New execution date set for Ernest Lee Johnson

The Missouri Supreme Court has set an execution date for Ernest Lee Johnson for the murders of three employees at a Columbia convenience store.

The court’s June 29 order sets the execution to occur in the 24-hour period beginning at 6 p.m. on Oct. 5.

Johnson was convicted of the bludgeoning deaths of Mary Bratcher, Fred Jones and Mabel Scruggs at a Casey’s General Store in 1994. He was scheduled to die in 2015, but the U.S. Supreme Court sent the case back to an appeals court to review whether the execution drug could cause Johnson to have violent seizures due to a brain tumor.

The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Johnson’s argument last year, and the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year declined to review the case.

Johnson has had numerous appeals in state and federal court. His original death sentences were reversed in 1998 due to ineffective counsel. He was sentenced to death a second time, but those were reversed in 2003 in a post-conviction case regarding whether Johnson was so intellectually disabled that he could not be executed. 

He then was sentenced to death a third time, leading to an appeal that resulted in a 2008 Supreme Court decision that criminal defendants who allege mental retardation to avoid the death penalty must prove the disability. 

Johnson continues to challenge his intellectual fitness for execution.

The case is State v. Johnson, SC87825.