Mid-Missouri killer still has a date with the executioner

KMIZ — The Missouri Supreme Court has refused to halt the October execution of a man convicted of a Columbia triple killing who claimed his intellectual disability made him ineligible for the death penalty. Ernest Lee Johnson  is scheduled to die by injection Oct. 5 at the state prison in Bonne Terre. It would be the first execution in Missouri since convicted killer Walter Barton was put to death in May 2020. The court ruling was Tuesday. Johnson was convicted of killing 46-year-old Mary Bratcher, 57-year-old Mable Scruggs and 58-year-old Fred Jones during a closing-time robbery of a Casey’s General Store in Columbia in February 1994.