In advance of Kevin Johnson was executed, he saved a journal. What he wrote in his ultimate times

On Aug. 24, Kevin Johnson learned when he was likely to die.

He had 97 days to write down his feelings, have final conversations with his daughter and put together himself to stroll into the execution home at a jail in jap Missouri.

“My upcoming appeared distinct now that there was no much more maybes and what ifs,” he wrote in a journal entry. “The sun was hitting my encounter really hard and I enjoyed every minute of it as I wondered if this would be my previous time staying ready to truly feel it.”

“Life is meant to be a gift and dying is supposed to be a curse that sneaks up on you in the dark of night time ideally in your sleep. The terminally sick realized they were dying but not even they know the specific working day and time.”

The 37 year previous frequently wrote down his thoughts and self-revealed two textbooks though in prison for a 2005 killing of a St. Louis place police officer.

In modern weeks, Johnson’s tale garnered statewide and countrywide notice after a specific prosecutor attempted to halt the execution, arguing his trial experienced been marred by racism.

His previous elementary faculty principal Pam Stanfield is now compiling Johnson’s writings for a 3rd ebook entitled “Journey to the Gurney.” The two reconnected after his arrest and have kept in touch for 17 yrs, writing letters and visiting in particular person. They supported each other’s producing endeavors when Johnson started journaling about his existence a number of several years ago. She helped him get the initially two publications printed and just after he discovered out the execution date, he started emailing her entries documenting his last months to be released posthumously.

She mentioned he was meticulous in his writing, from acquiring dialogue accurate to vocabulary and editing. He was also in a position to produce in a way that obtained “an instant psychological reaction,” Stanfield explained.

“I do consider he is leaving a legacy.”

Johnson was 19 when he shot and killed William McEntee, a white Kirkwood law enforcement officer, husband and father of 3.

Johnson’s very first trial finished with a hung jury. A 2nd jury convicted him of initially-diploma murder.

Tale continues

The entries illustrate Johnson’s perception of hope that ebbed and flowed and consist of his ideas on race in Missouri.

“This conservative condition has a zero tolerance for black guys who hurt or get rid of white people today,” Johnson wrote. “I have killed a white male of value and there was no other punishment other than loss of life.”

Journal excerpts were being shared with consent from Johnson and supplied by Stanfield. Facts under were being contained in Johnson’s writings.

‘Walked all-around in fear’

Johnson was in the health club on Aug. 24 when a corrections officer informed him he was needed back in the housing device. He was escorted down a hallway, by way of a metallic detector and out a door. His coronary heart felt like it was sinking into his belly. But it’s possible he experienced been called for a adhere to up clinical appointment. Or perhaps his legal professional wished to chat, he thought.

For decades, Johnson had challenged his sentence by means of the courts. He frequented the jail regulation library on Fridays. The latest authorized developments gave him some hope. A determination in Kentucky declared the dying penalty unconstitutional for folks less than 21 at the time of the offense. A Missouri legislation passed in 2021 gave prosecutors the proper to intervene in cases in which they considered a defendant had been unconstitutionally convicted, he mentioned.

“’Stay optimistic JK,’ everyone near to me would instruct,” Johnson wrote.

His appeals were exhausted in March.

For months, he had “walked about in fear on eggshells” asking yourself if the Missouri Supreme Court docket would problem a death warrant.

“Out of my full seventeen several years of incarceration, awaiting the court’s choice experienced to be the most tortuous thoughts-boggling encounter ever.”

As he approached a jail team member, “it became more clear than the obvious blue waters of the Pacific Ocean.” An additional jail staff study the dying warrant: Johnson was scheduled to die Nov 29.

“I had held up rather effectively the overall time main up to this remaining looking through but as those words and phrases spewed from his lips, I could come to feel myself breaking internally,” he wrote.

Johnson was put on “pre-execution position,” he wrote, and transferred to solitary confinement. For the reason that he experienced not violated any rules, he was permitted to hold his Tv and tablet and had accessibility to a phone.

He was strip searched, a method he discovered demeaning when he experienced entered prison many years in the past, but “I had gotten butt bare for these guards so a lot that I could wander wholly nude around Periods Square on New Year’s Eve and not truly feel shame.”

He was introduced to the unit supervisor, a caseworker and a “psych medical doctor who was tasked with generating absolutely sure that I was not owning ideas of harming myself or anybody else. Anything that I assumed was ridiculous. I was condemned to die in a few months and they noticed necessarily fit to maintain me right up until that date. Why?”

They asked if he experienced any thoughts. He reported no.

“I just desired to be alone in a silent area so I could entirely evaluate the entirety of the circumstance,” Johnson wrote.

He entered cell nine in which there was a steel sink and bathroom, a a few-foot-by-three-foot shower, a concrete slab usually utilized as a shelf or desk and a steel stool bolted to the flooring, he explained. A bunk mattress experienced a two-and-a-fifty percent inch thick gray mattress. Centered over the bunk was a window measuring 4 inches huge and 4 feet tall.

He sat on the bunk and “allowed the light-weight from the window to shine on me.”

“The state of Missouri just created your worst fears actuality,” he wrote. “They’re going to basically get rid of you. Put you on screen like a monkey in the zoo then operate poison by means of your veins right until your heart stops.”

10:40 a.m., August 25th

Johnson wrote that his “only correct hope” was the appointment of a special prosecutor who could look into the constitutionality of his St. Louis County conviction.

But that individual had not yet been appointed.

“What the freak was the maintain up? I only have 96 additional times to dwell … pretty much! For me to be spared the needle an lawyer would have to be appointed, finish a full investigation that may consist of finding witnesses, and if something faulty is discovered they would have to file the important paperwork.”

He goes on to problem why the courtroom had chosen him as the next to die. Missouri experienced 19 folks on death row, some of whom had been been sentenced in advance of Johnson was even born, in accordance to department of corrections documents.

“I’m only 36 decades previous, effectively I would be 37 by the time I’m actually strapped to the gurney,” he wrote, stating he felt “mounting aggravation.”

“I felt the need to have to launch my pent-up anger but not like July 5, 2005 I understood I did not want it misguided in the incorrect route so I synced my pill once more to see if I had any new messages. I guess the stars have been aligned but just briefly. My daughter has usually been a heal to my mental madness and just as I was on the brink of inner madness, there was an e mail from her.”

E.E. Keenan was appointed particular prosecutor Oct. 12, in accordance to a St. Louis County purchase.

He would go on to inform Missouri Supreme Court docket justices that previous prosecutor Robert McCulloch — whose father was killed in the line of duty — dealt with five conditions involving a law enforcement officer death during his career. In the four situations with Black defendants, which include Johnson’s, he sought the dying penalty. The fifth circumstance was a white defendant and McCulloch did not go after capital punishment even while the killing “was much more aggravated,” Keenan alleged.

In courtroom files, Keenan also mentioned McCulloch deliberately removed Black jurors in the course of Johnson’s next trial.

On Nov. 28, the courtroom struck down a request to halt Johnson’s execution.

5 p.m., November 29th

Johnson’s dying warrant went into influence at 6 p.m.

Times prior to, he had been moved to Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center, in Bonne Terre, exactly where executions are carried out.

Several hours ahead of, he wrote, “I have been concerned a great deal of instances in my everyday living but I consider that this minute usually takes the cake. My complete day has been flooded with ideas of what that poison will sense like once it enters my body. I do not want to die.”

He wrote about getting baptized on Nov. 8.

“It was surreal as my head went underneath the drinking water and when I arrived up, I actually felt like a new man … Who would have considered that with all that I had long gone by way of in lifestyle I would give my lifestyle to the Lord. Now glance at me!”

He wrote on the Missouri Supreme Court’s choice: “The world was observing and all obtained to see racism at its optimum degree.”

Johnson declined a previous meal, fearing he would defecate when the lethal injection was administered.

All over 6:40 p.m., the U.S. Supreme Courtroom denied a remain of execution.

Witnesses, together with Stanfield, have been escorted into viewing rooms. Johnson laid on a gurney with Rev. Darryl Grey, who had baptized him, by his side in the execution room.

An execution crew administered a deadly dose of pentobarbital.

Johnson was pronounced dead at 7:40 p.m.

On Nov. 30, Stanfield acquired Johnson’s last entry. Prison correspondences are screened so shipping is delayed.

“Although my struggle is in excess of, the combat for this bring about is never dying. Keep on to stand up to racism. Proceed to improve the narrative,” Johnson’s past sentences said.