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Thread: Ernest Lee Johnson - Missouri Execution - October 5, 2021

  1. #11
    Senior Member Frequent Poster elsie's Avatar
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    I don't think this is one the Governor will commute.
    Proverbs 21:15 "When justice is done, it is a joy to the righteous but terror to evil doers."

  2. #12
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    Attorneys file appeals to halt Ernest Johnson's execution

    By Alan Burdziak
    The Columbia Daily Tribune

    Attorneys for a man sentenced to death for a 1994 triple murder in Columbia are attempting to halt his execution on the grounds that he is mentally disabled and that drugs used during a lethal injection would cause pain and suffering because of his brain tumor.

    Attorneys William Gaddy and Jeremy Weis on Thursday filed a complaint and on Friday filed a temporary restraining order in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri to halt the planned Nov. 3 death of Ernest L. Johnson because of his brain tumor. The tumor was discovered after Johnson was incarcerated, and it was partially removed in 2008. The remaining portion of the benign tumor could not be extracted and created “scarring tissue and a brain defect where a portion of the brain appears missing or suppressed on MRI images,” according to the complaint.

    Lethal injection drugs used in Missouri — midazolam and a lethal dose of pentobarbital — could cause “uncontrollable seizures” and result in a painful execution, violating the Eighth and 14th amendments to the U.S. Constitution, the lawyers argue. Along with the complaint and restraining order, Gaddy and Weis filed an affidavit by Joel Zivot, an assistant professor at Emory University's School of Medicine in Atlanta. Zivot on Aug. 14 examined Johnson at Potosi Correctional Center and found Johnson has a hole in the top of his head and is missing 15 to 20 percent of his brain tissue because of the surgery.

    Johnson’s brain condition left him with a seizure disorder, Zivot said, and midazolam and pentobarbital promote seizures. Zivot wrote he believes Johnson “faces a significant risk for a serious seizure" from a lethal injection.

    Johnson was convicted in 1995 of killing Mary Bratcher, 46, Mable Scruggs, 57, and Fred Jones, 58, on Feb. 21, 1994. The trio was closing a Casey’s General Store on Ballenger Lane when Johnson entered and robbed the register before beating them to death with a hammer and a screwdriver. His death sentence was overturned in 1999 and 2003, but the Missouri Supreme Court in 2006 affirmed a Pettis County jury’s decision to once again sentence Johnson to death.

    Weis on Friday said he had confidence in Zivot’s findings. Zivot has practiced anesthesiology and critical care medicine for 20 years and has performed or supervised the care of more than 40,000 patients, he wrote in his affidavit.

    “I don’t think the state will be able to say with any confidence that what Dr. Zivot has done in his examination with Ernest is not correct,” Weis said.

    The restraining order and stay should be denied, Missouri Assistant Attorney General Gregory Goodwin wrote in his response filed Friday. Goodwin said Johnson's claim is barred by the statute of limitations and that he has failed to exhaust all administrative remedies. Johnson has "unreasonably delayed bringing this suit," Goodwin wrote, which is not sufficient to delay the execution.

    In the Supreme Court, Johnson’s lawyers filed a motion to stay the execution, a writ of mandamus to appoint a judge to determine whether Johnson is intellectually disabled or, in the alternative, a petition for a writ of habeas corpus. Attorneys for Johnson have said he has a low IQ, with the most recent test showing a score of 67, well below the average of 100.

    The U.S. Supreme Court in 2002 ruled it is unconstitutional to execute someone who is mentally disabled, thought the court left it up to states to define what constitutes a mental disability.

    Gaddy and Weis requested a hearing in front of a judge to determine whether Johnson is handicapped. Both sides would present evidence and offer testimony from experts rather than leave the matter up to a jury, which is what happened before.

    “That takes it out of the jury’s hands,” Weis said. “That takes the emotion out of the case. That takes out the facts of the crime, which are really irrelevant to whether the person is intellectually disabled or not.”

    http://www.columbiatribune.com/news/...comments=focus

  3. #13
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Do any states have a time limit on the appeals process? Like no appeals 2 weeks before the execution or something like that?
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

  4. #14
    Senior Member CnCP Legend CharlesMartel's Avatar
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    Opinion

    Disability should disqualify killer from death penalty

    Ernest Johnson is scheduled to die Nov. 3 by lethal injection, even though he does not meet such a standard of punishment because of his intellectual disability — IQ of 67 — and documented fetal alcohol syndrome.

    The death penalty in this case is prohibited by the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution and upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in Atkins v. Virginia 536 U.S. 304 (2002).

    We have no argument with his conviction — he is guilty of three counts of murder committed in 1994 — but Johnson has had clear deficits from the very beginning.

    National forensic psychologist Natalie Novick Brown, who specializes in cases of individuals diagnosed with fetal alcohol syndrome, issued a report about Johnson in 2005. It read, in part:

    “His mother abused alcohol from the age of 10, and by the time she was 18 and pregnant with Ernest, she was downing several pints of whiskey and gin each week in addition to consuming sedatives. She had a serious history of intoxication as well as several associated hospital admissions.

    She prostituted herself out for money to support her addictions. When that wasn’t enough, she prostituted her children out, including Ernest. ... She rewarded Ernest’s childhood prostitution with alcohol and drugs, thus turning him into an addict.

    Later, Ernest’s mother married a man who physically and sexually abused Ernest.”

    Brown’s report is replete with documented evidence of the many characteristics of a child whose mother abused alcohol during pregnancy, including attention deficit disorder, hyperactivity, small stature, incomplete formation of the frontal lobe, where executive functioning development occurs, resulting in poor judgment skills and understanding consequences of behaviors, all of which are well-documented in the now extensive literature on fetal alcohol syndrome and fetal alcohol spectrum disorders. In addition, her report provides documentation of alcohol and drug abuse by his mother, and clear psychological and physiological deficits that have been evidenced in Johnson from an early age.

    Yet none of this report has ever been admitted in the many appeals that have been conducted in this case over the years.

    The Missouri Chapter of the National Organization of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome is an organization dedicated to providing education and training on fetal alcohol spectrum disorders as well as advocacy for these individuals who cannot speak for themselves.

    As president of the Missouri chapter of the National Organization of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, I strongly encourage Gov. Jay Nixon to remove the death penalty from Johnson and grant him life imprisonment.

    http://www.columbiatribune.com/opini...65cb6981f.html

  5. #15
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    Federal judge denies attempts to halt execution for Columbia murders

    By Alan Burdziak
    The Columbia Daily Tribune

    A federal judge has denied attempts to stop next Tuesday’s scheduled execution of a man convicted in a triple murder at a Columbia convenience store in 1994.

    Greg Kays, a U.S. district judge for the Western District of Missouri, denied Tuesday a motion for preliminary injunction filed on behalf of Ernest L. Johnson and dismissed a complaint at the behest of the state. Both sought to stop Johnson’s pending death on the basis that Missouri’s lethal injection drug, pentobarbital, combined with Johnson’s brain condition is likely to result in a painful execution, a violation of the Eight Amendment barring cruel and unusual punishment.

    In siding with the state, Kays wrote in his nine-page order that Johnson’s case is unlikely to succeed on its merits in part because Johnson failed to establish that there is “a better, available method of execution” as required in claiming the possibility of a violation of the Eighth Amendment. Though Johnson’s claim of a painful execution favors an issuance of an injunction, Kays wrote, Johnson has “failed to carry this heavy burden” of success on its merits, or of showing that he would likely win the case.

    Kays agreed with two Missouri assistant attorneys general, who wrote last week in their response to Johnson’s complaint that Johnson failed to state a claim to relief. Kays dismissed the complaint without prejudice because the complaint did not “provide any facts establishing an essential element of his claim: that there is a feasible and readily implementable way to execute him.”

    Johnson was sentenced to death three times for the Feb. 21, 1994 beating deaths of Mary Bratcher, 46, Mable Scruggs, 57, and Fred Jones, 58. The sentence was overturned twice, but the third time, a decision by a Pettis County jury in 2006, withstood a state Supreme Court review. As Bratcher, Scruggs and Jones were closing a Casey’s General Store on Ballenger Lane in Columbia, Johnson entered, robbed the cash register and beat them to death with a hammer and screwdriver.

    Attorneys arguing against a stay of Johnson’s execution also wrote that Missouri has carried out 18 successful and painless executions using pentobarbital and that Johnson has known of his brain condition since 2008 and waited too long to bring up the possibility that it could complicate the execution.

    Johnson also has a pending case in Missouri’s Supreme Court seeking to halt his execution because his IQ is 67, making him mentally disabled.

    http://www.columbiatribune.com/news/...4c0aa2b82.html
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  6. #16
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    This is good news. Helen, does the state of Missouri have problems with the drugs, or is everything okay there?
    Greetings, bernhard

  7. #17
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    Grisly triple murder case shocked mid-1990s Columbia

    By Alan Burdziak
    The Columbia Daily Tribune

    Driven by his addiction to crack cocaine, Ernest L. Johnson robbed a north Columbia convenience store on Feb. 12, 1994, and killed three people for $1,700 to support his drug habit. Nearly 22 years later, Johnson appears to be living out his final days while his attorneys scramble to stop his execution.

    Unless a court agrees with his lawyers’ pleas for clemency or Gov. Jay Nixon intervenes, the state of Missouri will inject 5 grams of pentobarbital into Johnson at 6 p.m. Tuesday at a prison in Bonne Terre, cementing the fate three separate juries have decided for him.

    Columbia was a different, smaller town in 1994. The area where Casey’s General Store stood on Ballenger Lane was mostly rural, and the city had about 40,000 fewer people than the 2014 estimate of nearly 117,000 residents.

    When news broke that Johnson had used a hammer and screwdriver to fatally bludgeon Mary Bratcher, 46, Mable Scruggs, 57, and Fred Jones, 58, during the robbery, the city was shocked. Though police arrested Johnson the day after the murders, the city was on edge in the aftermath of the crime.

    Carroll Highbarger was deputy chief of the Columbia Police Department in 1994. Highbarger said the murders frightened the city’s residents, particularly people who worked at night in gas stations, convenience stores and other businesses.

    “Everybody was more cautious,” Highbarger said Friday at his south Columbia home. “Obviously we were very fortunate he was caught pretty quick.”

    The Mid-Missouri Major Case Squad was activated to aid in the investigation, with investigators coming from the Missouri State Highway Patrol, the Boone County Sheriff’s Department and nearly every other law enforcement agency in adjacent counties. Highbarger recalled a break in the case that identified Johnson: A woman who lived across the street from the store saw Johnson enter and exit the building at the time of the slayings, but she did not come forward for several hours.

    “That did it,” Highbarger said. “Then it was just a matter of running him down.”

    The case was the most heavily covered crime story in Columbia’s history at that point, said Stacey Woelfel, who was KOMU’s news director at the time. Media coverage was so intense that Johnson’s lawyers requested the judge in the case bar the media and public from pretrial hearings because, they said, the coverage could prejudice the jury pool.

    The sheer brutality of the crime shocked people, Woelfel said. Before Johnson beat Jones to death, he shot him in the face with a .25-caliber gun. Johnson stabbed Bratcher at least 10 times with a screwdriver. Investigators found Jones’ body in a cooler and the other two victims in the store’s bathroom. Police found teeth, bone fragments and large amounts of blood near all three victims.

    “It was kind of a lonely little outpost there, and people could just picture the way these folks were killed and how they just couldn’t get away,” said Woelfel, now the head of the documentary journalism program at the University of Missouri.

    Randy Boehm, who was a Columbia police captain at the time, said the murders created a lot of fear in the city.

    “A lot of folks didn’t think of something like that happening in our community,” said Boehm, who now is manager of security services with MU Health Care.

    Police increased their presence in the area near the store and frequently updated the public on the progress of the investigation to assuage fears, Boehm said. The store closed immediately after the murders and never reopened.

    Though Boehm was not part of the investigation, he said it affected officers in the department who were involved. “It wasn’t ... a typical crime scene,” he said.

    Several people who investigated the case, responded to the scene or took part in Johnson’s court proceedings either declined comment or did not respond to messages seeking comment. Relatives of Johnson and his victims were unavailable or unwilling to comment. Kevin Crane, the county prosecuting attorney at the time who tried the case and is now a circuit judge, declined comment because of the pending litigation. Johnson’s attorneys, W. Brian Gaddy and Jeremy Weis, did not respond to messages seeking comment.

    The first two times Johnson was condemned to die were overturned, but a Pettis County jury’s 2006 decision to put him back on death row withstood a Missouri Supreme Court review.

    At trial and in his penalty phases, public defenders represented Johnson. Nancy McKerrow, one of Johnson’s public defenders during his trial, said the murders never would have happened had it not been for crack cocaine and Johnson’s addiction.

    “Ernest was not — I know this sounds weird given the horrendous nature of the crime — was not and is not a violent person,” McKerrow said. “He’s very mild-mannered.”

    The three victims knew Johnson, now 55, who lived nearby with his girlfriend and her two sons. He frequented the store, and it was during his third visit that day that he robbed the place and killed the three employees. Scruggs and Bratcher were single mothers, and Jones cared for his disabled twin brother. The night she died, Scruggs was filling in for another employee who switched shifts to attend a birthday party.

    One of 33 inmates on Missouri’s death row, Johnson will be the seventh inmate in Missouri to be executed in 2015 if he dies Tuesday. Ten men were put to death in the state in 2014; two in 2013.

    A three-judge panel in the Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday denied a motion to stay Johnson’s execution on an appeal from U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri. A bid to stop the execution on the grounds that Johnson is intellectually disabled is pending in the Missouri Supreme Court.

    McKerrow said the nation’s capital punishment system is flawed.

    “When the state seeks the death penalty, the system is such that they get it,” she said. “The way the juries are selected, I think they’re predisposed to give death.”

    She mentioned dozens of inmates who sat on death row but later were exonerated. While proponents call it a deterrent, she said people who commit capital crimes don’t consider the consequences.

    “I just don’t see any good coming from executing Ernest Johnson,” McKerrow said.

    http://www.columbiatribune.com/news/...1e4c505bf.html

  8. #18
    Moderator Ryan's Avatar
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    Appeals court denies motion to stay execution of man convicted in triple murder

    By Alan Burdziak
    The Columbia Daily Tribune

    The Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday denied a motion to stay the execution of a man convicted of a 1994 triple murder at a north Columbia convenience store.

    Ernest L. Johnson, 55, is scheduled to die by lethal injection at 6 p.m. Tuesday. Driven by his addiction to crack cocaine, Johnson on Feb. 12, 1994, robbed Casey’s General Store, 2200 Ballenger Lane, and used a hammer and screwdriver to fatally bludgeon Mary Bratcher, 46, Mable Scruggs, 57, and Fred Jones, 58.

    Kansas City attorneys W. Brian Gaddy and Jeremy Weis have been unsuccessful in stopping Johnson’s scheduled execution.

    In 2008, Johnson had surgery to remove part of a tumor in his brain and has since suffered seizures. His lawyers argued in a federal case that his brain condition combined with the pentobarbital creates a “substantial risk” that Johnson will have a violent seizure and a painful death that violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.

    U.S. District Chief Judge Greg Kays on Tuesday denied attempts to halt the execution, writing that Gaddy and Weis had not shown the case would win and that Johnson had not done enough to offer an alternative method of execution.

    Gaddy and Weis appealed, and a three-judge appellate court panel sided with Kays. The panel said Johnson did not present strong enough evidence that pentobarbital would cause pain because of his brain condition. The judges also said Johnson’s case was unlikely to succeed because he did not identify an alternative method of execution that could be implemented quickly and would reduce the risk of pain.

    His attorneys did argue lethal gas was an alternative execution method, but the court ruled that arguing lethal gas is “legally available in Missouri is not the same as showing the method is feasible or readily implementable alternative method of execution.”

    A case in Missouri’s Supreme Court still is pending. In that court, Gaddy and Weis requested a judge be appointed to consider evidence that Johnson is intellectually disabled. Past attorneys for Johnson unsuccessfully tried to convince juries that his IQ is 67, well below the average of 100, and therefore it would be unconstitutional to execute him.

    Neither Gaddy nor Weis responded to messages seeking comment Saturday afternoon.

    Johnson is the latest inmate in the country to challenge lethal injection protocols. Paul Litton, a professor at the University of Missouri School of Law, said there probably are more death penalty states in the United States with lawsuits fighting lethal injection procedures than those that are not.

    The inmates in nearly every case across the country are challenging the Eighth Amendment standard set by a U.S. Supreme Court decision in the 2008 case of Baze v. Rees.

    “It’s a heavy burden basically to show that the method of execution presents a substantial or objectively intolerable risk of pain when compare to known and available alternatives,” Litton said.

    If the Missouri Supreme Court appoints a judge to consider whether Johnson has an intellectual disability, that would delay his execution indefinitely, Litton said. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the 2002 case of Atkins v. Virginia that states cannot execute people who are mentally retarded.

    Though a Boone County jury sentenced Johnson to death in 1995, that and a subsequent death sentence were overturned. A 2006 Pettis County jury’s decision to put Johnson back on death row was upheld.

    “There were issues that had to be litigated,” Litton said. “There are reasons this has taken awhile. What the death penalty does in a sense to families, instead of helping them, to a great extent you can say this is a case in which the litigation has actually probably harmed” the victims’ families.

    http://www.columbiatribune.com/news/...055cc3f16.html

  9. #19
    Moderator Ryan's Avatar
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    Attorney tries to block Missouri execution, asks for lethal gas instead of injection

    Missouri is scheduled to on Tuesday execute a man who in 1994 killed three people at a Columbia Casey’s store. Ernest Lee Johnson was convicted of killing Mary Bratcher, Mable Scruggs, and Fred Jones using a hammer.

    His attorney, Jeremy Weis, is trying to get that execution postponed or stopped altogether. He and Johnson don’t dispute that Johnson committed the murders.

    Weis is asking the state Supreme Court to appoint a special investigator to consider his argument that Johnson is intellectually disabled, which would disqualify him for the death penalty.

    Weis said testing of Johnson over more than 40 years establishes deficits in intellectual functioning. He said in Johnson’s trial the jury was given instructions including a clinical definition of intellectual disability but no guidance. He said that hampered their ability to consider his condition.

    “If you don’t understand what an adaptive function is, there’s no definition that the court gave them. If you don’t understand what it means to have onset before the age of 18 and whether it’s documented before the age of 18, the court didn’t give any guidance on that. They didn’t talk about IQ scores, and what IQ score would qualify, what IQ score wouldn’t, margin of error – things like that,” said Weis.

    Weis also argues that Johnson is prone to seizures after a 2008 operation to remove part of a brain tumor, and that the pentobarbital used in executions in Missouri poses the risk of violent and uncontrollable seizures in Johnson. He argues that this would violate Johnson’s right not to suffer cruel and unusual punishment. Weis is arguing that lethal gas would reduce the risk of pain to Johnson.

    Lethal gas is the method of execution used by Missouri from 1937 until 1965. It is still in Missouri law as a method that can be used, but the state does not have a functional gas chamber.

    Weis also represents Kimber Edwards who was scheduled to be executed in October, but Governor Jay Nixon commuted his sentence to life in prison.

    If Johnson’s appeals and a request of Governor Nixon for clemency are not successful, Johnson will be executed between 6 p.m. Tuesday night at 5:59 p.m. Wednesday night at the state prison in Bonne Terre.

    http://www.missourinet.com/category/death-penalty/

  10. #20
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Victim's family prepares for execution of their mother's killer, Ernest Lee Johnson

    The night she found out her mom had been murdered, Carley Schaffer sat outside her house in a Philadelphia ice storm and smoked a cigarette. She waited for her sister to pick her up so they could travel to Columbia for the funeral. She listened to the ice crackle in the trees.

    Saturday, more than 20 years after her mother's death, Schaffer prepared once again to travel to Missouri from the East Coast — this time to watch the execution of her mom’s killer.

    Her mother, Mary Bratcher, was one of three people killed by Ernest Lee Johnson in Casey’s General Store the night of Feb. 12, 1994. Bratcher, Fred Jones Jr. and Mable Scruggs were all employees at the store closing up for the night when Johnson knocked on the door.

    Johnson, looking for money to buy drugs, robbed the store and bludgeoned all three employees to death with a hammer. He hid the bodies in the bathroom and in a cooler. Police later found bloody shoes and a bank bag with a couple hundred dollars and store receipts in Johnson's house.

    He has been convicted of the murders and was sentenced to death three separate times through his appeal process. His attorneys have an appeal before the U.S. Supreme Court that argues Johnson is mentally disabled and should not be executed, according to the Associated Press.

    Johnson, 55, is scheduled to die by lethal injection after 6 p.m. on Tuesday. He is the last person on death row for a crime committed in Boone County. If executed, he will become the seventh person executed in Missouri this year.

    Schaffer and her two siblings planned to be at the state prison in Bonne Terre for the execution. For Schaffer and her sister, Lorrie Heichelbech, who lives in Columbia, it's not about vengeance or finding peace. It's about honoring their mother's memory and supporting each other through the end of more than two decades of legal proceedings.

    “The only peace I’m going to get is to stop having to wait for the next step in the legal process,” Schaffer said. “It’s not bringing my mom back. I’ve known that since the first sentence. It doesn’t change my reality. It doesn’t change that I’m going to grieve for her for the rest of my life.”
    Coffee and cigarettes

    Mary Bratcher was dealt a bad hand in life, her children said, but played her cards as best she could and with as much joy as possible.

    The fifth of 11 children, Bratcher grew up fast and tough. After her husband was arrested and imprisoned for dealing drugs, she raised their three kids by herself.

    “Many people would have laid down a long time ago, given the hand she was given,” Heichelbech, 45, said.

    The three children were the free lunch kids, Schaffer said, and moved from one rented trailer home to another as their mom tried to make ends meet as a convenience store manager. Bratcher wore hand-me-downs and shoes with holes in them so her kids could have nicer things.

    “She led by example,” Schaffer, 42, said. “You work hard. You don’t make excuses, and you rise above your circumstances.”

    She loved to sing The Supremes, Diana Ross and Frank Sinatra, especially “White Christmas” and “I’ll Be Seeing You.” She always smelled like coffee and cigarettes and had “quite the potty mouth,” Heichelbech said. She giggled watching her girls dance disco in their living room. Sometimes those giggles became peals of laughter.

    Bratcher’s laugh was a force. It was deep and seemed to come from every part of her body, Heichelbech said. It made everybody else in the room laugh.

    “I could hear her in a store laughing, and I knew it was her and exactly where she was,” Heichelbech said. “I would give my right kidney to hear it again.”

    Bratcher was the manager at Casey’s and had gone to the store to help Scruggs, a new employee, the night she was killed. When Johnson knocked on the glass, Bratcher recognized him and let him in, Heichelbech said.

    “She always managed to find the good in people,” she said. “That might have led to her death.”

    Johnson's other victims had people who relied on them, too.

    Jones, 58, took care of his elderly mother and his twin brother, who had been disabled by a stroke. He was a quiet man who liked to laugh, according to previous Missourian reporting. After his death, his brother's care was turned over to a state agency, according to an obituary in the Columbia Daily Tribune.

    Scruggs, 57, was a single mother and worked at Casey's and as the chief clerk at the MU Student Health Center. Her co-workers at the health center described her as unusually dedicated and said the job meant “everything” to her, according to previous Missourian reporting. The night she was killed at Casey's she was covering a shift for another worker.

    “You could sum her attitude up in four words — 'I want to help,'” a friend said at Scruggs' funeral, according to an obituary in The Columbia Daily Tribune.
    Scabs

    Heichelbech remembers little about the weeks after her mom's death besides seeing her aunts, buying the casket and speaking at the funeral, which more than 300 people attended.

    Her brother, Rob Bratcher, was 18 at the time and the only sibling living in Columbia. He struggled with his mother's death much more than his sisters, Heichelbech said. Rob Bratcher declined to speak to the Missourian for this story except to say that his mother was a good person. He lives in Kansas City now with his wife and two kids and works in commercial banking.

    Most of those weeks after the murder are a blur for Schaffer, who was 20. But winter, cold and ice storms always bring back the memories and reminders of the absence they surround.

    “I let myself grieve during the winter,” she said. “My family knows what to expect. It’s not easy, but we get on.”

    Schaffer’s children, 10 and 13, know Bratcher as Grandma Mary, their guardian angel who looks out for them from heaven. Teaching them about their grandmother and how she died has been bittersweet, Schaffer said. Telling the good stories passed on her memory. Explaining her death and why they’ll never know Bratcher hurts all over again.

    Her daughter once cried for the loss of her grandmother, mourning a woman she had never known. That’s the worst part, Schaffer said: watching her mother’s murder hurt her child. It makes her angry.

    Heichelbech's son met Bratcher when he was a child, but he doesn't remember the grandma that doted on him.

    “I can tell stories, but it doesn’t cut it," Heichelbech said. "I can’t even convey half of her spirit. It’s a void in his life.”

    Schaffer became a drug counselor to help people with addictions like Johnson. She wants to help people stay away from the path Johnson chose.

    “Part of trauma recovery is taking that trauma and creating a new meaning for it," Schaffer said. "I think what I’m doing now is an honor to her memory.”

    Johnson's execution on Tuesday will be the end of the legal proceedings that repeatedly forced the siblings to revisit that trauma.

    “I struggled so long to deal with the anger and the horror of her death,” Schaffer said. “Sometimes I want to wad it up in a ball and stick it in the back of the brain. Times like this we have to unwad the ball and rip off the scab.”

    Any anger the sisters had toward Johnson has dissipated, they said, though they don't sympathize with him.

    “Once I came to the reckoning of it all, being angry at him was only destroying me," Heichelbech said. "It wasn’t going to touch him in any way. It does nothing but wreck you as a person.”

    The execution will be an opportunity to put the crime of their mother's death to rest. No longer will they have to find babysitters when they're called to court. No longer will they have to face their mother's murderer. No longer will they be left in limbo.

    The loss will last forever, they said, but at least now they'll be able to deal with it on their own timetable.

    “I feel that I need to ride this out. To stand it out and survive it,” Schaffer said. “I'm ready for this to be done.”

    http://www.columbiamissourian.com/ne...4a006f459.html
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

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