Kia Johnson was executed by the State of Texas for the murder of William Rains
According to court documents Kia Johnson would enter a Stop ‘N Go convenience store where he would shoot the clerk William Rains before taking $23 from the register and fleeing. Rains would die from his injuries
Kia Johnson would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Kia Johnson would be executed by lethal injection on June 11 2003
Kia Johnson Photos
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When Was Kia Johnson Executed
Kia Johnson was executed on June 11 2003
Kia Johnson Case
A twice-paroled burglar was executed Wednesday evening for gunning down the night manager of a suburban San Antonio convenience store 9 1/2 years ago in a $23 robbery.
“Tell mama I love her,” Kia Levoy Johnson, 38, said when asked by a prison warden if he had a final statement. “Tell the kids I love them too. See y’all,” he said, directing his comments to his brother, watching through a window a few feet away. He never looked through an adjacent window where the parents and brother and sister of his victim watched. Johnson, who has four children, gasped a couple of times as the lethal drugs began to take effect. He was pronounced dead at 6:18 p.m., seven minutes after the dose began.
Johnson was condemned for killing William Matthew Rains, who authorities said bled to death after he was shot once in the abdomen with a .32-caliber pistol in the Oct. 29, 1993, attack at the Balcones Heights store. Johnson was the 16th condemned inmate to receive lethal injection in Texas this year and one of 10 set to die over the next two months.
Johnson’s lawyers contended he was mentally retarded and should not be put to death because the U.S. Supreme Court has barred execution of the mentally retarded. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court refused to halt the punishment or hear his appeal. Appeals that contended Johnson received incompetent legal help at his 1995 Bexar County trial were rejected earlier.
A surveillance videotape from inside the store shows Rains trying to climb out from behind a counter for an agonizing 45 minutes after he had been shot and robbed. The video that showed Rains’ death also showed the shooting and helped convict Johnson, who insisted he was innocent. On the tape, Rains, 32, is shot once and moans in pain. His attacker grabs the register from the counter and flees.
“As he’s doing that, he’s dragging the cash register tape, the paper that comes out,” Cohen recalled. “And when he steps out of the door he steps on the cash register tape and leaves a real good imprint of the sole of the tennis shoes he’s wearing.” A customer found Rains’ body and called police. When the video of the crime was aired on television in San Antonio, several people called police to tell them the gunman was Johnson. “When we caught up with him at his residence, we found that same tennis shoe in his closet and it was a perfect match,” Cohen said.
Johnson, a high school graduate who worked as a cook, was no stranger to authorities. He had a long juvenile record that included seven arrests. As an adult, records showed he had four more arrests and wound up with a pair of burglary convictions that in March 1990 got him 10 years in prison. Six months later he was paroled, only to be returned to prison in February 1992 as a parole violator. Nine months later, in November, he was paroled again. The Rains killing occurred the following October.
