State set to execute man for 1982 slaying

ST. LOUIS -- Stephen K. Johns has been waiting a long time for the state to carry out his sentence of death. So long, in fact, his attorneys argue that executing him now would unfairly punish him twice for the same crime.

Johns, convicted of the 1982 gas-station slaying of 17-year-old Don D. Voepel, is scheduled to die by injection at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday at the Potosi Correctional Center.

If his final appeals before the state, and potentially, the U.S. Supreme Court fail, Johns will be the seventh person put to death in Missouri this year and the state's 53rd since it resumed capital punishment in 1989.

Throughout almost two decades of appeals, Johns has maintained his innocence. He insists he did not shoot Voepel on Feb. 18, 1982, during a St. Louis gas station robbery that prosecutors said netted $248. Voepel was covering a shift for a co-worker.

Prosecutors argued at trial that Johns ordered Voepel to lay on the floor before he shot him three times, then gave some of the stolen money to a pair of teen-age accomplices before heading to a bar and buying a round of drinks for the house.

Throughout his trial and appeals, Johns has maintained he was not at the gas station that night and did not shoot Voepel.

"He has always said that," said Robert Selsor, Johns' attorney. "Trying to be objective, certainly there was some damning evidence. But I can also tell you there was more than reasonable doubt that this man wasn't there."

Cruel punishment

In one of his two pending appeals before the state Supreme Court, Johns argues that his long wait while trying to prove his innocence during the appeals process constitutes a double punishment that violates the Constitution's protection against cruel and unusual punishment.

Johns, convicted in 1983, waited five years for state appeals to conclude before moving onto the federal level, where it took another 11 years before that system dispensed with his claims. Only one inmate in Missouri has spent more time on death row.

"A state government would have to work hard to find a more cruel punishment than to allow a prisoner to suffer the anguish of awaiting a sentence of death that could be carried out relatively swiftly, but to make him live with that debilitating uncertainty for a generation while his uncertain fate is pondered by the system," Johns' appeal to the state Supreme Court reads.

In addition to that argument, Selsor said Robert Wishon, who pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in Voepel's death, was willing to testify that Johns had nothing to do with the murder and that he did not see Johns after 3:30 p.m. the day of Voepel's death.

"Why was it that he was never called by prosecutors to testify," Selsor said. "To me, that raises grave issues."

Selsor said the failure of Johns' trial attorney to call Wishon is evidence of ineffective counsel.

The attorney, during Johns' initial appeal, also failed to bring all the possible claims he could when challenging the judge's trial instructions to the jury, Selsor said.