“I think of execution a lot. Laying on that gurney, having the drugs administered one at a time, wondering who is in the audience on the other side of that two-way mirror.”-Kevin Johnson
Kevin Johnson, 36 and sentenced to die next month, has been writing to his high school teacher, Melissa Fuoss.
In one of those missives he mused about pentobarbital, a chemical sedative that slows the activity of the brain and nervous system used for executions in Missouri and a handful of other states.
Johnson was convicted for the July 5, 2005 murder of Kirkwood Police Sgt. William McEntee. On Tuesday Nov. 29, Johnson is scheduled to be put to death at the state prison in Bonne Terre.
“Growing up, you know, we had a hard childhood. My mother had fallen victim to crack cocaine and she just lost focus…of us.”-Kevin Johnson’s older brother, Marcus Tatum.
Johnson was a student in Fuoss’ class where she taught English as part of Kirkwood High School’s alternative programs. She remembered Johnson as “quiet and withdrawn” and vividly recalls the day she heard about McEntee’s murder.
“It didn’t feel real. My brain struggled to make sense of what had happened,” Fuoss confessed. “How could someone who had just been in my classroom over a year ago, writing a poem about giving his baby daughter a bath – shoot a young father (McEntee) three, seven times?”
Fuoss was 26 at the time. Although she was a character witness in Johnson’s first trial (which resulted in a hung jury) she hadn’t spoken to or written about her former student since he was in her class.
That changed after another student from the Kirkwood Call student newspaper called Fouss for a quote about Johnson’s execution.
“I felt she had a lot of bravery for a high school student to be writing about Kevin,” Fuoss explained. “That’s part of what made me start writing my thoughts about him. That and the fact that I’m 100% sure that he should not be executed.”
As a character witness, Fuoss told the jury about a poem Johnson had written in her class. She said she wanted to “humanize him” and testified how “Kevin wrote such a simple, beautiful piece that showed the awe he had for his baby daughter.”
She didn’t recall the exact details of the poem until Johnson sent her an email a few weeks ago telling her about his life at that time as a senior. His daughter had been born while he was confined to a juvenile detention home.
Johnson talked about his dream of being drafted in the NFL so he could “support his family and get his mother off drugs.”But low grades dashed those already far-fetched dreams.
“I had a kid and no money to support it…my future seemed dead and to make matters worse I became basically homeless…” Johnson wrote to Fouss.
He recalled how he was “lost” and couldn’t figure things out until the teacher encouraged him “to write about a good or special moment” in his life.
“You said something like, ‘think of your most memorable time with her?’ Johnson wrote recalling Fuoss’ directions. “And just like that I wrote about my first experience giving her a bath.”
Johnson’s daughter is now 19, the age he was when he ended McEntee’s life.
In the short time Fuoss has been corresponding with him, she’s found out things about Johnson’s life she never knew. Through his letters and the “Kevin Johnson Clemency” video posted on the Missourians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty’s [MADPMO) website, Fuoss has cobbled the pieces of a puzzle that depicts the creation of a murderer.
“Kevin’s dad was incarcerated, and his mom struggled with a crack addiction,” she wrote on her blog.
“He remembers getting beatings for wetting the bed or sucking his thumb. His abusers used a custom-made paddle…and a three-foot switch. He remembers being forced to hop on one leg in a corner for hours.”
In the clemency video, Johnson tried to explain his thought process as a child.
“I started believing everything going on was my fault. I was the reason he (his father) was in prison; I was the reason my mom was on drugs…I felt guilty and wanted to die.”
In the clemency video, Johnson’s older brother, Marcus Tatum, also recalled his and his brother’s upbringing and their absentee parents. The brothers described how they ate roaches and tried to catch a mouse to beat back their hunger.
“Growing up, you know, we had a hard childhood,” Tatum explained. “My mother had fallen victim to crack cocaine and she just lost focus…of us. We were left alone in the house, maybe days at a time with nothing to eat.”
Kirkwood educators, an assistant principal and his high school football coach all detailed a likable child betrayed by the system
Rachel Jenes, Johnson’s former elementary school teacher, spoke of the obviously abused kindergartener in her class.
“He had so many people dropping balls on him…I feel like I dropped the ball…that I should have taken him…somebody should have removed him from the home. Somebody should have had his back.”
Dr. Greg Batenhorst, who was the assistant principal of Nipher Middle School in Kirkwood shares Jeness’ remorse. Johnson was “very well liked” throughout his elementary school years and in high school football, Batenhorst said, adding: “Even though he was fighting incredible abuse from an infant throughout his life.”
During Johnson’s trial, former County Prosecutor Robert McCulloch, who prosecuted Johnson, urged jurors to ignore arguments about his troubled upbringing.
“They want you to think that because he had a lousy childhood that he should not have to face the appropriate punishment,” McCulloch argued.
McCulloch is theoretically right. A person’s lifetime of abuse does not justify murder. Yet, for Fouss and those advocating for Johnson’s life, his childhood, the fragile state of his mind and his feelings that McEntee was involved in his younger brother’s death should have been mitigating factors in the decision to end his life.
Fuoss offered a nuanced rebuttal to McCulloch’s dismissal of Johnson’s childhood.
“Kevin’s lifetime of abuse, his mental illness, his extreme trauma, and his still not fully developed teenage brain, do not excuse, or justify his actions. But we cannot separate Kevin’s story from the tragedy of that day in 2005.”
In the video, Mike Wade, Johnson’s high school football coach, talked about the student he’d known since the age of five.
“Life was not good to him,” Wade said. “He had a (expletive) home life. The only time I was confident he was eating properly was at school.”
Johnson was one of the top five players Wade said he had ever coached. He defined Johnson as a “natural, with the ability to “run and hit,” the coach said.
Unfortunately, Johnson was also a constant target of opposing teams. He earned the name “Rockhead,” Wade explained, because “he tackled everybody with his head.” Wade also recalled a series of concussions Johnson received through football games and one where he was knocked unconscious.
“There wasn’t a game where he didn’t get his bell rung at least once,” Wade recalled.
Dr. Dan Martell, a forensic neuropsychologist retained to evaluate Johnson’s mental health disclosed his findings in the clemency video. Johnson, Martell said, had a “fairly extensive set of head injuries, starting at the age of three or four” from falls at home and multiple concussions from football.”
Martell explained Johnson’s long history of “psychiatric disorders, including major depressive disorder, suicidal ideation, psychosis-a break from reality, where you hear voices-and severe impulse disorder.”
In the video, Johnson detailed the time he tried to hang himself at the age of 13.
Martell noted “frontal lobe” damage to Johnson’s brain which he said impacted his “impulse control.” Patients with this type of brain damage exhibit a “breakdown in impulse control” and problem-solving skills that are necessary to make good decisions,” Martell reported, adding: “As situations become more complex, it becomes more difficult for people with these kinds of impairments to make sense of situations.”
The day Johnson killed McEntee could not have been more “complex.” Johnson was convinced that McEntee was the main officer who failed to help after his younger brother, Joseph “Bam Bam” Long suffered a heart attack and died in their grandmother’s home while police searched the house.
Fuoss, who said Johnson’s life “is a story of endless tragedy,” disagrees with McCulloch who told reporters, “A death sentence is justice for McEntee.”
“Vengeance won’t do anything for the family,” she argued. “I really don’t think it will heal them. If we kill him (Johnson), what do we get? Pain on top of pain.
“If we keep Kevin alive, a father is allowed to continue to be a father from prison. We keep an advice-giver and a storyteller. His father, brother, his mom, and the people who love him get the chance to keep him.
“As a teacher, I’m still learning from him. So, I get to keep him, too.”
Sylvester Brown Jr. is The St. Louis American’s inaugural Deaconess Fellow.
Next: Part III: The Injustice of the Death Penalty
Related:
Part I: A Murder in Meacham Park
“We Can Save Kevin- But we are running out of time.” By Melissa Fuoss
Madpmo’s Kevin Johnson Clemency Video
