Before Kevin Johnson was executed, he kept a journal. What he wrote in his final days

On Aug. 24, Kevin Johnson learned when he was going to die.

He had 97 days to write down his thoughts, have final conversations with his daughter and prepare himself to walk into the execution room at a prison in eastern Missouri.

“My future seemed clear now that there was no more maybes and what ifs,” he wrote in a journal entry. “The sun was hitting my face hard and I enjoyed every moment of it as I wondered if this would be my last time being able to feel it.”

“Life is supposed to be a gift and death is supposed to be a curse that sneaks up on you in the dark of night preferably in your sleep. The terminally ill knew they were dying but not even they know the exact day and time.”

The 37 year old regularly wrote down his thoughts and self-published two books while in prison for a 2005 killing of a St. Louis area police officer.

In recent weeks, Johnson’s story garnered statewide and national attention after a special prosecutor attempted to halt the execution, arguing his trial had been marred by racism.

His former elementary school principal Pam Stanfield is now compiling Johnson’s writings for a third book entitled “Journey to the Gurney.” The two reconnected after his arrest and have kept in touch for 17 years, writing letters and visiting in person. They supported each other’s writing endeavors when Johnson began journaling about his life several years ago. She helped him get the first two books published and after he found out the execution date, he began emailing her entries documenting his last months to be published posthumously.

She said he was meticulous in his writing, from getting dialogue correct to vocabulary and editing. He was also able to write in a way that got “an immediate emotional response,” Stanfield said.

“I do think he is leaving a legacy.”

Johnson was 19 when he shot and killed William McEntee, a white Kirkwood police officer, husband and father of three.

Johnson’s first trial ended with a hung jury. A second jury convicted him of first-degree murder.

The entries illustrate Johnson’s sense of hope that ebbed and flowed and contain his thoughts on race in Missouri.

“This conservative state has a zero tolerance for black guys who harm or kill white people,” Johnson wrote. “I have killed a white man of value and there was no other punishment except death.”

Journal excerpts were shared with consent from Johnson and provided by Stanfield. Details below were contained in Johnson’s writings.

Former elementary school principal Pam Stanfield and Kevin Johnson are shown in this undated photo. Stanfield is compiling Johnson’s writings for a third book entitled “Journey to the Gurney.” Johnson was executed in Missouri on Nov. 29, 2022.
Former elementary school principal Pam Stanfield and Kevin Johnson are shown in this undated photo. Stanfield is compiling Johnson’s writings for a third book entitled “Journey to the Gurney.” Johnson was executed in Missouri on Nov. 29, 2022.

‘Walked around in fear’

Johnson was in the gym on Aug. 24 when a corrections officer told him he was wanted back in the housing unit. He was escorted down a hallway, through a metal detector and out a door. His heart felt like it was sinking into his stomach. But maybe he had been called for a follow up medical appointment. Or maybe his attorney wanted to talk, he thought.

For years, Johnson had challenged his sentence through the courts. He visited the prison law library on Fridays. Recent legal developments gave him some hope. A decision in Kentucky declared the death penalty unconstitutional for people under 21 at the time of the offense. A Missouri law passed in 2021 gave prosecutors the right to intervene in cases where they believed a defendant had been unconstitutionally convicted, he noted.

“’Stay optimistic JK,’ everyone close to me would instruct,” Johnson wrote.

His appeals were exhausted in March.

For weeks, he had “walked around in fear on eggshells” wondering if the Missouri Supreme Court would issue a death warrant.

“Out of my entire seventeen years of incarceration, awaiting the court’s decision had to be the most tortuous mind-boggling experience ever.”

As he approached a prison staff member, “it became more transparent than the clear blue waters of the Pacific Ocean.” Another prison employee read the death warrant: Johnson was scheduled to die Nov 29.

“I had held up pretty well the entire time leading up to this final reading but as those words spewed from his lips, I could feel myself breaking internally,” he wrote.

Johnson was placed on “pre-execution status,” he wrote, and transferred to solitary confinement. Because he had not violated any rules, he was allowed to keep his TV and tablet and had access to a phone.

He was strip searched, a process he found demeaning when he had entered prison years ago, but “I had gotten butt naked for these guards so much that I could walk completely nude around Times Square on New Year’s Eve and not feel shame.”

He was introduced to the unit manager, a caseworker and a “psych doctor who was tasked with making sure that I wasn’t having ideas of harming myself or anyone else. Something that I thought was ridiculous. I was condemned to die in three months and they saw necessarily fit to preserve me until that date. Why?”

They asked if he had any questions. He said no.

“I just needed to be alone in a quiet place so I could fully assess the entirety of the situation,” Johnson wrote.

Kevin Johnson is pictured with his daughter Khorry and her newborn son.
Kevin Johnson is pictured with his daughter Khorry and her newborn son.

He entered cell nine where there was a metal sink and toilet, a three-foot-by-three-foot shower, a concrete slab typically used as a shelf or desk and a metal stool bolted to the floor, he described. A bunk bed had a two-and-a-half inch thick gray mattress. Centered above the bunk was a window measuring four inches wide and four feet tall.

He sat on the bunk and “allowed the light from the window to shine on me.”

“The state of Missouri just made your worst fears reality,” he wrote. “They’re going to literally kill you. Put you on display like a monkey in the zoo then run poison through your veins until your heart stops.”

10:40 a.m., August 25th

Johnson wrote that his “only true hope” was the appointment of a special prosecutor who could investigate the constitutionality of his St. Louis County conviction.

But that person had not yet been appointed.

“What the freak was the hold up? I only have 96 more days to live ... literally! For me to be spared the needle an attorney would have to be appointed, complete a full investigation that may include locating witnesses, and if anything erroneous is found they would have to file the necessary paperwork.”

He goes on to question why the court had selected him as the next to die. Missouri had 19 people on death row, some of whom had been been sentenced before Johnson was even born, according to department of corrections records.

“I’m only 36 years old, well I would be 37 by the time I’m actually strapped to the gurney,” he wrote, saying he felt “mounting frustration.”

“I felt the need to release my pent-up anger but unlike July 5, 2005 I knew I did not want it misguided in the wrong direction so I synced my tablet again to see if I had any new messages. I guess the stars were aligned but just briefly. My daughter has always been a cure to my mental madness and just as I was on the brink of internal madness, there was an email from her.”

Kevin Johnson and daughter. Kevin Johnson pictured with his 19-year-old daughter Corionsa “Khorry” Ramey.
Kevin Johnson and daughter. Kevin Johnson pictured with his 19-year-old daughter Corionsa “Khorry” Ramey.

E.E. Keenan was appointed special prosecutor Oct. 12, according to a St. Louis County order.

He would go on to tell Missouri Supreme Court justices that former prosecutor Robert McCulloch — whose father was killed in the line of duty — handled five cases involving a police officer death during his career. In the four cases with Black defendants, including Johnson’s, he sought the death penalty. The fifth case was a white defendant and McCulloch did not pursue capital punishment even though the killing “was more aggravated,” Keenan alleged.

In court documents, Keenan also said McCulloch intentionally eliminated Black jurors during Johnson’s second trial.

On Nov. 28, the court struck down a request to halt Johnson’s execution.

5 p.m., November 29th

Johnson’s death warrant went into effect at 6 p.m.

Days before, he had been moved to Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center, in Bonne Terre, where executions are carried out.

Hours before, he wrote, “I have been afraid a lot of times in my life but I think that this moment takes the cake. My entire day has been flooded with thoughts of what that poison will feel like once it enters my body. I do not want to die.”

He wrote about being baptized on Nov. 8.

“It was surreal as my head went under the water and when I came up, I literally felt like a new man ... Who would have thought that with all that I had gone through in life I would give my life to the Lord. Now look at me!”

He wrote on the Missouri Supreme Court’s decision: “The world was watching and all got to see racism at its highest level.”

Johnson declined a last meal, fearing he would defecate when the lethal injection was administered.

Around 6:40 p.m., the U.S. Supreme Court denied a stay of execution.

Witnesses, including Stanfield, were escorted into viewing rooms. Johnson laid on a gurney with Rev. Darryl Gray, who had baptized him, by his side in the execution room.

An execution team administered a lethal dose of pentobarbital.

Johnson was pronounced dead at 7:40 p.m.

On Nov. 30, Stanfield received Johnson’s last entry. Prison correspondences are screened so delivery is delayed.

“Although my fight is over, the fight for this cause is never dying. Continue to stand up to racism. Continue to change the narrative,” Johnson’s last sentences said.

Kevin Johnson was sentenced to death for the 2005 shooting of a Kirkwood police officer.
Kevin Johnson was sentenced to death for the 2005 shooting of a Kirkwood police officer.