Re: Was Execution Justified?
edgarblythe wrote:"I am innocent by reason of self-defense," he said. "The only difference between me and James Byrd Jr. is that I lived," he said, alluding to the 1998 racially motivated dragging murder of a Jasper County black man.
He said the youths offered to drive him to his Tomball home, then took him to a remote location, where they forced him from the truck at gunpoint, urinated on him and threatened to kill him. When the teens relaxed their guard, Johnson said, he grabbed the pistol and shot them.
Fulk was shot three times in the head and once in the chest. McCaffrey was found entangled in a fence about 350 feet away. A bullet severed his spinal cord, killing him instantly. Investigators found a knife in his outstretched hand.
I'm not famaliar with this case at all but there seems to be various claims of what happened - all attributed as having come from Johnson.
"" This is the end of the ride for you' Nigger.' When the truck stopped, he was forced out onto the ground and the 2 teenagers kicked him in the head and stomped on his back, all the time laughing and saying, 'Nigger you gonna die. I hate Niggers. We're gonna cut you up.' When he was ordered, 'Get your black Nigger arse up," Lonnie got up slowly, and then made a grab for the guy holding a gun. He said he was mad with fear and rage and struggled against this teenager who was bigger than him. The smaller youth jumped on Lonnie's back. The gun went off. "The big guy falls. I have the pistol now. The other guy comes at me with a knife. So I pull the trigger." "
http://www.ccadp.org/lonniejohnson.htm
Now something doesn't quite add up there. If, as the page I linked to says, Johnson, by his own words, shot one and then the other attacked him and he shot him - then how did the kid's body end up 350ft away if he died immediately? Also, I noticed that there is no mention of being urinated on in his description of events on that site.
This part of the story...
Quote:Johnson, 44, was convicted of killing Leroy "Punkin" McCaffrey and his friend, Gunar "Bubba" Fulk, after the teens offered him an early morning ride from a Tomball convenience store on Aug. 15, 1990. They told the store clerk they were assisting a stranded motorist. Their bodies were found beside a remote farm to market road hours later.
doesn't match up with the Amnesty International news brief either.
"Police interviewed a woman, Tammy Durham, who said that she had asked the teenagers to come to the store where she worked after she saw a black man, wearing cut-off jeans and a dirty shirt and carrying a rolled up newspaper, acting suspiciously near the store. After the teenagers arrived, she saw them approach a black man who was using a payphone outside the store and she said they left with him in
their vehicle, after asking for a can of petrol."
http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGAMR511242007
There do appear to be an awful lot of questions on this...
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