National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty

Kia Johnson (TX) - June 11, 2003

The state of Texas is scheduled to execute Kia Johnson June 11 for the murder of William Rains in San Antonio. Johnson, a black man, allegedly shot Rains, a white man, while robbing a convenience store on Oct. 29, 1993. As racial discrimination continues to plague the death penalty process, this is yet another case with the jackpot combination: black defendant, white victim.

A surveillance camera in the convenience store captured the murder on tape; the footage showed a man enter the store, put his hands on the counter, and then proceed to shoot the clerk in the abdomen with a pistol. After it ran on local television, two people came forward to identify Johnson on the tape and a third to link him to the shooting; with three witnesses and a videotape, the state began building its case against him.

As with many similar investigations, the facts of the Rains murder turned out to be much more complicated than they initially appeared. The two people who identified Johnson as the man on the surveillance tape had ulterior motives and very little credibility: one was his common-law wife’s uncle, who openly admitted that he could not stand Johnson, and the other was a drug addict who had not seen Johnson in 15 years. The footage in the film was not clear at all, and the fingerprints investigators took from the counter – which the tape showed the offender touch – did not match Johnson’s fingerprints. The third witness for the prosecution, who claimed she was with Johnson before the shooting, was a longtime jailhouse informant; she had already been in prison three times and had previously testified in exchange for reduced sentences.

Johnson’s court-appointed defense attorney, who apparently met with his client once before the trial, provided grossly ineffective legal representation, most noticeably during the penalty phase of the trial. In an egregious and severely consequential error, he called Julian Rains, the victim’s father, to testify; Rains bluntly said: “I want the guilty person punished…because I don't think my son could rest until his murderer is taken care of.” The courts refused to accept Johnson’s ineffective assistance argument on appeal, claiming that under the circumstances, that could be considered a sound trial strategy.

In his appeal to the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in 2002, Johnson argued that his defense counsel’s errors in the sentencing phase led the jury to settle on the death penalty, rather than consider the issue of “residual doubt” concerning his guilt or innocence. This case, now nearing a very serious execution date, represents an inevitable nightmare of the capital punishment process: the state is preparing to execute a possibly innocent man who stood trial with poor legal representation.

Johnson has also argued that he should not be executed because he is mentally retarded. In 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court banned the execution of people with mental retardation in Atkins v. Virginia. However, the Texas legislature has not yet passed laws to come into compliance with the ruling, and therefore the state does not have guidelines by which to evaluate Atkins claims. Johnson scored within the range of mental retardation on an IQ test in 1997, and two medical experts have supported his claim.

Johnson has four children and countless friends and supporters; his execution, if carried out, will only create a second set of victims and perpetuate the cycle of violence in Texas. Please write Gov. Rick Perry and request a stay for Kia Johnson and a re-evaluation of the death penalty system in Texas.