychiatric profession to - to say yes. This is it, this irrefutable
evidence that, that this guy didn't know what he was doing or didn't know and appreciate it.
If you can't pick apart a psychiatric report, you know, then
then you're not that much of a lawyer.
Has the jury reached a verdict? All right. Mr. Werther, would you please obtain the verdict
of the jury from juror number twelve?
As to count one, we the jury find the defendant, Johnny A
Johnson, guilty of murder in the first degree,
as submitted in instruction number nine.
The outcome of the trial was that
Johnny was found guilty of killing Casey Williamson,
and then we put on a penalty phase.
In Missouri, the only crime
that carries the potential of death penalty is first degree
murder. And that's a murder that's done after deliberation,
which is cool reflection for
any amount of time, no matter how brief.
So it's not heat of passion killings, it's not
spur of the moment killings, it's killings where there's been pre-meditation, where it's
planned in advance. But even then, not every
first degree murder case allows the prosecutor
to seek the death penalty.
There are 17 or 18 aggravating factors, and you have to prove
beyond a reasonable doubt
that at least one of those aggravating factors exists.
I always prefer more than one.
A lot more than one because more aggravating circumstances
are the more egregious the crime and the more deserving
of a death sentence the individual might be.
Well, too, Johnny, it's like I said, he's mentally ill, easily led. The detectives interviewed
him I forget how many hours.
Newsham: The date is July 27th, 2002; the time is 12:50 a.m.
And if you tell him something with that
auditory processing disorder that he has and you tell
him that and tell him that and tell him that,
then he will just agree with what you tell him.
Det. Newsham: ...report numbered 02-70076. The person being
interviewed at this time is Johnny Johnson.
Johnny, I want to call your attention to
this incident in the respect that a short
time ago while we were standing
in the booking section of the St. Louis County Department
of Justice Services at the jail,
you told me that you desired to make a more complete
and accurate statement of what occurred today. Is that correct?
Johnny: Yes.
Newsham: Okay. You did this because you
felt like you needed to
clear your conscience and your soul. Is that correct?
Johnny: Yes.
Newsham: Okay. Would you start with when
you woke up this morning, what was going on
and what your thought processes were in relation
to the victim?
Johnny: Uh, this morning I woke up and saw the victim
standing beside the couch, and I wanted to take her somewhere
and sleep with her.
Newsham: Okay. So when you say you wanted to sleep with her,
could you be more specific what you're talking about?
Johnny: I wanted to have sex with her.
Newsham: Okay. Sexual relations with her?
Johnny: Yes.
Newsham: Okay. And you told me over there that when you
had made up your mind for this you were afraid that you could
be caught, that she was going to tell someone, correct?
Johnny: Yes.
Newsham: Okay. And what was your plan once
you had finished having sex with her?
Johnny: To kill her.
It was obvious to us you could lead him into say anything.
And it's the detective who needs
to have an aggravator in Johnny's case,
well, then you have to say he tried to rape her.
Well, that gives you the aggravator.
Once you get the aggravator, that gets you death.
Newsham: So your chest was basically pinning her to the ground.
Johnny: Yeah.
Newsham: Okay. So what happens?
Johnny: Then she starts freaking out.
Newsham: What does she do when you say "freaking out?"
Johnny: She is kicking and screaming and everything else.
Newsham: Okay.
Johnny: And at that point I got up,
and then she stood up, and then that's when I
decided to kill her.
Longworth: Okay. But now you had said earlier that
when you left the house with her - this is what you told us -
when you left the house with her your intention was...
Johnny: My intention was to have sex with her.
Longworth: And you said your intention was to kill her to
cover that up. Is that right?
Johnny: Yes. Yes.
Longworth: Because you told us you didn't want her mother
and father, who you knew, to find out. Is that right?
Johnny: Yes.
Longworth: And you didn't want obviously prosecution
and everything that went with that, right?
Johnny: Yes.
Longworth: And that was the whole purpose that you were
going to kill her was after the sexual act. Is that right?
Johnny: Yes.
Longworth: Okay.
Johnson: But then I decided earlier that...
Newsham: In an interview earlier with Detectives Kneib and Neske
you said you sustained a scratch while she was standing
up, and that's not correct, is that true?
It is interesting to hear the closing arguments,
because the prosecutors and the defense attorneys
have then at the very same trial and yet they are trying to sell completely different stories
to the jury. I mean the defense attorneys are
often out there talking about this is not a clear
cut case. And the prosecution is just trying to be fact
oriented. And the facts are very clear. And the evidence is
clear. And the defense is seeing it from a totally different
point of view where they're conceding that this is a horrible crime.
However, they're talking about the mitigating
factors and trying to make the defendant seem more human.
Anybody who thinks sort of outwardly about the work we do it's easy to demonize our
clients, to think of, "How do you sit across the table from someone who's accused of
or done horrible horrible things?" I'll tell some part of the story that humanizes
them and and I think that at least helps people understand a little but more about who the
person is.
I find very frustrating... I guess the confines in which we have to work with in
a courtroom setting, in a trial setting, in which to explain the story of your client.
I find that very frustrating. Because the story of my client is often much much bigger
and much more complex than a trial setting will allow me to explain to a set of jurors
who have no information whatsoever about my client in the very limited time I have in
which to explain it.
I wanted to be a public defender because I had been, on several occasions, the family
of the victim. I had a brother who was killed,
murdered, a niece that was murdered and thrown
in an alley, a nephew who was abducted, sodomized,
and threatened to be killed. Some part of
me wanted to understand what would make a person do that. And it really helped me to
grow, to not be angry, as I had been, to see people who are more than their worst day.
These are very emotional cases. You can't be involved in this as either a prosecutor
or a defense attorney without getting very much emotionally involved in the case. Now
I've never been on the other side, so I'm very emotionally attached to the victims and
the victim's families on this side of it, and I'm sure the defense attorneys are very
emotionally attached from his perspective.
I'm sure if you get to know this guy somewhat,
if you've dealt with him as
long and as intently as they would have in the preparation
for trial of this case, you know it is very difficult. It's got to be very difficult
from that side. I'm frankly glad I'm not on that side of it for that reason.
One of my strongest memories of Johnny was in the trial I was doing the closing argument
of the penalty phase. So I was the one making the closing argument to the jury, trying to
persuade them of our position that a life, a sentence of life without parole would be
the appropriate sentence for him. And it had been a really long trial - it had been
a really really difficult trial, umm, and both Bevy and I were very tired. It was certainly
a very emotional trial. You know her mom, Angie, was in the courtroom, and, and there
were aunts that were in the courtroom and grandparents that were in the courtroom. You
know you can't try these cases without picking up
on their, just their sorrow and their anger
and their grief, and these are very normal things
for them to experience in light of what happened to their girl.
But so all of that, and dealing with Johnny, and I knew
all the things that had happened to Johnny in his life. And so when I'm doing the closing
argument, and I truly believed - and I still believe to this today - that sentencing
Johnny to death accomplishes nothing, and it wasn't the appropriate sentence in this
case, even though I know the jury worked hard,
and I just know that, you know, there is better
alternatives out there. And so, toward the end of my closing argument, I started to cry.
I was really tied; I was really worn out; it was a very emotional thing to do, and I
started to cry. And so I went ahead and wrapped up my closing argument, and I sat back down,
and I didn't realize because my back was to Johnny when I was making the closing to
the jury, that Johnny was crying. And so Johnny - I sit down next to Johnny, and we're
sitting at this table, and it's just covered with all our books and our papers and everything,
and Johnny's been crying. And so he reaches out and he grabs my hand and holds my hand,
and with his other hand he hands me this just tear-stained, wet Kleenex that he'd been
using, and without even thinking about it, I just grab this wet old Kleenex from Johnny,
and I just start wiping my tears away, and I thought, well, this is just a total break-down
of any barriers between attorney and client,
because we're sharing the same wet tear-stained
Kleenex, umm, and I think that was a perfect example of Johnny having such a good heart.
When he's not in the grip of his schizophrenia - when it's not got its hands on him,
then Johnny is able to feel what's going on with the people around him, which always
made it so easy to like him. That's one of my strongest memories of him, at the end
of that closing argument.
When a jury gets in that box, you know, they want to believe everybody's good. It's
difficult for them to think, "wait a minute - could this guy really have done that?
Could Johnny Johnson really have taken this little girl, dragged her into the woods, into
this old abandoned factory, beat her, tried to rape her, crushed her, could he really
have done it? Nobody could do that.' They don't want to believe that, and that's
a good thing. And it's the same when you get with him with Johnson specifically with
the death penalty. Nobody wants to sentence somebody to death. I've never ever seen
a jury come back where they were happy that they had done it. Those juries are emotionally
drained. They don't want to do it, but they, they come to the conclusion that this is what's
right. This is the right thing to do in this situation, and we're going to do it.
We went into the jury room and everybody sat down,
and the foreman passed out paper and pencils and asked everybody to vote.
There were two people who didn't agree on the death penalty.
In the death penalty litigation, in order to decide a death penalty case, you have to
go through what they call death qualification. What that means in real terms is that you
load up your jury with people who are already predisposed to giving a death sentence.
Going into the trial, my feelings on the death
penalty were that if I'm 100% sure that this
person committed this crime then yes, that would be a suitable punishment. But I did
keep an open mind through the whole trial to listen to all the testimony and look at
all of the evidence and weigh that out with what happened and what the punishments were,
that we were instructed to decide on.
When we're selecting a jury, the first thing
I always tell them, and most prosecutors trying
a death penalty case, during the jury selection
process is this is not some philosophical discussion
we're going to have here about the death penalty. Is it a good thing? Is it a bad thing?
Should it be used more? Should it be used at all? We're not having that discussion.
What we're going to ask you to do is if you find this guy sitting right here who is
10 feet from you, if you find him guilty of this murder, then I'm going to ask you to
sentence him - this guy right here - sentence him to death. And it hits home. You can see
it in their faces that it hits home at that point that you know what? This is real.
We already knew too, that there were only two outcomes. It was either gonna be the death
penalty, or it was gonna be life without the possibility of parole. So, we knew he wasn't
gonna walk free, but at the same time, I think some people had the impression that if you
got life with parole, that, you know, through
the appeals process that since the death penalty
hadn't been recommended that it might somehow be overturned.
He planned it out. I mean, her whole family was upstairs in this house. He took her in
her nightgown out of the house, into this factory, into a pit that she couldn't get
out of by herself, tried to rape her and then beat her to death with a brick and a rock,
and then tried to cover it up. He took the life of an innocent six-year old girl. If
that didn't deserve the death penalty then nothing does. I mean, you can't do something
like that and expect to just get off with a lesser punishment, in my opinion.
The jury had to decide between life and death,
and ultimately as you know they imposed a sentence
of death and Judge Seigel went along with that recommendation and, and also sentenced
Johnny to death.
I remember when they said what they were giving him.
And my brother stood up and called everybody murderers.
He said, "How do you think you're different?
You're taking a life and you don't even know him."
My name is Bob Lundt. I'm an Assistant Public Defender. I represent primarily clients who
have received the death penalty in what's called post-conviction litigation. Next week
I'm going to be arguing in front of the Missouri Supreme Court on Johnny Johnson's case. It
was undisputed during the trial that Johnny suffers from some form of schizophrenia. All
the doctors that have ever seen Johnny have all agreed that he suffers from schizophrenia
of some form or another.
Johnny is so so sick and, in many ways, sort of fell through the cracks in terms of
the educational system and mental health system.
If anybody had asked me of all my clients, if one of my clients was going to do this,
Johnny wouldn't have been even on the top ten list of clients who would have done this.
But a lot of times, when they're not taking their medications, and they have the
hallucinations or whatever the psychosis is,
combined with illicit drugs or alcohol, this is possible. This is possible.
Then your demons take charge of your mind. You're not in control anymore.
I'd like to say that the Missouri Supreme
Court would see that a jury would be persuaded
by neuropsychological evidence, persuaded enough that they would say, at least, he does
not deserve a death sentence. Still murder
in the first degree, but not a death sentence.
I'd like to see Johnny go back to a new penalty phase so that a jury could see that Johnny's
brain just does not work correctly and that he does not deserve to die.
How likely that is, I'm not entirely sure.
If we never ask for death again on any case, that's fine by me. But if we had a murder
like the Johnny Johnson case with Casey Williamson,
you know, yes. If we had those circumstances
again tomorrow, that's going to be a death penalty case. I hope we don't, but if we
do, I'm not going to have any difficulty making that decision again.
When you have a child, an innocent child, killed in this manner, it's easy for emotion
to take over with juries. Nobody would want their child to die in this way.
Seeing the rock, seeing the brick, seeing her nightgown, but most of all was the medical
examiner's report with the photos of the autopsy.
And the, you know, those photos really haunted
me for quite some time. And still do. I have to
force myself not to think about it sometimes.
But about a month or so after the trial, I finally sought out help from a therapist to
help me get the images out of my head. It was a traumatic experience that has taken
a long time to get through.
You have to take that emotion and do something with it because
if you don't give it some focus, I think it can eat you up.
And there is one thing I want to talk to you about that I don't talk to people about.
I mean, what was my alternative? You think about him taking
her into a pit that she couldn't get out of and think about what went on there. You can't
do that. This many years later you can't let your head go there, because if you do this
is what happens and this is how you don't function.
Even my own little one when she was little, she asked my friend some questions and my
friend said, "Well, Lauren you know you can ask your mom that." And Lauren said, "Oh,
no. I don't wanna be the one to make my mommy cry again." I used to cry every night because
when you lay down then those thoughts can creep in. And my husband said to me, "You've
got to figure something out because you can't go through the rest of your life like this."
It's always with you. It's something that changed my life. It changed everybody's life
in my family and in the town I feel like it changed people's lives. I noticed too though,
after everything happened, when it would be like birthday cards and stuff. I remember,
you know, Angie would always sign them, "Angie and Ernie" and then like each kid's name,
but I remember one time reading the card and being like "Angie and Ernie, and the kids,"
because she couldn't not write Casey's name, so I remembered she just started writing,
"and the kids."
It is probably the most devastating case I ever
handled. I mean it - I'll still just, in moments, you know
think about it, reflect on it.
He's a tragic figure, Casey was a tragic figure.
It, it's just devastating. It's just heartbreaking on
on every level.
This case is a horror, and the only way to make it more horrible would be to put Johnny
to death. With a guy whose brain doesn't work, the state just shouldn't kill him.
I think that the death penalty is an appropriate
punishment in very rare situations.
And fortunately in St. Louis County we've not had
one of those situations for quite some time, and
I'm very happy about that. I hope we never ever again have one, umm, but I think in,
in some situations it is, it is an appropriate punishment. Is it a deterrent? I don't know
if it's a deterrent or not. There are studies out there that go both ways. Some say no;
some say it's neutral; some say it increases homicides; some say it decreases homicides.
If Johnny Johnson getting sentenced to death
deters somebody from committing a crime like
that, then that's great. I doubt that it does. I mean these aren't the kinds of crimes
that are deterred by the possibility of punishment.
These cases don't really do anything to help families or individuals
with mental illness. All they do is play into
that primordial fear that the mentally ill are people to be shunned, that they can't
be trusted. A prosecutor said to me once, you're not just saying that this is a dog
that has a mental problem, you're saying this is
a rabid dog. And what do you do with rabid
dogs? They have to be put down, they have to be killed.
I hate to use the term "bleeding heart." There are people who are bleeding hearts, they're
disconnected, they've never had it touch their family. It's easy to stand on the outside
and be like, "Oh, well, how can you be for the death penalty and how can you be that
kind of person?" Well that's how you can be that kind of person. Because we lived it.
And she lived it, what she went through. It's easy to be out there and say, "Well I don't
believe in that and that makes you barbaric if you feel that way," but if you lived the
reality of it you might feel differently.
I have not had a member of my family or loved one killed and so I do respect the fact that
I have not walked in the shoes of a person who has had that happen to them, and I think
capital punishment sort of sells a bill of goods, saying okay if we do this, you know,
we will feel better, we will have taken care of the problem and we really haven't.
I think the money that we use to, on capital cases, could be used in prevention, could
be used in victim services, so I just don't think it's a viable, societal solution for anything.
Well, my father was a minister. I was raised in a religious situation. When my brother
was murdered, they asked my mother, did she want the death penalty, and she said, no.
I didn't understand that. I mean, I knew she was hurt. She was crushed, but somewhere in
her heart, she didn't have vengeance. I didn't want to have vengeance, because I think the
hater is more hurt than the hated. Because if you're hating somebody, you gotta take
that with you everywhere you go. It colors what you think. It colors what you feel. And
I didn't want to be like that.
...such a wicked person who commits such a heinous crime -
Can he be forgiven by God and be
receiving of the gift of eternal life?
Be patient. Wait for justice.
And please pray for this dear family.
It will be very difficult.
My sister, Debbie, she died of cancer. She really struggled with it on her deathbed
really because she's like, "Well... " Some minister told her that if she couldn't say
that she forgives him, that she was gonna go to Hell. And she said, "Well, I guess I'm
going to hell because I don't think I can say that." She said, "I can say that I've
let go of it and that it's between him and God, but if I have to say I forgive him for
what he did," she said, "I can't say that because... " So, you know luckily she talked
to enough people and we were all like, "Well, yeah, but you haven't let it make you a mean,
angry, bitter person, you've just turned it
over to God. In our eyes, that's what forgiveness
is, you know, if you just let it go."
I remember being on the stand, I looked at my brother 'cause I hadn't seen him in a while
and I said, "I love you." And he said, "I love you too."
And I glanced over and I saw Angie.
I said, "I'm sorry."
I was asked,
"Do you still consider yourself friends with her?
Do you still think she's your friend?" And all I could reply is, "I hope so."
"I hope she has some understanding."
There are three viewing rooms that are separate, of course. One for the victim's family, one
for the inmate's friends and family, and one for the state's witnesses - and never the
twain shall meet. So they all come in at separate
times, they're placed in separate places in
advance, and then they're moved separately to the viewing chambers.
I think it only makes it worse for the victims,
and it destroys the lives of the defendant
and their family who didn't do anything wrong.
It destroys the lives of the guards at the prison, who
have to help kill this person.
It debases the jury who has to decide to kill somebody.
If we ever reach the point where majority of the public feels, "We don't think it's
right to kill somebody." That's when we won't have a death penalty anymore or is when the
public decides, "We don't want this punishment."
But back 10 years ago, 75% to 80% of the public
supported the death penalty. I think that's lowered quite a bit since then, and so we'll
just see if the trend continues to get lower every decade or if it starts an upswing back
up. But as long as the public thinks they want it on the
table as a possible punishment, we'll have it.
Well, I don't know. I'm not sure about the death penalty at all. I've witnessed a couple
executions. Once you start trying to figure out who's more sick than evil and who's more
evil than sick... I don't know what to think. I'm ambivalent, I guess I'd say.
Let's say Johnny Johnson is schizophrenic, but yet he knew right from wrong. In other
words, should the fact that he has a psychotic illness preclude him from death, as we have
drawn the line with mental retardation now
and with individuals involved in murders under
the age of 18. That may be the common ground that we could all settle on; that if he's
gonna be convicted and you're gonna put him in prison, he has schizophrenia,
then let's don't execute him.
Yeah pretty much like last year, except for that we
had to just make adjustments for the MOCHIPS, right.
We started a memorial walk for Casey the year
after, and we called it "A Walk to Remember Casey."
We tried to say, "Oh we're just gonna remember her and be happy that day."
It didn't really ever end up like that. We all kind of just ended up thinking about that
god-awful day and then we morphed it into the safety fair.
That's where the other tablecloths are.
Cardinal Glennon works with Kohl's for Kids. They're going to come do bike helmet fittings,
and they're gonna give away 75 free helmets. Operation Lifesaver is the railroad safety
organization. Valley Park has a railroad that runs right through it, so they come teach
the kids to respect the tracks. MO-DOT comes and teaches about seatbelt safety, car seats,
that kind of thing. Tomorrow though is all about being positive and trying to prevent,
you know, other tragedies and keep it fun for the kids, because we don't want it to
be a downer day. She has a lot of cousins and a lot of people on you know that loved
her so that's why we just all pitch in and do this every year and remember her.
I am very nervous heading for the Supreme Court. Johnny is a client who I feel very
strongly about. I like Johnny. I feel that Johnny does not deserve to die. Should I tell
them that, "It doesn't matter what you guys do here today. When I go back and tell Johnny
what happened, he'll just nod and say okay. He'll nod and say okay if you guys uphold
his death sentence; he'll nod and say okay if you decide that he stays the rest of his
life in prison; he'd nod and say okay if you said that he would go home tomorrow." He doesn't
understand that eventually, if things don't change, that he'll be dead.
He doesn't really get that.
Thank you, your honor. If it please the court Johnny Johnson has a mental disability. In
this state, we don't kill people who have mental disabilities. There is no doubt that
he has a mental disease. It is the worst mental disease that a person can have. The jury heard,
and it is proven beyond a reasonable doubt, that Johnny...
It's not easy for society to do anything and figure this out because somebody like Johnny
Johnson had been identified as a person with mental problems, had been referred to a psychiatrist,
had been referred to an agency,
was on medication and when someone like Johnny Johnson gets
off medication, leaves his
support system behind, in his case, his grandmother it's
difficult really to know who to blame.
When Casey's class graduated in 2014, we had raised enough money
that we were able to give every member of her class a five-hundred dollar scholarship.
It was our way to participate in their graduation in a positive way without it being sad.
So I talked to the kids that day, and this is what I said to them.
First of all, I would like to thank everyone for coming today, and I would
like to say congratulations to the class of 2014.
I can't tell you how much it means to us to present
these scholarships to you in memory of Casey.
We loved Casey, and it is important to us that her memory
is kept alive and that she be remembered for positive things.
Some of you actually remember her. You played and laughed with her.
To others, she probably seems like a character in a book.
Today we remember Casey, and we celebrate each and every one of you.
As you leave here today, there are a few thoughts that I hope you will carry with you.
First, you are important. The choices you make are important.
Every life, even Casey's of a short six years, has an impact on everyone around them.
The type of person you are will make a difference.
Whether it impacts three people or three thousand people,
you have the chance to help make the world a better
place. Treat others the way you would like to be treated.
What's happening in a lot of states, there's been a paring down of mental health services
at the state level. In Missouri, in fact,
there's no longer civil services, it's solely forensic for in-patient treatment.
You know the mental health system in this country was dismantled in, in the 80s
all through the 80s and so a lot of people who might otherwise have gone to a mental
institution the alternative is either we charge them and bring them into the criminal justice
system or we leave them on the street. Now neither of those are very attractive alternatives.
In 2009, Governor Nixon appointed me as Director
of Corrections. In sitting around the table
with my fellow cabinet members, they all had tremendous needs that were going unmet because
of funds. And everybody's scared to death about raising taxes or even talking about it.
If you're going to provide the services for mental health, for
education, for health, for kids, I don't care what it is, it takes money.
Second, you only have one life. As you move forward, we hope that you do explore new things,
go new places, and broaden your horizons. However, remember
that you only have one life. Be smart, and value it.
And if the right thing is to protect the rest of the community,
the option is with Johnny Johnson, sending
him to a psychiatrist to be treated and medicated,
versus putting him in the penitentiary forever
and perhaps being executed, I have no difficulty with that decision at all.
Everybody knows this is what would happen. Everybody knows that if Johnny's death sentence
is allowed to stand, someday they will put a needle in his arm and put enough drugs into
his body to end his life, that he'll be strapped
down to a gurney, he'll be given some drugs
to calm him down so that he doesn't resist when they go to kill him.
There comes a time when the chief counsel asks the attorney general's office if there's
any legal reason why this should not move forward. The director shares that with the
governor's office, and they'd say, "Proceed," and it proceeds. And then, when it's done,
people are escorted separately out, each group. The state's witnesses sign a special form
that says they did see this happen, and that's it.
It's gut-wrenching that we as a society would decide, okay, this person has to die.
I can't reconcile him being killed. I mean,
it doesn't - it will not make anything any better.
Society needs to take some part of that blame, and he
should remain in an institution for the rest of his life,
but the death penalty, it just - I just - I don't think it's right in his case.
In some cases, yes, but in his case, no.
In closing, I would like to thank everyone for their help
and support along the way, and I would like to thank you
for being my therapy for the last almost twelve years.
You are where I refocused my emotions.
Setting the goal of having her with you at graduation
has helped me and my entire family get through each day.
She is part of the class of 2014, and she is with you in spirit.
I'm proud of each and every one of you, and I know that you're
going to go out there and make this world a better place.
If and when the sentence is carried out, I need to prepare for it. I need to know about
it beforehand, because I don't know how I'm gonna feel honestly. I'm not rethinking my
decision, but it wasn't an easy decision to come
to, and it's not something that I take lightly, and
I don't wanna hear about it on the news.