The nation in brief: Daughter barred from father’s execution

Daughter barred from father's execution

ST. LOUIS -- A federal judge has denied a request from a 19-year-old woman to let her watch her father's death by injection, upholding a Missouri law that bars anyone younger than 21 from witnessing an execution.

Kevin Johnson is set to be executed Tuesday for killing Kirkwood, Mo., police officer William McEntee in 2005. Johnson's lawyers have appeals pending.

His daughter, Khorry Ramey, had sought to attend the execution, and the American Civil Liberties Union had filed an emergency motion with a federal court in Kansas City. The ACLU argued the age requirement serves no safety purpose and violates Ramey's constitutional rights.

But U.S. District Judge Brian Wimes ruled late Friday that Ramey's constitutional rights would not be violated, though he acknowledged emotional harm.

"I'm heartbroken that I won't be able to be with my dad in his last moments," Ramey said. "My dad is the most important person in my life. He has been there for me my whole life, even though he's been incarcerated."

Ramey said she was praying that Gov. Michael Parson would grant her father clemency. Johnson's lawyers don't challenge his guilt but claim racism played a role in the decision to seek the death penalty as well as the jury's decision. Johnson is Black and McEntee was white.

Johnson's lawyers also have asked the courts to intervene because of a history of mental illness and his age; he was 19 at the time of the crime.

The Missouri attorney general's office argued there were no grounds for intervention: "The surviving victims of Johnson's crimes have waited long enough for justice, and every day longer that they must wait is a day they are denied the chance to finally make peace with their loss."

Michigan kidnap plotters denied retrial

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. -- A federal judge has denied a new trial for two men convicted of conspiring to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

Lawyers for Adam Fox and Barry Croft Jr. alleged misconduct by a juror and unfairness by U.S. District Judge Robert Jonker after their conviction by a federal jury in August. Jonker on Friday shot down claims of juror misconduct and said he found "no constitutional violation and no credible evidence" to convene a new hearing.

Fox and Croft face up to life in prison when they're sentenced Dec. 28. Whitmer, just reelected to a second term, was never physically harmed in the plot, which led to more than a dozen arrests in 2020.

Fox and Croft's first trial ended in a mistrial when the jury was unable to come to a unanimous verdict.

Defense lawyers said a juror in the second trial was described by a co-worker as "far-left leaning," was eager to get on the jury and was poised to convict before hearing evidence. They also said the judge erred by imposing a time limit on the cross-examination of a government witness.

"Defendants have neither demonstrated that the jury verdict is 'against the manifest weight of the evidence' nor that a 'substantial legal error has occurred' such that the interests of justice demand a new trial," Jonker wrote.

N.M. nuclear disposal area expands

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- Workers at the nation's only underground nuclear waste repository, in southern New Mexico, have started using a newly mined disposal area.

Officials at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant made the announcement last week, saying the first containers of waste to be entombed in the new area came from Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee -- one of the many labs and government sites across the country that package up waste and ship it to the plant.

Known as Panel 8, the area consists of seven rooms for placing special boxes and barrels packed with lab coats, rubber gloves, tools and debris contaminated with plutonium and other radioactive elements. Each room measures 33 feet wide and 16 feet high and runs the length of a football field.

Carved out of an ancient salt formation about half a mile deep, the landfill outside Carlsbad received its first shipment in 1999. The idea is that the shifting salt will eventually entomb the radioactive waste left from decades of bomb-making and nuclear weapons research.

Arrest made in truck stop shootout

BATON ROUGE -- A 42-year old man was arrested after a deadly Thanksgiving shooting at a truck stop in Louisiana.

Timothy Washington, who was injured, was arrested by police and SWAT officers Friday, Iberville Sheriff Brett Stassi said. Washington faces one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm.

Video surveillance shows that about 10 p.m. Thursday a fight broke out between three men at the Interstate 10 truck stop in Grosse Tete, just west of Baton Rouge, The Advocate reported. Police said 40 rounds were fired, forcing nearly a dozen people to run to safety.

The shooters "didn't take into consideration that innocent bystanders could be hit," Stassi said, adding that bullets were lodged in several cars.

Police found 29-year-old Demore Debose dead, and his brother was injured.


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