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 ) |
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 |
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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