After his final appeal was turned down by the highest court in Missouri, a man named Kevin Johnson, who was 37 years old and black, was put to death at the beginning of this week. When Johnson was found guilty of the murder of a law enforcement officer and condemned to death, he was just 19 years old. His defence team maintained that the initial case brought by the prosecution in 2005 was filled with “racist prosecution practices,” which resulted in the death sentence, and that this was what led to the conviction.
His daughter, Khorry Ramey, who was just 19 years old at the time, made a request to be present for her father’s final moments, but the state refused her request because of the age requirement of 21 or older. She kept up her communication with her father by writing him letters, calling him, and making periodic trips to see him, during which she introduced her kid to his grandfather.
“My father has been the only parent for virtually all of my life, and he is the one who has had the greatest impact on me throughout my whole life…” In her declaration to the court, Ms. Ramey claimed, “The suffering that I will experience because Missouri officials restrict me from attending the execution of my father for no other reason than my current age is deep and cannot be fixed.”
The United States of America is one of the few western countries that still possesses the practice of state-sanctioned executions, despite the fact that this practice is grossly out of date. People who are locked up in the United States are seen as expendable, as persons who can be isolated from society without attracting any attention from the general public. Our judicial system is a form of modern-day slavery, and the use of the death sentence amounts to the lynching of black bodies in a legal setting.
Many people are unaware that local and national elections take place every year to decide the detailed regulations surrounding the death sentence until they actually look at the ballot and see that they have a say in the matter. In addition to the various steps we are doing to lower the jail population, it is imperative that we give careful consideration to these recommended changes in order to address this severely flawed system from every angle. Click HERE to visit Kevin Johnson GoFundMe page