Johnson set to die by injection on Nov. 29 for 2005 murder of Kirkwood police sergeant
An execution date has been set for Kevin Johnson, convicted of shooting and killing Kirkwood Police Sgt. William (Bill) McEntee on July 5, 2005.
Johnson, 36, is set to die by injection on Nov. 29, 2022, at the state prison in Bonne Terre, Missouri, the Missouri Supreme Court announced last week.
Johnson appealed his conviction over the years, arguing that he didn’t get a fair trial. The Missouri Supreme Court in July 2013 upheld the November 2007 conviction of Johnson in McEntee’s murder. Johnson, who had been sentenced to death for the shooting, was seeking a new trial.
Advocates for Johnson seeking to win him clemency say he received the death penalty because of a racially biased prosecution that was set on convicting a Black man for killing a white cop.
Former St. Louis Prosecuting Attorney Bob McCulloch, who prosecuted the case, said that race was not a factor. He said Johnson was convicted of murder and is on death row because of his “brutal and unprovoked” killing of McEntee, who he shot 7 times.
“It’s been 17 years since the sentence was imposed, and clearly that has been sufficient time for courts across the state and federal system to look at all aspects of the case — and they have,” McCulloch told the Times on Tuesday. “They have reviewed everything, including if there was any racial bias. They’ve ruled on all of the issues that public defenders have laid out in the petitions and rejected every one. The Missouri Supreme Court has now set the execution date.”
McCulloch said he believes the death penalty is appropriate in Johnson’s case because of his ambush and deliberate attack on McEntee.
“We sought the death penalty because he assassinated a police officer,” the former prosecutor said. “He shot him 5 times when he walked up to the patrol car, then after McEntee’s car crashed and he was helped out of the car by neighbors, he walked up to him and shot him 2 more times when he was on his hands and knees. Then he grabbed McEntee’s gun and marched down the street in front of everybody waving the guns.
“That’s why Kevin Johnson was charged with 1st-degree murder,” McCulloch continued. “It has nothing to do with his race or the victim’s race, or mine or anyone else’s.”
Police had been looking for 19-year-old Johnson on July 5, 2005, for an alleged probation violation. On that same day, his 12-year-old half brother suffered a seizure at their home. His brother died at the hospital later that day from a heart condition.
McEntee, who had responded to the medical emergency for Johnson’s brother, returned to the neighborhood that evening to investigate a report of fireworks. The 43-year-old police sergeant was in his patrol car on Alsobrook Street in Meacham Park talking to a teenager when Johnson approached the passenger side of the vehicle, fired several shots and walked away.
After McEntee was shot, his patrol car rolled down the street and crashed into a tree. Neighbors called 911 and helped McEntee get out of the vehicle. Johnson then walked up and shot McEntee 2 more times — in the back and in the back of his head. He was shot a total of 7 times.
The prosecution argued that the teenage Johnson was upset and angry when he ambushed McEntee because he felt police had not done enough to help save his brother’s life earlier that day.
Johnson was convicted of 1st-degree murder after his 2nd trial in 2007. The first ended in a hung jury. Johnson testified at both trails, saying he was in a trance-like state when he shot McEntee.
Advocates Push For Clemency
Missourians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty has collected roughly 2,600 signatures in the past month calling for Missouri Gov. Mike Parson to commute the death sentence for Johnson to life without the possibility of parole.
Shawn Nolan, a lawyer for Johnson, said in a statement last week that his client is facing execution because of “racially biased prosecution tactics.”
The current St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office would like a special prosecutor to investigate whether race played a part in Johnson’s conviction and death sentence. No one has been appointed yet, a spokesperson for the prosecutor’s office said Monday.
“Particularly given that the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office itself rejects the practices of the prior administration and agrees that a thorough investigation should be conducted into the circumstances leading to Kevin’s conviction and death sentence, the (Missouri Supreme) court should not have scheduled his execution,” Nolan said. “We plan to pursue all available avenues for judicial relief and executive clemency on Kevin’s behalf.”
“Kirkwood Can’t Forget”
A memorial honoring McEntee stands outside Kirkwood City Hall in McEntee Memorial Park. McEntee was a husband and father of three children who were ages 13, 10 and 7 at the time of his murder. He had been a police officer for nearly 20 years.
“Kirkwood can’t forget what we’ve been through, and what the families have been through,” former Kirkwood Police Chief Jack Plummer told the Times in 2017. Plummer was the chief of police at the time of McEntee’s killing.
“When Sgt. McEntee was shot and killed on the job in Meacham Park in Kirkwood, I knew it had been 100 years since a Kirkwood officer lost his life in the line of duty,” he continued.
“I hoped it would be another 100 years if something like the loss of Sgt. McEntee ever happened again in Kirkwood. That’s not the way it worked out,” Plummer added, referring to the Feb. 7, 2007, city council shootings that killed two police officers, three city officials and left the mayor and a reporter wounded.
Source: Webster-Kirkwood Times, Staff, September 5, 2022
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
