ATLANTA, GA – Defense attorneys for Warren King, a man convicted and sentenced to death in Georgia in 1988 for the murder of a store clerk, claim they have found evidence Prosecutor John B. Johnson withheld critical evidence from the defense team and used racial prejudice in jury selection.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) last week, a new court filing revealed King’s co-accused and the only witness to the crime, Walter Smith, reached a plea deal with ADA Johnson who had told jurors during King’s trial that there were “no deals” in place for Smith.
This plea deal allowed Smith to avoid the death penalty and plead guilty to life in prison with the possibility for parole three years after King’s trial and conviction, despite the DPIC noting Smith and King were charged with the death of the clerk and Smith testifying during cross-examination there were no deals in place.
One of Smith’s trial lawyers, John Brewer III, issued a new statement according to the DPIC, stating ADA Johnson approached his client with a possible deal “several months before Mr. King’s trial” and recommended Smith’s sentence of a life sentence with the possibility of parole in exchange for his testimony against King.
The DPIC quotes Brewer, who said he “would have never recommended Smith testify against King unless (he) knew for certain that he had a deal and would avoid the death penalty.”
Under long-standing legal precedent established by the U.S. Supreme Court in Brady v. Maryland (1963) and an ethical obligation for prosecutors to turn over all favorable evidence to the defense team, the DPIC argues counsel for King should have been provided this information, and with proof of this deal, Mr. King’s attorneys could have impeached Smith’s credibility as a witness.
The filings summarized by the DPIC state the prosecution’s failure to disclose the deal, “deprived Mr. King of a fair trial and produced the ultimate miscarriage of justice: an unreliable conviction and death sentence.”
During the trial, Smith testified that King was responsible for shooting the clerk and afterward had said, “I hope I killed the b*tch,” while the DPIC said Mr. King told the jury during the sentencing phase that Smith had given him the gun and told him to shoot the clerk but he gave the gun back to Smith who then fired the fatal shots.
Smith’s testimony was the only evidence pointing to King being the triggerman and had Johnson disclosed the deal with King’s trial attorneys, the DPIC shows the motion claimed they “would have been able to powerfully challenge Mr. Smith’s testimony by highlighting his motive to paint Mr. King, rather than himself, as the shooter, in order to save his life.”
The DPIC also lists the evidence from the motion as follows: ADA Johnson struck 87.5 percent of eligible Black jurors, while striking 8.8 percent of white jurors who were all women, a Black juror was 10 times more likely to be excused than a white juror, and women were four times more likely to be excluded than men.
Despite these statistics from the motion and the Supreme Court’s decision in Batson v. Kentucky (1986) prohibiting attorneys from excluding potential jurors from the service based on their race, on July 2 the Supreme Court refused to hear claims that ADA Johnson had improperly excluded Black jurors from King’s trial; lower courts have since upheld King’s conviction.
While ADA Johnson provided race-neutral reasonings for his exclusion of Black jurors during King’s trial, the DPIC writes, King’s attorneys have uncovered handwritten notes from ADA Johnson which indicate he closely tracked which potential jurors were Black and which were women.
In DPIC’s article, King’s lawyers see these handwritten notes as “concrete proof that (ADA) Johnson was indeed considering race and gender of potential jurors.”
