Missouri executes man said to be disabled, despite pope's call for clemency

Missouri executed convicted murderer Ernest Johnson on Tuesday evening after both Governor Mike Parson and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to grant the clemency sought by Pope Francis, among others, on the grounds that Johnson was intellectually disabled.

Johnson, 61, was found guilty by a jury of murdering three convenience-store employees in 1994. He was injected with a lethal dose of pentobarbital, a powerful barbiturate, in the state's execution chamber in the city of Bonne Terre.

He was pronounced dead at 6:11 p.m. CDT (2311 GMT), the Missouri Department of Corrections said in a statement.

His lawyers said there was overwhelming evidence of Johnson's intellectual disability. They asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday to halt the execution because executing intellectually disabled people breaches a constitutional ban on "cruel and unusual punishments."

The conservative-majority Supreme Court rarely blocks executions, and denied Johnson's petition in a brief unsigned order late Tuesday afternoon. The Missouri Supreme Court had rejected Johnson's intellectual disability claim in August.