Stop the Execution of Warren King

Newly discovered evidence shows that Warren King’s conviction and death sentence were tainted by infamous prosecutor John Johnson’s misconduct and discrimination.

Despite this new evidence and other injustices in the case, Warren faces execution by the State of Georgia.

Photo: Warren King with his family

What Happened

Warren King was an 18-year-old Black teenager, with no history of violent crime, when he was charged with murdering Karen Crosby, a white woman, during a robbery attempt at the convenience store where she worked in 1994.

Warren’s involvement in the crime came about only because his older cousin, Walter Smith, tracked him down one evening and recruited him to participate. Walter had brought his uncle’s gun and a black cap when he drove around in his uncle’s truck all over Surrency looking for Warren. He finally found Warren riding a bike to bring ice cream to a friend. Though Walter blamed Warren for the crime, it was Walter who demanded the keys from Ms. Crosby, Walter who ran into the convenience store to rob it, and, according to a crime scene expert that jurors never heard, Walter who was more likely to have been her shooter. The prosecutor enlisted Walter to testify against Warren at his trial under a grant of immunity — with Walter ultimately receiving a plea deal of life with the possibility of parole, while Warren was sentenced to death.

Mr. King’s lawyers repeatedly asked prosecutor John Johnson prior to trial if there was a deal for Walter’s testimony and Johnson always assured them there was no deal. Walter testified at Warren’s trial that he was not expecting anything in exchange for his testimony, which the prosecutor then capitalized on to bolster Walter’s testimony. Now, over two decades later, Warren’s legal team has discovered evidence proving what the defense suspected all along—ADA Johnson had offered Walter Smith a deal for a life sentence in order to testify against Warren at his trial, and both Smith and Johnson lied about it in front of the jury. Read the affidavit of Walter Smith’s attorney here. Had the jury known about the deal Walter Smith was receiving for his testimony, his credibility would have been severely impacted, particularly in a case where he was the only eyewitness to the crime and the State’s only evidence that Warren was the shooter.

Not only did Johnson, notorious for his misconduct in death penalty cases, hide the co-defendant’s deal, but he also impermissibly considered race and gender when selecting the jury. John Johnson struck 7 of the 8 qualified Black jurors from Warren’s jury and ranted against precedent that prevents racial discrimination in jury selection. Although the U.S. Supreme Court recently declined to hear Warren King’s case to determine whether Johnson’s conduct violated the United States Constitution by striking jurors based on race and gender, two justices dissented from denial.

New evidence of Prosecutor Johnson’s notes from trial—which was previously not available to Mr. King’s legal team and has not been considered by any court yet—reveal that he was considering race and gender throughout the jury selection process and treated Black jurors differently from white jurors.

Based on the recently discovered evidence of prosecutorial misconduct and discrimination, Mr. King has filed a new petition for habeas relief. Read his petition here.

Five jurors and an alternate juror now support a life sentence for Warren.
Read their affidavits here.

Many other injustices plague Mr. King’s case. Warren King was 18 years old at the time of the crime and has intellectual disability and schizophrenia. His intellectual disability should make him ineligible for the death penalty under the Constitution, but at trial, he had to meet Georgia’s uniquely high burden of proof—beyond a reasonable doubt—which is the most onerous in the country. Warren repeated both kindergarten and first grade, and by age 16 was still in eighth grade and reading at a fourth grade level. He never made it to high school. Warren was also in the early stages of a psychotic disorder at the time of his arrest, and he has since been diagnosed with schizophrenia and a psychotic disorder by the Georgia Department of Corrections. He was raised in extreme poverty and in a household with daily and extreme domestic violence between his parents.

Learn more about Warren’s Case

Jurors Support Life for Mr. King

Mastermind Avoids the Death Penalty

Childhood Poverty and Trauma

Intellectual Disability Should Exempt Mr. King from the Death Penalty

Severe Mental Illness

Discrimination in Jury Selection

Numerous Jurors Support Life for Warren King

The jurors who convicted and sentenced Mr. King to death never had many critical pieces of information his life and the crime, such as evidence of his codefendant Walter Smith’s greater culpability and evidence of Warren’s then-recent schizophrenia diagnosis. Now, at least five of the jurors and one alternate juror think that Warren should have a life sentence, not death. Read more about their reasons for supporting a life sentence below.

A Lesser Punishment for a More Culpable Man

Juror J. M.: “I do not believe that it is fair that Walter Smith got a life sentence, when Warren King got a death sentence.”

Juror J.O.: “[Walter Smith] was the main culprit, as he enticed Mr. King to participate in the robbery. Based on the information I’ve learned since the trial, I believe Mr. Smith was also likely the shooter. ”

Juror L.P.: “Although I voted that Warren King receive the death penalty, I have never felt 100% comfortable with that sentence. I never knew whether I should believe Walter Smith’s testimony. At trial, I suspected that Walter Smith was squealing on Warren to save himself . . .”

Juror K.M.: “At the time of trial, I assumed that Mr. King and Mr. Smith would receive the same sentence. I was shocked and disappointed to learn that Mr. Smith is instead serving a much lighter sentence than Mr. King, life with parole, because of a plea bargain. I do not believe that is a just outcome. I believe Mr. Smith’s testimony was not credible and Mr. Smith took advantage of Mr. King’s vulnerabilities . . . [Mr. King] seems like a lost boy who did not get a chance in life, and not someone who deserves the death penalty.”

Juror R.N.: “The information I learned . . . would have been extremely important to me at Mr. King’s trial. It would have changed my mind about whose version of the crime to believe. Even more, it would have changed my mind about giving Warren King the death penalty.”

Alternate Juror J.P.: “I have serious doubts about whether Mr. King was the actual shooter, and I am even more convinced that I would not have voted for death [had I known].”

Information Jurors Did Not Have About Mr. King’s Mental Illness and Schizophrenia Diagnosis

Juror K.M.: “Knowing that Warren King had been diagnosed as schizophrenic would have changed my mind whether to give the death penalty. Although this might not have changed my guilty verdict, it would have made me change my mind about the right penalty for him.”

Juror L.P.: “. . . I wish I had known that there was credible evidence that Warren King was truly mentally ill (and not faking like the DA told us) when I was deliberating because I likely would not have voted for the death penalty if I had had this information. . . . I believe Mr. King needs treatment for schizophrenia, not the death penalty.”

Juror J.O.: “I do not believe Mr. King’s lawyers emphasized his mental illness as much as they should have, knowing what I know now.”

Alternate Juror J.P.: “. . . I am shocked that information about Mr. King’s mental health and schizophrenia diagnosis was not presented to us as a jury. If I had known that Mr. King had schizophrenia, that would have solidified my view that a life sentence without parole was the appropriate punishment. . .”

Warren’s older cousin Walter Smith recruited Warren to rob the convenience store. Walter left home in his uncle’s truck, with his uncle’s gun and a black skull cap, and stopped at the convenience store where Karen Crosby worked. He then drove around town searching for Warren. Eventually he found him, riding his bike, shirtless, having just picked up snacks for his friends. Walter told Warren to hop in the truck with him. They dropped off the snacks, and Walter then drove to the convenience store where the two boys waited until closing.

After closing the store, the clerk Karen Crosby went out to her car. Walter led the two towards her. Walter told Karen to toss him the keys and instructed Warren to hold the gun on her while he went inside the store. When the alarms went off, Walter can be seen on the security footage running back outside. Two shots are then heard on the recording, but the camera did not show what occurred outside of the store. Walter and Warren gave conflicting stories about which of them actually shot Karen Crosby. While both contend they did not shoot Karen, there are several reasons to question Walter’s version of events. First, he was the mastermind of the robbery itself. Second, his testimony was littered with errors and inconsistencies, such as how many shots were fired and his view of the fatal gunshot. Third, unlike Warren, Walter had a violent criminal record and had previously planned to rob the same store. Despite these disturbing facts, the prosecution enlisted Walter to testify against Warren and ultimately allowed him to plead to a life sentence with parole. Today, Walter is eligible for parole, while Warren faces the execution.

Multiple jurors from Warren’s trial have been shocked to learn about the disparate sentences, and have indicated they would not have imposed the death penalty if they had known his co-defendant would get a much lighter sentence.

Now, newly discovered evidence shows that John Johnson repeatedly misled the courts, defense counsel, and the jury in denying a deal he made with Warren’s codefendant and the State’s star witness to testify against Warren at trial.

Warren was tried by infamous Georgia prosecutor John Johnson, in the same troubled judicial circuit where Ahmaud Arbery was murdered. Johnson has a decades-long history of misconduct, including illegally withholding helpful evidence from the defense and rewarding witnesses for their testimony.

While choosing jurors for Warren’s trial, Johnson struck almost all the Black people on the jury—seven out of eight eligible Black jurors, including all five qualified Black women. He used his remaining three strikes to remove white women. In other words, Johnson struck 87.5% of qualified Black jurors, but only 8.8% of qualified white jurors, and struck 40% percent of women, while striking only 9% percent of men. Put another way, Johnson was ten times more likely to strike a Black juror than a white one; he was four times more likely to strike a woman than a man; and he never struck a white man at all, although they made up almost half of the eligible pool.

Each of these struck jurors had been qualified in the jury selection process to sit in this particular case based on responses indicating they were not biased for or against the parties, and could consider imposing both a life sentence and the death penalty. Yet Johnson chose to strike them, citing a variety of false excuses that don’t hold up, some of which directly contradict the record. Johnson drew weak connections between potential Black jurors and Warren’s family members, even though many white jurors who served had closer ties to them. Black jurors from the Surrency area were immediately assumed to have relationships to the King family, even when they specifically said they did not. Johnson claimed to strike one Black juror because she was a minister, though he allowed several white male jurors with with significant church leadership positions to stay on the panel and did not strike a white man who was also a minister. Another Black juror was struck when Johnson said her husband, who was also a potential juror, told him she was opposed to the death penalty—when this justification is flatly contradicted by the jury selection transcript. Lastly, Johnson relied on possible criminal charges and investigations against family members of some of the Black jurors – including a distant relative by marriage – as reasons for striking them without ever asking the jurors questions about those charges and whether that might affect the juror’s deliberations.

Johnson’s recently disclosed notes from jury selection also provide additional support for Mr. King’s claim that Johnson intentionally discriminated on the basis of race and gender in striking qualified Black and female jurors.