02/01/2008

UPDATED, 11:21 a.m.

2/1/2008

CLAYTON -- A judge sentenced Kevin Johnson this morning to die by lethal injection for the murder of a Kirkwood police officer on July 5, 2005.
 
St. Louis County Circuit Judge Melvyn W. Wiesman imposed the death penalty that a jury recommended in November for the fatal shooting of Sgt. William McEntee. Wiesman rejected a plea by defense attorney Karen Kraft that the life of Johnson, 22, be spared.
 
In a coutroom crowded with family members of both the victim and the defendant, Wiesman heard impassioned victim impact statements from McEntee' sister, Jane, and his widow, Mary, and arguments by Kraft and Prosecuting Attorney Robert P. McCulloch for and against the death penalty.

Sgt. McEntee was 43, the father of three and a Kirkwood police officer for nearly 20 years.

Jane McEntee said she will never again hear her brother's ``big booming laugh or his big footsteps walking through the door.''
 
Refering to her two nephews left fatherless by the murder and their prowess in sports, Jane McEntee said: ``I will never see again the proud look on his face when his sons score a goal or make a basket or hit a homerun.''
 
Mary McEntee told Wiesman how devastated the family has been by her husband's death and the lack of any time for grieving because of all the trials and publicity.

``I am no longer the same mother I was,'' she added, ``There is not enough of me to go around.''
 
As tragic as the murder was, Kraft said, the death penalty was  not justified and the jury's recommendation of death was ``arbitrary and caparicious...This was not a young man who sat for weeks to plot the revenge of his brother.''
 
Wiesman said: ``the sentence of death is the appropriate penalty.''
 
Johnson had already shot McEntee and shooting him again while he was disabled was an act of deliberation, Wiesman told the defendant.

At a trial last April, another jury had deadlocked between first and second-degree murder verdicts so Wiesman had ordered a mistrial.

In both trials, the defendant testified that he was distraught over the death earlier in the evening of July 5, 2005, of his half-brother, Joseph "Bam Bam"' Long, 12, who had died of a congenital heart condition.

Witnesses said they heard Johnson say he blamed police for Joseph's death. Johnson said he was in a trance-like state when he shot the police officer.

On the night he was gunned down, McEntee took another officer's call for a fireworks complaint that evening because he was closer to the Meacham Park neighborhood.
McEntee was talking to three juveniles when Johnson walked up to the police car, fired several shots into it, and walked away. Shot in the head and chest, McEntee still managed to get his car in gear and drive about 200 feet before he crashed.

McEntee got out of the car with help from neighbors but Johnson walked up to the officer, fired three more shots and killed him, witnesses testified and Johnson confirmed.

McCulloch told both juries that every shot Johnson fired amounted to cool deliberation, the necessary ingredient for first-degree murder.

Defense attorneys Robert Steele and Kraft argued that Johnson, distraught over his brother's death, was unable to reflect coolly or act deliberately that night.
No area judge has ever gone against jury wishes in death penalty cases in the 30 years since Missouri reinstated capital punishment. If Johnson receives the death penalty, Steele and Kraft get an automatic appeal to the Missouri Supreme Court.

They are expected to raise the issue of jury misconduct. Last month, Wiesman determined over their objections that Johnson was not entitled to a third trial just because a juror had known one of the witnesses, a crime scene detective who testified in the case.

The judge ruled that the juror had not seen the detective in three years, had never socialized with him, and did not intentionally mislead the court when she failed to mention before the trial began that she knew him.

McCulloch said the officer played only a minor role at the trial, telling the jury about the location and condition of bullet fragments.

Sgt. William McEntee.

McEntee was a father of three and a Kirkwood police officer for nearly 20 years.