It’s hard to believe that a prosecutor with a track record of misconduct as long and as egregious as John Johnson’s, the former Chief Assistant District Attorney for Glynn County, Georgia, is still permitted to practice law, let alone continue to prosecute for Glynn County. Johnson’s extensive legacy of prosecutorial misconduct includes a growing list of overturned convictions he broke the rules to secure. Incredibly, although Johnson resigned from his chief deputy post last year amid widespread criticism, the state continues to allow him to prosecute misdemeanors as a contractor.
While the many examples of Johnson withholding key evidence have been deeply reported on by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, they are worth re-visiting here:
In the case of Dennis Perry, Perry was convicted and sentenced in 2003 to life in prison because of the evidence the State “lost,” withheld and suppressed from the defense. Thanks to in-depth investigative journalism from The AJC and the Undisclosed podcast, – as well as tireless legal advocacy by the Georgia Innocence Project and subsequent DNA testing – Perry was finally released after 20 years when a Glynn County judge overturned his wrongful conviction for the murders of a deacon and his wife. Dennis Perry’s case is the subject of the Undisclosed podcast’s third season, which rigorously scrutinizes and investigates the State’s case. Despite the absence of physical evidence linking Perry to the crime scene, and lead investigators eliminating the possibility of Perry being at the scene at the time of the murders, Johnson persisted in seeking the death penalty for Perry.
At trial, Johnson relied on key witness Jane Beaver, the mother of Perry’s ex-girlfriend, who testified that Perry, who is white, had told her of his plan to kill one of the victims, a Black preacher, providing evidence that suggested the murder was racially motivated. What the jury never heard, because Johnson never disclosed it to defense, was that Johnson knew and had written documentation proving that Beaver expected to, and ultimately did, receive $12,000 for her testimony.
In Perry’s Writ of Habeas Corpus, his defense explains that Beaver’s payout wasn’t the only evidence withheld:
Specifically, Petitioner has discovered that the State: (1) failed to disclose that the prosecution’s key “independent” fact witness, Jane Beaver, was actively seeking a substantial reward in exchange for her role in securing the arrest and successful conviction of Petitioner and in fact received a $12,000 payment for her testimony; (2) suppressed information related to a confession to law enforcement by the key alternate suspect in the murders, Donnie Barrentine, including coaching Mr. Barrentine on how to respond to questions regarding that confession and other admissions; and (3) withheld evidence that one of the witnesses at the scene of the murders, Gwen Owens, had told Deputy Bundy in 1998 as he was reopening the investigation that the composite drawing of the suspect, which the prosecution relied on heavily at trial and argued resembled Petitioner, did not look like the man she saw moments before the shooting.
To avoid facing their failure to disclose this Brady evidence, the State argued procedural default at every opportunity, seeking to block higher courts from reviewing the State’s suppression of evidence without looking at the merits of what they failed to disclose. Fortunately for Perry, there was new DNA evidence in his case implicating another suspect, so he didn’t have to rely solely on adjudication of his Brady claims for relief. The judge who overturned the conviction wrote:
The Court finds that the new DNA evidence presented by Defendant is so material that, had it been introduced at his trial, it probably would have produced a different verdict. The new DNA evidence reliably links another suspect, Erik Sparre, to the key piece of physical evidence found at the crime scene: a pair of unique eyeglasses that investigators long believed belonged to the killer.
Unsurprisingly, however, the State continued to challenge Perry’s appeals until the very end, the AJC reported. The state argued that Perry had forfeited the right to appeal when he pled to two consecutive life sentences to avoid the death penalty, and that he shouldn’t be allowed to file a Motion for New Trial, regardless of the results of the DNA testing.
Jimmy Meders was another capital case Johnson prosecuted, in which he intentionally withheld police reports from the defense that would have corroborated Meders’ testimony at trial and directly contradicted the State’s star witness, Bill Arnold. Meders was sentenced to death for the armed robbery and murder of a convenience store clerk in Glynn County. At trial, Meders maintained his innocence of the shooting, but never denied he was at the store at the time, with Arnold and another friend, Greg Creel. Meders testified that it was state witness Arnold who shot and killed the clerk. Neither Arnold nor Creel were ever charged with any crime related to that night. Arnold testified that neither he nor Creel knew of the gun and only came to know about it when they stopped at the convenience store and Meders pulled it out and shot the clerk.
Meders testified to a different set of facts, which were supported by 911 calls, which Johnson suppressed. Meders said that Arnold drove Meders and Creel in the hours preceding the murder, and that, during that time, Arnold had fired shots from Meders’ gun at two locations. Both shootings were directed at trucks parked in front of homes of people with whom Arnold and Creel had disputes. Arnold denied ever handling Meders’ gun or firing at trucks earlier in the night, and Johnson, who knew of police reports documenting the 911 calls from witnesses reporting the fired shots, deliberately concealed the evidence and refused to disclose the 911 calls to the defense or the jury. In fact, Johnson even asked a lead investigator on the case at trial whether he’d uncovered any evidence that might indicate Arnold had ever handled the gun, and the investigator answered, “no.” After soliciting the false testimony and violating his constitutional duties to ensure the defense couldn’t have known it was false, Johnson then again committed misconduct by failing to correct this false testimony.
In fact, Johnson went so far as to answer a direct question from the jury with false information. When the juror foreman sent a note specifically asking, “Was there any reports [sic.] filed on the incident of the truck, on Ga Hwy 303, reported between the day, after or between then and now, being shot at??”, Johnson said that no such evidence existed in his file.
In a hearing years later, The AJC reports, Johnson testified, “Obviously, from the question, it was important to the jury.” He goes on, “But the question is whether it was important to me and the answer is no.”
Meders was sentenced to death. Despite the shocking Brady material uncovered during the appeals process, Georgia prosecutors did what they do best, fighting bitterly to oppose any new motions or hearings on the matter. As a habeas court revealingly noted when overturning Meders’ conviction, a ruling which would later be reversed, the court wrote:
When the jury submitted [its] question, Johnson realized that the jury was concerned about a report of a truck shooting on Highway 303, but did not believe he had any duty to advise the court of the existence of the police incident reports in his file and, therefore, stood mute.
The court’s description is misleading. Johnson did not stand mute. He affirmatively and actively lied.
Meders, believing DNA would show he wasn’t the triggerman, wanted the gun tested for DNA but the State opposed and courts denied that too. In the end, Meders was granted clemency just hours before he was set to be executed and his sentence was commuted to life without the possibility of parole.
As this Death Penalty Information Center piece and the Undisclosed podcast’s third season outlines in detail, the history of misconduct by Johnson isn’t limited to one case but spans across many. There are two other known capital cases, where Johnson won convictions and sentences based on unconstitutional, illegal and unethical misconduct: Lawrence (Larry) Lee, who was later exonerated, and Larry Jenkins, whose conviction was vacated in 2005 but later retried and reconvicted.
It’s extremely difficult to imagine the misconduct stopped there, and much more likely that this is simply the only misconduct that’s been unearthed thus far. To then think that for years, the District Attorney Jackie Johnson defended her chief deputy – yes, the same DA Jackie Johnson who refused to file charges for months against the men who murdered Ahmaud Arbery – and his dubious convictions and sentences reveals the extent to which some prosecutors in this country will break the law for a conviction or extreme sentence and then their office will circle the wagons and support their colleagues’ actions, no matter what.
Fortunately, John Johnson’s defender, former DA Jackie Johnson, was defeated by the current DA, District Attorney Keith Higgins. Higgins took office in December of last year and has multiple tools at his disposal to seek justice. For example, he could order a review of every case John Johnson ever prosecuted. The misconduct we merely know of raises deep and concerning questions about all the cases he ever prosecuted. The people he prosecuted deserve nothing less.
And let’s not stop there. Why is John Johnson still permitted to work as a prosecutor, let alone as a lawyer, even if it’s contract work prosecuting misdemeanors? Misdemeanors makes up the bulk of the criminal legal system, with serious collateral consequences. The Solicitor of the Glynn County, Maria Lugue, is quoted in The AJC responding to concern saying: “I can tell you this if he or anyone else does something wrong they’ll be looking for a job.” The thing is, Johnson’s already been found doing something wrong – not once, not twice, but many times.
While he can no longer cheat and lie to secure death and life sentences, what’s to make us believe he won’t go to all lengths to secure misdemeanor convictions or coerce people into pleas unfairly? Glynn County has a history of discriminatory treatment against people charged with misdemeanor offenses through the County’s cash-bail system. Every case matters, every outcome, every defendant and no one deserves to face John Johnson nor do the people of Georgia deserve to have him represent them on any level.
