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.
