Killer of 6-year-old girl is executed in Missouri despite ‘documented’ mental illness

The state of Missouri on Tuesday executed a man for killing a 6-year-old girl more than two decades ago in St. Louis County, despite arguments that he was not legally competent to get the death penalty.

Johnny Johnson, 45, died at 6:33 p.m. by lethal injection at the state prison in Bonne Terre for murdering Casey Williamson in 2002 after attempting to rape her.

Gov. Mike Parson, a Republican, denied clemency and said while Johnson’s death would not bring Casey back, he hoped it “may provide some closure for” her loved ones.

Johnson’s attorneys argued he was “in the grips of active psychosis” when he killed Casey and was not competent to be executed under the Eighth Amendment. He was sexually abused as a child, diagnosed with schizophrenia at 16, heard voices and believed he was executed because the devil was using Missouri to “bring about the end of the world,” they said in his clemency application.

His attorneys asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene to “prevent the execution of a man who is profoundly insane.” The high court greenlit the execution Tuesday evening over the dissent of Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who was joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

“The Court today paves the way to execute a man with documented mental illness before any court meaningfully investigates his competency to be executed,” Sotomayor wrote. “There is no moral victory in executing someone who believes Satan is killing him to bring about the end of the world.”

Before Tuesday, Pope Francis called on Parson, a Baptist, to grant Johnson clemency on the basis of “our own shared humanity.”

Democratic Reps. Emanuel Cleaver of Kansas City and Cori Bush of St. Louis also urged Parson to halt the death sentence, saying Johnson did not have a “rational understanding of the reasons for his execution.”

The victim’s mother, Angie Wideman, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch she had been “looking forward to putting this part of it to rest.” Her father, Ernie Williamson, told the newspaper that while he wanted to see Johnson “die a miserable death,” he did not support capital punishment.

A juror said she would have been OK with clemency, according to Johnson’s attorneys.

In early 2002, Johnson was released from a state psychiatric center. On July 25 of that year, he went to a friend’s house where he had been staying for a few days. Casey, who was also staying there, was reported missing the next day.

Johnson admitted to bludgeoning the child’s head with a brick and leaving her body in a pit at a nearby glass factory. He was convicted in 2005 of first-degree murder, kidnapping and attempted rape. A judge sentenced him to die.

In a statement Monday, Parson called Johnson’s crime “one of the most horrific murders that has come across my desk.”

While incarcerated, Johnson heard voices that told him to cut off his arm, according to his lawyers. Despite several medications, Johnson at times believed he was a vampire, medical records indicated.

Johnson’s execution marked the fourth this year in Missouri. In his final statement, he wrote: “God bless. Sorry to the people and family I hurt.”

There have now been 16 executions this year across the U.S., according to the Death Penalty Information Center. In addition to the four in Missouri, there have been five in Texas, four in Florida, two in Oklahoma and one in Alabama.

Other prisoners remain sentenced to die in Missouri. In July, Parson lifted a stay of execution for one of them, Marcellus Williams, whose guilt was called into question in a St. Louis County killing after his DNA was not detected on the murder weapon.

The Star’s Katie Moore and Bill Lukitsch contributed to this report.