commentary by Patrick H. Moore
According to Newser, executions in the U.S. are at a 20 year low. The news service informs us that The Death Penalty Information Center, which is a nonprofit organization that opposes executions and tracks the issue, reports that so far this year (and the year is drawing to a close) 35 inmates have been executed in the U.S. and 71 have been given the death penalty. We have to go back 20 years to see lower figures; in 1994 there were 31 executions nationwide. And the 71 death penalty sentences meted out this year is apparently the lowest number in the last 40 years.
Thus, this is good news for those of us who generally oppose the DP. On the other hand, those of us who believe that justice is exemplified by following the “eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth” dictum can find consolation by checking the numbers in 1999, the year in which executions in the modern era (since the DP was reinstated in 1977) peaked with a whopping 98 folks being executed and 277 being sentenced to death.
Therefore, if we break down the figures, we see that about one-third as many folks were executed this year compared to the peak year 1999, and only about one-quarter as many were sentenced to death. However you look at it, this is a big decrease.
In my own criminal defense work, I work mainly on Federal cases which means I draw mostly drug cases and fraud cases (with an occasional sex case thrown in for the sake of nausea). What this means is that there are very few federal capital cases; murder and its first or second cousin, manslaughter, is almost always prosecuted at the state level.
There are certain exceptions, though, which generally occur when a federally prosecuted narcotics cases also includes murder(s) or some form of drug-related fatalities, and these cases can trigger the death penalty. One of these cases occurred in Iowa in 1993 when an Iowa woman named Angela Johnson helped her boyfriend Dustin Honken, a Mason City, Iowa methamphetamine kingpin, kill two former drug dealers, 32-year-old Terry DeGeus and 34-year-old Gregory Nicholson, who were cooperating against him with the Feds; Nicholson’s girlfriend, 31-year-old Lori Duncan; and Lori’s two daughters, who were 10 and 6 years old, respectively.
Ryan Foley of the AP describes how Johnson played an integral role in bringing the murders to fruition:
Dustin Honken
Prosecutors said Johnson posed as a saleswoman to get into Duncan’s home days before Honken was to plead guilty to drug charges. Honken and Johnson forced Nicholson to make a videotaped statement exonerating Honken, then took him, Duncan and her children to a field where they were shot in the back of the head, according to prosecutors. Months later, Johnson lured DeGeus, a former boyfriend, to a secluded location where Honken shot him and beat him with a bat, prosecutors said.
The victims’ bodies weren’t found until 2000, when Johnson, then jailed on drug charges, drew a map for an informant to a shallow grave near Mason City.
Lori Duncan
Thus, we see that Johnson played a key role in all of the killings, acting as the lure to draw the victims into Honken’s murderous net.
Although the state of Iowa does not have the death penalty, in federal cases the prosecutors have discretion to seek it in extreme cases, and in 2002, they announced that they would be seeking that punishment for Johnson.
After Johnson was convicted at trial of being Honken’s accomplice in the slayings, in 2005, a jury handed down four death sentences, giving her the decidedly dubious honor of being the first women to take her place on federal death row in decades.
In March of 2012, in what could be seen as a rather surprising development, “U.S. District Judge Mark W. Bennett overturned Johnson’s death sentence” on the grounds that at her trial, her lawyers “failed to present evidence about her brain and personality impairments that could have been mitigating factors.”
Michael Burt
This meant that her case had to go back for re-sentencing and set the stage for a new round of arguments from both sides. In an effort to make a powerful pitch on Johnson’s behalf, her current lawyers, including death penalty specialist Michael Burt of San Francisco, “met with the Justice Department’s capital review committee earlier this year to try to persuade them to back off their pursuit of capital punishment.”
Their strategy was essentially three-fold. First, they stressed “that many of the victims’ families didn’t want to go through another hearing.” They also pointed out that Johnson wasn’t the shooter. Lastly but perhaps most importantly, they explained that “expert testimony developed after the trial shows Johnson suffered from a brain disease that impaired her ability to weigh actions and had mood and personality disorders.”
By making their pitch, Johnson’s lawyers essentially volleyed the ball back into the prosecutor’s court, leaving it up to them to either agree to a life sentence, or to continue to argue for the death penalty, thus sticking to the guns they’d been firing since 2012.
DRUM ROLL
On Wednesday of this week, perhaps to everyone’s surprise, the U.S. attorney’s office in Cedar Rapids announced in a court filing that they will be abandoning their pursuit of the death penalty, which means that Johnson, who is 50 years old, will be sentenced to life without parole.
Angela Johnson is currently serving time at a federal prison in Carswell, Texas. According to Attorney Michael Burt, she reacted with “immense relief and gratitude to the government” after learning about the decision.
“I can’t say enough about how much I respect Judge Bennett and the government for realizing this is not a case they should seek death in,” said Burt. “It’s really remarkable that they would reach that decision.”
What this means is that in this case the Feds, who are generally tough as nails – as I know so well from dealing with them for the past 11 years – especially in really serious cases which this obviously is, have chosen to be content, however grudgingly, with a sentence of LWOP for Ms. Johnson.
Thus, they appear to have raised a weather finger to see which way the wind is blowing, and upon realizing that the wind is definitely blowing in the direction of fewer death sentences, they have chosen – at least in this matter – to join this trend.
I’m very aware that many of the individuals that read this crime blog will be horrified to see that Ms. Johnson’s “judgment day” will come at the hands of a higher power than the federal government, while other readers will salute this decision as a harbinger of a day — in the perhaps not too distant future — when our nation makes common cause with those nations all over the world who have chosen to relegate the death penalty to the dustbins of history.