Vernon Brown was executed by the State of Missouri for two murders
According to court documents Vernon Brown, a convicted sexual offender, would grab nine year old Janet Perkins as she walked by his house. The little girl would be sexually assaulted and murdered.
When Vernon Brown was arrested he would confess to the murder of Janet Perkins and to the murder of nineteen year old Synetta Ford who was killed a year prior. Brown was also suspected of the murder of a child in Indiana however was not charged
Vernon Brown would be convicted and sentenced to death
Vernon Brown would be executed by lethal injection on May 18 2005
Vernon Brown Photos
Vernon Brown FAQ
When Was Vernon Brown Executed
Vernon Brown was executed on May 18 2005
Vernon Brown Case
Vernon Brown, who killed a 9-year-old girl and a 19-year-old woman, and was a suspect in a child killing in Indiana, was executed at 2:35 a.m. Wednesday morning.
After more than three hours strapped to a gurney waiting to hear the U.S. Supreme Court’s final decision on his appeal, Brown looked to the left towards his spiritual advisor and one of his lawyers, then looked up at the ceiling of the death chamber. After the first drug was administered at 2:32 a.m., Brown moved his head slightly with his eyes closed, and pointed his chin up towards the ceiling blowing air out of his mouth, which then fell open. A doctor pronounced Brown dead at 2:35 a.m.
Missouri Department of Corrections spokesman John Fougere said that Brown was strapped into the gurney at 11:30 p.m. Tuesday night. The U.S. Supreme Court notified the Missouri Attorney General’s office of a temporary stay of execution at 11:56 p.m. Fougere said the issues in front of the court dealt with the constitutionality of Missouri’s method of lethal injection and racial disparity in executions.
One of Brown’s attorneys, public defender Janet Thompson, said that Missouri uses a method of lethal injection, “that we don’t even allow veterinarians to use.” Brown’s lawyers have argued in legal filings that there is no way to tell if a prisoner is suffering during the administration of the three drugs the state uses to execute prisoners. His spiritual advisor is a former supervisor of the laundry at the prison in Potosi, and is a layman with a strong religious background, Thompson said.
Brown had a last meal of shrimp, french fries, salad and cake, watched a little television and took calls from his brother, and according to Fougere, a woman proporting to be his mother. However, Thompson said that Brown’s mother is dead. She said she saw Brown during the evening and said that his mood could be described as “scared.” Fougere said Brown declined a sedative at 7 p.m. but agreed to sedation at about 1 a.m. Fougere said that Brown fell asleep for a “good amount of time” before the procedure was begun.
“Tonight the process of our judicial system has been carried out,” commented Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt after Brown was pronounced dead. “The courts and the Missouri Department of Corrections have met their responsibilities under law. I reviewed applications for clemency and the history of legal proceeding. I found nothing to merit setting aside the result of previous judicial proceedings.”
Brown issued his own statement Tuesday night. “You’ll see me again. To all my friends, don’t think of me as being gone, but there with you.” He continued, “And to Jazz, who has my heart and love. Peace, love. Vernon Brown.”
Brown, 51, was put to death for the 1986 killing of Janet Perkins, 9, although he was also under a death sentence for the 1985 murder of 19-year-old Synetta Ford.
Brown and his lawyers unsuccessfully appealed to state and federal courts and Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt for clemency. “I support the sentence issued and upheld by both Missouri and U.S. courts and believe it is a just punishment for this horrific crime,” Blunt said in a prepared statement. The Missouri Board of Probation and Parole also recommended against clemency, and the 8th U.S. Court of Appeals denied Brown’s motion for a stay of execution Tuesday afternoon.
Brown did not present a very sympathetic case. The high school dropout spent four years in prison in the 1970s for sexually assaulting a 12-year-old girl. He then moved to St. Louis and married a homeless woman.
On March 7, 1985, while living under an alias and working as a maintenance man in an apartment building in the 3500 block of Washington Avenue, he strangled Ford in her basement apartment with an electrical cord and stabbed her in the chest and throat. Although police arrested Brown, he wasn’t charged with Ford’s murder until more than a year later, after police arrested him in Perkins’ death and he confessed to killing both.
At trial, Brown’s stepsons told jurors that on the afternoon of Oct. 24, 1986, Brown called their friend Janet Perkins inside the house and sent the boys to their room. They listened to her screams through a vent as Brown strangled her. He then dumped her body in two trash bags in the alley behind his house in the 4100 block of Enright Avenue. She lived about a block away.
Brown told police that he strangled Janet while under the influence of the drug PCP. In the other murder case, he said, Ford attacked him with the knife and accidentally stabbed herself.
In 1987, Indianapolis prosecutors charged him with the murder of 9-year-old Kimberly Campbell, who was tied up, beaten, sexually assaulted and strangled in 1980. Prosecutors also charged him with molesting an 11-year-old boy and three girls, aged 9, 7 and 2. He was convicted of Janet Perkins’ murder in 1988 and Ford’s murder in 1991.
Brown declined an interview request passed through the Missouri Department of Corrections Tuesday.
Rita Linhardt, spokeswoman for the Missouri Catholic Conference and Missourians to Abolish the Death Penalty, did not question Brown’s guilt in a telephone interview Monday but said death was not an appropriate punishment. Brown’s lawyers and supporters say jurors, when deciding Brown’s punishment, should have been told about his “horrendous” early life. They say he was physically and sexually abused and may have been the product of an incestuous relationship between his grandfather and mother.
Brown had a low IQ and a head injury that left him suffering from periods in which he had memory lapses and was not responsible for his actions, they said. Brown supporters also said that jurors in the 1988 trial never heard from Brown’s brother, Darius Q. Turner, who would have described a caring, protective family man who changed after a stint in prison. Linhardt said jurors never knew those details, so were unable to give Brown an appropriate sentence. She also said Brown’s lawyers needed more money and help defending him.
Brown’s lawyers also argued that Missouri’s method of execution was cruel and unusual — that Brown could feel intense pain from one of the three drugs used to execute him but would be too paralyzed to show it. Opponents of the death penalty protested and held prayer services outside the prison Tuesday night. Fougere said that there were 35 protesters outside the prison, with 31 opposed to the death penalty, and four in favor of the death penalty. Ford’s sister and mother attended the execution. Both declined to comment.
Tuesday afternoon, Susie Perkins, Janet’s grandmother, said she and other family members would not attend. “I’m a little ill to make it, but I will be glad when it happens. When it’s over with,” she said. “It’s taken a long time. It’s finally here, so I’m glad.”
