On April 30, 2020, Latavious Johnson’s appeal was
rejected. He was convicted of murdering Corrections Officer Barbara Ester in
Arkansas on January 20, 2012 and was sentenced to death. Bare in mind, Latavious
Johnson was convicted of shooting dead his father and now has murdered again in
prison.
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Latavious D. Johnson ( Arkansas
Department of Corrections )
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Arkansas Supreme Court rejects death row inmate's appeal
by
Associated Press
Friday,
May 1st 2020
LITTLE
ROCK, Ark. (AP) — The Arkansas Supreme Court on Thursday rejected the appeal of
an inmate on death row for the 2012 fatal stabbing of a prison guard.
Justices
rejected Latavious Johnson’s argument that he received ineffective assistance
from his attorney during his sentencing following his conviction for the
killing of Barbara Ester. Johnson was convicted of killing Ester with a shank
after she attempted to confiscate contraband shoes he was wearing.
Johnson
was serving a life sentence for first-degree murder in the shooting death of
his father at the time of Ester’s slaying.
Arkansas
currently doesn’t have any executions scheduled. The state’s supply of lethal
injection drugs expired last year and the state has not replaced them.
Johnson
argued his attorney should have introduced additional evidence during his
sentencing, including decades-old mental health records from his first trial.
INTERNET SOURCE: https://katv.com/news/local/arkansas-supreme-court-rejects-death-row-inmates-appeal
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Corporal Barbara Ann Dukes Ester
Arkansas Department of Correction, Arkansas
End of Watch Friday, January 20, 2012
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Arkansas Supreme Court upholds death sentence for guard's
killer
by
John Moritz |
April 30, 2020 at 11:19 a.m.
The
Arkansas Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the death sentence of a state inmate
who killed Arkansas Department of Corrections Cpl. Barbara Ester in 2012.
In a
unanimous decision, the high court rejected Latavious Johnson's claims that his
attorneys failed to properly research and present mitigating evidence about his
childhood during the sentencing phase of his trial for the prison guard's death.
Johnson
was already serving a life sentence for fatally shooting his father when he
attacked Cpl. Ester with a shank at the East Arkansas Regional Unit, after she
and another corrections officer tried to take away a pair of contraband shoes
from Johnson.
Johnson's
conviction for Ester's murder was previously upheld by the Supreme Court in
2016.
His new
attorney, Bill Luppen, filed another post-conviction appeal the next year
arguing that that the full circumstances of Johnson's childhood -- after his
mother died of AIDS in 1994, Johnson was sent to live with the abusive father
he later killed at age 18 -- should have been presented to the Lee County jury
that sentenced Johnson to death.
Only
Johnson's half-sister testified in his favor at the sentencing portion of his
trial, according to the court record.
The court
found that calling a lone witness in Johnson's favor was a matter "of
trial strategy and tactics," and that Johnson's representation had not
been deficient.
Johnson
is currently held on death row at the Varner Supermax prison.
The
Barbara Ester Unit, a new prison named for the slain corporal, opened in Pine
Bluff in 2015.
INTERNET SOURCE: https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2020/apr/30/arkansas-supreme-court-upholds-death-sentence-guar/?crime
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I believe that there is a moral and constitutional equivalence between
laws designed to subjugate a race and those that distribute benefits on the
basis of race in order to foster some current notion of equality…. In my mind,
government-sponsored racial discrimination based on benign prejudice is just as
noxious as discrimination inspired by malicious prejudice.
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