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What was Corey Johnson's IQ? Execution of serial killer labeled 'unconstitutional' over intellectual disability

Johnson, 52, had been arrested and convicted for the murders of seven people in Richmond, Virginia

Federal inmate Cory Johnson was executed by lethal injection on Thursday, January 14, night despite calls for the execution to be called off. Johnson, 52, had been arrested and convicted for the murders of seven people in Richmond, Virginia. However, activists and defense lawyers claimed that his IQ of 77 as ascertained at the time of his trial was wrong and that it was much lower.

Johnson was a member of the Newtowne crack cocaine gang, was put to death at the Federal Correctional Complex, Terre Haute, in Indiana. The current administration under President Donald Trump resumed federal executions last year after a 17-year hiatus and is expected to halt once President-elect Joe Biden -- who is against the death penalty -- is inaugurated on January 20. Federal inmate Dustin Higgs is set to be executed on Friday, January 15.

According to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, when asked if he had any last words, Johnson, strapped to the gurney, looked to the room on his left reserved for family and said, “No. I’m OK.” Several seconds later, he said softly while gazing intently at the same room, “Love you.” According to the Daily Mail, in a letter presented by his defense attorney before his death, Johnson -- who spells his name as Corey, as opposed to Cory as it is presented in government filings -- apologized for his crimes, writing, "I would have said I was sorry before, but I didn't know how."

Social media responded in the negative to the news of Johnson's hasty execution, with one user writing, "heartbreaking and could have been avoided. But of course silence from the administration. RIP Corey. #LisaMontgomery #CoryJohnson #MurdererInChief." Another wrote, "As the US executes an intellectually disabled man, #CoryJohnson, it's worth remembering one of the reasons the US government has still not ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is that they didn't want to be told not to execute disabled people." Another user tweeted, "with evidence proving Mr. Cory Johnson was intellectually disabled with tests taken since young, at 13 barely reciting the months of the year up to August, and tested at 45 with elementary school level results, he was executed at 11:34 pm. unconsitutional. may he rest in peace."

Was Johnson intellectually disabled?

According to Johnson's lawyers, the IQ score of 77 presented at his 1993 trial was incorrect, and that his real IQ is even lower, within the range of 70-75, the threshold used by courts to determine intellectual disability. In a statement, Johnson's lawyers denied he has the mental capacity to be a drug kingpin and said that the government had executed a man "with an intellectual disability, in stark violation of the Constitution and federal law."

According to the Daily Mail, Johnson's special education teacher at a New York school for emotionally troubled kids, Richard Benedict, said that Johnson was hyperactive, anxious, and reading and writing at a second- or third-grade level when he was 16 or 17 years old. Benedict said, "I had to have someone walk him to the bathroom because he just couldn´t get back to the classroom."

In the clemency petition to Trump, Johnson's lawyers requested to commute his death sentence to life in prison. They said Johnson had a traumatic childhood during which he was physically abused by his drug-addicted mother and her boyfriends. He had been abandoned when he was 13 years old and then shuffled in between residential and institutional facilities until he aged out of the foster care system.

His lawyers cited numerous childhood IQ tests discovered after he was sentenced, that placed him in the mentally disabled category. Even during his time in prison, Johnson could read and write at only an elementary school level.

His lawyers presented that Johnson had repeatedly expressed "sincere remorse" for his crimes. During his sentencing hearing, he spoke to a group of students present in the courtroom and told them not to commit crimes or make the mistakes he had made in his life, saying, "I'm sorry for the great number of people who are dead, you know, and there is a lot on us. I feel we are no angels."

In a statement to MEAWW last year, Johnson's attorneys, Ronald J Tabak and Donald P Salzman, in a joint statement had said: "Corey Johnson is a person with intellectual disability. Yet, despite compelling evidence demonstrating his intellectual disability, no jury or court has ever listened to the evidence at a hearing to decide if he has intellectual disability.  Under federal law and pursuant to the Supreme Court’s decision in Atkins v Virginia, Mr. Johnson’s intellectual disability should prohibit his execution from being constitutionally carried out. We are not aware of any other federal death penalty prisoner who has never had a single evidentiary hearing at which he could present his intellectual disability evidence. The government should not proceed with Mr. Johnson’s execution in the absence of a thorough and fair opportunity for him to present this evidence."