Kansas City Star. September 12, 2022.
Editorial: Missouri man committed a horrific crime. But execution is not justice — it’s cruelty
Little evidence suggests Missouri Gov. Mike Parson will spare the life of convicted cop killer Kevin Johnson, a Missouri death row inmate scheduled to be put to death this fall. Just last year, Parson ignored a plea from Pope Francis to stay the execution of an intellectually disabled man. We oppose Johnson’s pending execution, despite our revulsion at the gravity of his crime, and call on Parson to grant Johnson, of suburban St. Louis, clemency and end government-sanctioned violence.
But it’s not simply the Johnson case that’s the problem. The death penalty is cruel and inhumane. Its application is fraught with risk of error. And study after study has shown the death penalty doesn’t deter violent crime.
Capital punishment is already outlawed in 23 states. Missouri isn’t among them and it shows. Since the turn of the century, 51 men have been executed in the state, according to anti-death penalty advocacy group Missourians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. Only four other states have executed more.
In addition to Johnson, 17 others are on death row in Missouri. Despite their crimes, being put to death by the government is an injustice that implicates all the people in whose name the state spills blood.
Racial and economic disparities exist at nearly every stage of the capital punishment process, studies have consistently shown.
There’s also increased cost concerns associated with capital punishment. Death penalty cases are extraordinarily expensive and drawn out. For example, in neighboring Kansas, where the death penalty exists but where no one has been executed since 1965, cases without the death penalty cost $740,000, while death penalty cases cost $1.26 million, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, which cited a 2014 study on the issue — a figure backed up earlier this year by a bipartisan group of prosecutors opposing the death penalty.
And too often, the system gets it wrong. Since 1973, at least 190 people who have been wrongly convicted and awaiting execution on death row have been exonerated. And a 2014 study by the National Academy of Sciences found that approximately 4.1% of those currently on death row could be innocent.
That shouldn’t surprise us. Any human system is bound to be imperfect. That’s the strongest reason why we shouldn’t dole out punishments that can never be adjusted once carried out.
In Jackson County, the death penalty has thankfully been used sparingly. In the last two decades, only five people have been executed for crimes — and none since 2015, according to Missourians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.
The governor is clearly pro-death penalty. He has yet to meet a death row inmate he’s deemed worthy of mercy. Since Parson took office in 2018, Missouri has executed four convicted killers — Russell Bucklew, Walter Barton, Ernest Johnson and Carman Deck. Not once has Parson, a former Polk County sheriff, spared the life of the condemned.
It’s true that Johnson’s case does not elicit much sympathy. In 2005, he was 19 when he shot Kirkwood Police Sgt. William McEntee. His first murder trial ended with a hung jury. He was later convicted by a second jury of first-degree murder and sentenced to death.
Last month, the Missouri Supreme Court set Johnson’s execution date for Nov. 29 despite the St. Louis County prosecuting attorney office’s attempt to review the case.
Anti-death penalty advocates point out that Johnson, a teenager when he killed McEntee, was abused as a child and grieving the unrelated death of a younger brother earlier that day. As a low-income Black person, Johnson had little chance to escape the death penalty, his supporters argued.
McEntee, the slain Kirkwood Police sergeant, was white, as was the St. Louis County prosecuting attorney at the time who sought the death penalty. After a number of potential Blacks jurors were excluded, Johnson was convicted of murder by a predominantly white jury.
But none of that is grounds by itself to single him out for mercy. Unless those were factors hidden from the jury when it imposed its sentence, the question isn’t one of Johnson’s culpability. He was convicted of a grotesque act of violence — McEntee was shot seven times in the head and torso. The fatal bullet was fired at close range. Instead, the question is one of justice, and whether given all the flaws in our very human criminal justice system it can ever be just to execute someone in the name of the state.
Johnson should be remanded to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
We urge Missouri to join the 23 states that have already abolished capital punishment altogether. (An additional three states — California, Oregon and Pennsylvania — have moratoriums in place that have stopped executions.)
The death penalty is a deeply flawed and inhumane practice, unequally and arbitrarily applied. It needs to stop.
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St. Louis Post-Dispatch. September 10, 2022.
Editorial: Cutting Missouri taxes when the state barely functions is beyond irresponsible
The Missouri state agency that cares for elderly military veterans can only service half its beds. Wait times for people to get set up on the state’s health insurance system for the poor continue to be so unacceptable that the federal government has had to intervene. The state’s teachers are among the lowest paid in the country, as are its severely understaffed home health care workers. Other examples of Missouri government’s deep dysfunction abound, most of it tied in one way or another to systemic underfunding.
And yet Gov. Mike Parson this week will ask the Legislature for a permanent cut to the state’s income tax — which, if granted, would make these and other problems that much harder to solve in the future. If there’s one shred of responsible governance still to be found in the Legislature’s Republican majority, it will turn back this exercise in fiscal malpractice and repair the damage they’ve already inflicted on the state with ideological extremism.
The Legislature will meet Wednesday in a special session called by Parson for the purpose of considering his proposal to reduce the state’s current income tax rate of 5.4% for most taxpayers down to 4.8%. Why this change is necessary is something Parson hasn’t explained beyond political bromides about giving money back to the taxpayers during a fiscally flush time for the state.
It’s not like Missourians are overtaxed in comparison to the rest of the country. The state’s current 5.4% top tax rate is more or less average among U.S. states — higher than neighboring Illinois (4.95%), lower than neighboring Iowa (8.53%) or Kansas (5.7%), higher than the handful of no-tax states like Florida, Texas or Alaska but far lower than places like California (13.3%), Hawaii (11%) or New Jersey (10.75%).
There is, in other words, nothing remarkable one way or the other about Missouri’s current tax rate. Where Missouri stands out is in its failure to conduct the basic functions of government. And that failure can only be exacerbated by Parson’s plan, which would cost around $1 billion a year in lost tax revenue.
The main rationale for the tax cut appears to be the fact that the state’s budget is currently flush with cash. This is true, but that positive balance sheet is the result of a fleeting set of circumstances that will soon change, even as the lower tax rate Parson seeks remains in place.
Pandemic-related stimulus funding from the federal government, higher sales tax revenues because of inflation and other fleeting factors have contributed to Missouri’s overstuffed coffers. The surplus would go to better use fixing some of the state’s chronically neglected problems.
The scandalous underpayment of teachers — and the anemic, insulting non-solution offered by the state’s leaders this year — is perhaps the most vivid illustration of the fact that Missouri isn’t even doing the basics right now.
The state’s minimum teacher salary is $25,000, and even those with a master’s degree and at least 10 years experience are paid as little as $33,000. The National Education Association this year ranked Missouri second-last in the nation in average starting teacher pay, and ranked it 46th in dollars spent per pupil.
The situation is so dire that even Parson and the Legislature’s GOP majority knew they had to address it last session. But their solution was so stingy that it begs the question of whether even they believe the state’s fiscal picture is as rosy as they claim.
Instead of permanently boosting teacher salaries, the new state budget offers a temporary grant program that local districts can partly match (if they wish) to modestly bring up the salaries of the lowest-paid teachers. But there’s no guarantee the money will be there again the following year. It’s a pathetic stop-gap measure for a genuine crisis in education, from a state government that claims to have so much extra money that it’s itching to pass it back to the voting public.
Other government services are similarly struggling. As the Post-Dispatch has reported, the Missouri Veterans Commission is currently able to serve vets in just half its available beds due to staffing issues stemming from — again — low salaries. Early this year, officials admitted that hundreds of mental-health patients were sitting in local jails because the state’s underfunded, understaffed psychiatric hospitals couldn’t accommodate them. Missouri’s child-welfare workers say understaffing is literally putting the lives of children at risk.
Then there is Missouri’s national humiliation of an infrastructure system. The state’s roads and bridges, consistently ranked among the worst in the country, will finally get some help after lawmakers last year raised the state gasoline tax, which had remained static for two decades. But, as with teacher pay, the reform is so tepid (the tax is being phased in over five years) that Missouri’s rattled drivers won’t see tangible results for several years yet.
Does any of this indicate that Missouri’s budget is rolling in so much unneeded cash that it should start giving it back?
Still, the rosy fiscal picture in the state right now is real — which makes the failure of its leaders to address these issues all the more outrageous. As with so many of Missouri’s problems today, it comes back to the ideological extremism of its Republican Legislature and governor. It perhaps shouldn’t be surprising that the self-proclaimed anti-government party is so bad at governing.
Parson clearly hopes that putting this tax cut out there right before the fall elections might benefit those in his party who are on the ballot. The best possible message voters could send in response to this irresponsible exercise would be to make sure that endeavor fails.
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St. Joseph News Press. September 6, 2022.
Editorial: Seeds of doubt on tax plan
Missouri lawmakers were supposed to begin a special session Tuesday to consider agricultural tax credits and a $700 million income tax cut.
Last month, Gov. Mike Parson primed the pump with a series of speeches, including one in St. Joseph to promote what he calls the biggest tax cut in state history. With a largely friendly audience, this kind of barnstorming can give an impression that everyone is on board. They’re not.
The special session was delayed a week so the governor’s office could continue negotiations with legislative leaders on the final details of the tax package.
Maybe it’s no big deal. It makes sense to get your ducks in a row and to hold the special session at the same time as the regularly scheduled veto session, set to begin next week in Jefferson City. It could be minor tweaks to the tax package, although there is talk of House Republicans pushing for a bigger reduction while the Missouri Budget Project, a liberal nonprofit group, is advocating for tax credits geared more toward the lowest-income Missourians.
But the delay can’t help but fertilize a dormant seed of doubt about the ability to find agreement on an issue that should be a short putt for the Republican majority. It’s this majority that will call the shots on what can pass at the end of the day. Nothing is ever as easy as it looks.
Recall the chaos of the 2022 regular session when disagreements over redistricting caused months of dysfunction and delay in the Senate. Also recall that Parson went out on a limb when he vetoed two issues that a gridlocked legislature managed to pass: agricultural tax credits and a one-time income tax rebate ($500 for single taxpayers and $1,000 for married couples).
It was a risky move to discard a guarantee of temporary relief in exchange for something bigger and longer-lasting, especially if some legislative factions support income tax cuts but not ag tax credits. Will the governor’s gamble pay off?
If facts rather than personalities prevail, then yes, this tax cut can still get through. A case can be made that a reduction in the top income tax rate, from 5.3% to 4.8%, is sustainable and in the long-term best economic interests of the state. The agricultural tax credits aren’t just important to farmers and producers but to anyone who benefits from an abundant food supply and a strong rural economy. That means Northwest Missouri.
The devil, as they say, is in the details as these negotiations continue. But you have to wonder, if the Republican majority can’t agree on income tax cuts at a time of budgetary surplus, what exactly are they capable of accomplishing?
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