Jurors gave a 36-year-old Little Rock man 80 years in prison Friday for shooting two men, killing one of them, on the same day more than two years ago.
After deliberating about two hours, the Pulaski County jury of six women and six men convicted John Ellis Johnson of first-degree battery for wounding 39-year-old James Washington, but reduced the murder count against Johnson for the slaying of 50-year-old Keith Douglas Williams to second-degree murder.
With eight felony convictions, Johnson faced a maximum sentence of 130 years for committing the crimes with a firearm. He will have to serve 20 years before he can apply for parole.
Deciding a punishment took jurors about 35 minutes.
Senior deputy prosecutor Barbara Mariani methodically walked jurors through Johnson's criminal history, which begins with two forgery convictions when he was 17, cocaine trafficking at 18, theft by receiving at age 22 and firearm possession at ages 29 and 31.
Along the way, he was sentenced to probation three times and prison four times, Mariani said. Johnson had been on parole about a year when he shot the men on April 17, 2016, she told jurors.
"We [authorities] have tried. We've given him probation over and over. We've given him ADC [penitentiary time] and paroled him over and over. And now, we're here," Mariani said. "He's got two prior possession of firearms and here we are with a man dead and his family will never ever see him again."
Johnson's aunt, Verna Morgan, and his former girlfriend Trinikka Jackson, the mother of his four children, both described him as an excellent and doting father whose sole focus in life was to provide for his family. Everything Johnson has done, although sometimes misguided, has been to provide for family, they said.
He kept his street life separate from his family life, they testified.
Johnson has no violent convictions. Defense attorneys Dominique King and Willard Proctor said their client only began carrying a gun after he was shot by an unknown assailant in 2000.
The attorneys asked jurors to consider the full person -- the loving father, nephew and companion who built a successful lawn care business through hard work, despite being labeled a felon since he was a teenager.
"John is a man ... he's always had the mindset that he has to be the provider, the protector, taking care of his kids," Proctor said, asking jurors to return a sentence that "reflects who he is."
"You have a young man who has done everything he can do to take care of his family."
Jurors sentenced Johnson to 50 years for killing Williams and 30 years for shooting Washington. Circuit Judge Chris Piazza ordered the sentences to run consecutively to show that Johnson was being punished for what he had done to both men.
Prosecutors prevailed, despite the absence of Washington, the survivor. The 39-year-old man was under court order to appear at trial and had assured prosecutors he would appear. However, he quit his job last week and posted a video of himself on a bus, saying he was going to Oklahoma. He's now a parole absconder, and the U.S. Marshals are searching for him.
Washington was shot at the Cedar Ridge West apartments on West 51st Street about nine hours after Williams' body was found in a vacant lot on Dennison Street. Shell casings show that the same gun was used in both shootings.
Authorities have drawn no connections, but in December 2016, Johnson's brother, 32-year-old Gary Deshawn Johnson, was shot and injured by Little Rock police during an encounter outside the family home at 34 Harrow Drive.
Investigators said Gary Johnson had called 911, claiming he had killed people and that he was armed with two pistols. Police said he was shot after suddenly taking one hand out of his jacket and extending his arm at police after refusing commands to take his hands out of his pocket.
The shot knocked him to the ground, but police shot him again when he again extended his arm toward them. Johnson was unarmed. Prosecutors classified the shooting as justified after a review by senior staff.
Metro on 12/02/2018