Whether the retrial and death sentence of a 19-year-old offender with mental impairments remedied the constitutional violation from the first trial with racist jurors

QUESTIONS PRESENTED Nineteen years old at the time of the offense, Petitioner Kevin Johnson was charged with first degree murder for fatally shooting a White police officer in the troubled and impoverished Black neighborhood of Meacham Park in St. Louis County, Missouri. The killing occurred about two hours after the sudden collapse and later death of Johnson’s twelve-year-old brother. Johnson believed that the police at the scene — including the victim, Sgt. William McEntee — were negligent in attending to his collapsed brother. The evidence was that Johnson yelled “You killed my brother” before firing the first of several shots at Sgt. McEntee. A mistrial ended Johnson’s first trial, with jurors divided 10-2 in favor of second degree murder over first degree murder, which includes the element of deliberation or “cool reflection.” Mo. Rev. Stat. § 565.002(5). During the jurors’ heated discussions, two White jurors “kept loudly repeating that they couldn’t vote for 2nd degree because Kevin would get out and hunt them down,” and one of them “kept yelling things about ‘your neighborhoods,’ and ‘you people,’ when talking to Black jurors.” App. 67. Those same two jurors held out for a verdict of first degree murder to the end. App. 70—71. The terms “you people” and “your neighborhoods” are familiar “codewords” that reflect an “othering” process through which White people such as the speakers are “generally perceived as superior” while the Black people being described are “perceived as inferior.” App. 102-03 (per Prof. Jason Okonofua, Dept. of Psychology, University of The jurors’ remarks also reflect the “classic negative stereotype” that Black people are “prone to violence and are a threat to white women in particular.” App. 103-04. Racial bias, then, prevented Johnson’s first jury from reaching a unanimous verdict of second degree murder. A second jury later convicted Johnson of first degree murder and sentenced him to death. The case presents the following questions for review: 1. In light of a court’s duty to issue a remedy that “neutralize[s] the taint of a constitutional violation” while avoiding the grant of “a windfall to the defendant,” Lafler v. Cooper, 566 U.S. 156, 170 (2012), did Johnson’s retrial before a second jury that convicted him of first degree murder and sentenced him to death remedy the constitutional violation from the first trial, at which two racist jurors prevented a unanimous verdict on a lesser offense? 2. Does the Eighth Amendment forbid the death penalty for crimes committed by offenders under the age of 21, or, at the least, in the case of a 19 year old offender who suffered from significant mental impairments? i