CORRECTS SPELLING TO BEIMDIEK NOT BEIMBIEK FILE - Johnny Johnson, left, listens as his attorney Bevy Beimdiek speaks during his sentencing hearing in St. Louis County Court in Clayton, Mo., March 7, 2005. Johnson who abducted and beat to death a 6-year-old girl was scheduled to be executed on Tuesday, Aug. 1, 2023, in Missouri, as his attorneys pressed claims that he is mentally incompetent. (Gabriel B. Tait/St. Louis Post-Dispatch via AP, File)
Missouri man executed for 2002 abduction and killing of 6-year-old girl
Johnny Johnson, 45, received a a lethal dose of pentobarbital at a state prison in Bonne Terre and was pronounced dead at 6:33 p.m. CDT, authorities said. He was convicted of the July 2002 killing of Casey Williamson in the small St. Louis area suburb of Valley Park.
Johnson had expressed remorse in a brief handwritten statement released by the Department of Corrections hours before the execution.
“God Bless. Sorry to the people and family I hurt,” Johnson’s statement said.
The U.S. Supreme Court, with three justices dissenting, said earlier in an emailed statement that it was rejecting the request to stay the execution plans. Justice Sonia Sotomayor was joined by two other justices in the dissent.
In recent appeals, Johnson’s attorneys have said the inmate has had delusions about the devil using his death to bring about the end of the world.
“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 and the other dissenting justices wrote in a statement when the stay was rejected by the wider court.
“There is no moral victory in executing someone who believes Satan is killing him to bring about the end of the world.”
The girl’s disappearance from her hometown of Valley Park on July 26, 2002, had set off a frantic search before her body was ultimately found.
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