Liberal Free Chat Zone

[mr40]

Why was 5-time felon spared prison weeks before allegedly killing ex-girlfriend?

About a month before police arrested him on suspicion of strangling his ex-girlfriend, Justin Johnson was in a Long Beach courtroom begging for mercy.

Johnson, a five-time felon, was caught bringing contraband into jail in October. Because of his criminal past, the transgression could have cost Johnson up to 13 years and 4 months behind bars.

Prosecutors offered him a four-year prison term if he pleaded guilty, but Johnson turned down the deal at an Oct. 24 hearing.

Instead, the 41-year-old asked for favor from the judge.

“Mercy. I’m tired,” he said according to a transcript. “I’m asking for mercy, please. One chance. One chance. I will not let you down.”

Johnson explained drugs had disrupted his life. He asked for a chance to kick his addiction and stay out of trouble.

He said he had newfound motivation, a girlfriend named Samantha.

“If I mess up, I’ll be sitting here again in front of you within months. I know that,” Johnson told Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Tomson Ong. “I never stabbed nobody. I have never shot nobody.”

“It must be Monday,” Ong replied. “Redemption is a very hard thing.”

But Ong ultimately granted Johnson’s request.

Over a prosecutor’s objection, the judge ordered Johnson into a one-year drug treatment program instead of jail. If Johnson failed at the program, his punishment would be nine years behind bars.

But if he managed to free himself from drugs and complete five years of probation, he wouldn’t have to face any more time in a cell.

“I want you to do the live-in program and get it done,” Ong said. “It’s not my intention to throw you in jail.”

Johnson interrupted.

“Remember when you were 40. The demon is with you,” he said without explanation before thanking the judge.

Johnson pleaded guilty that day. At his next hearing on Nov. 15, Ong imposed the agreed-upon sentence and released him into the custody of employees at the treatment center where he’d be living.

Johnson did not complete their program.

On Dec. 6 police found the body of Samantha Lang, a 29-year-old Signal Hill woman.

Three days later, detectives arrested Johnson.

They allege he’d strangled Lang before dumping her body and her new car in a drainage basin near the Los Angeles River in Long Beach.

‘WHY WASN’T THIS GUY LOCKED UP?’

Authorities have said little about their case against Johnson beyond that he’s now charged with Lang’s murder and is being held in Los Angeles County Jail without bail.

But what Lang’s family learned about the accused killer left them with a question.

“Why wasn’t this guy locked up?” Greg Schoen, Lang’s father, said.

Johnson has a lengthy criminal record, according to court documents.

The most serious offense was a robbery from 1997. Since then, he’s been convicted of a string of felonies between 2008 and 2016, including drug possession, recklessly evading police, theft and vehicle theft.

During Johnson’s October court hearing, a prosecutor cited these cases while she argued against freeing Johnson from jail.

“This is someone who is gang affiliated,” Deputy District Attorney Lakeri Patankar said, according to a transcript. “He has five felonies and over 15 misdemeanor convictions and is currently on parole. He was arrested with an outstanding warrant. He had numerous parole and probation violations.”

Lang’s parents said they don’t understand Ong’s decision.

“His letting (Johnson) go back out basically killed my daughter,” Brenda Jones, Lang’s mother, said. “If he had been sentenced to jail she would still be here.”

Lang grew up in Wisconsin before leaving town after high school with some friends, according to her parents, who are now divorced.

She settled in Long Beach, lured by the sun and sand, her mother said.

“She didn’t deserve to die like this,” Jones said.

VOLATILE RELATIONSHIP

Friends and family said Lang and Johnson had been dating on and off. Both were involved in drugs, according to Schoen, her father.

A friend, who asked not to be identified out of fear of retribution from Johnson or his friends, said Johnson was a volatile presence in Lang’s life.

He once stormed into the restaurant where she worked and demanded she leave her shift early, the friend said.

Threats of violence from Johnson toward Lang appeared to be routine, according to the friend.

“He would look her right in the face and tell her, ‘I’m going to kill you.’ And she would just blow it off,” she said.

But things changed when Lang decided to get clean, according to her family.

She started attending a local church and was determined to stay away from drugs, the friend said.

“I know she was on the right track,” Schoen said.

Lang finally ended the relationship with Johnson while he was behind bars, according to Lang’s friend.

Lang came to believe Johnson had been stealing from her, the friend said, so she cut him off shortly before Ong released him to the residential treatment program in November.

She stopped taking his calls, stopped putting spending money in his jailhouse account and sparked a relationship with a new man, according to the friend.

Lang’s family thinks she started to fear Johnson at some point. At her apartment after her death, they found a newly installed security camera.

JOHNSON’S SENTENCE ‘NOT AN OUTLIER’

According to experts, Ong’s decision to spare Johnson from prison in favor of probation and drug treatment was not unusual, based on the information he had.

“The sentence that the judge gave is not an outlier in terms of a mere slap on the wrist,” said Katharine Tinto, a UC Irvine law professor and former public defender. “I don’t see it as that at all.”

Johnson’s most serious crime, the robbery, was 20 years old, and since then, his offenses seemed to mostly be related to the drug problem he told the judge about.

Tinto said Ong appeared to be trying to give Johnson one last chance to kick his addiction while still putting him under the supervision of counselors and probation officers.

“Suspending nine years of prison over someone’s head is not in any way a light sentence, especially someone with a drug problem,” she said. “The minute you mess up, you’re going to go to prison for nine years.”

Tinto said the fact that Johnson is accused of killing someone while on probation is what makes his case an outlier. It’s more common, she said, for drug offenders to violate the rules of their release by committing crimes like theft to feed their addiction.

“I think it would be unfortunate if we took this tragedy to mean that we then decided to punish everybody very harshly for every small thing out of a hope that they wouldn’t reoffend in the future,” she said.

It doesn’t appear that any of California’s recent criminal-justice reforms — including Prop. 47, a ballot measure that changed some drug crimes from felonies to misdemeanors — directly affected Johnson’s case, according to experts.

Through a court spokeswoman, Ong declined to talk about Johnson or explain why he sent the felon to treatment instead of prison. Ong indicated he was ethically bound not to discuss the case.

PREVIOUS PROBATION VIOLATIONS

Transcripts from the October hearing also don’t reveal exactly what influenced his decision. Before Johnson’s plea for mercy, Ong was poised to sentence him to four years behind bars with a drug treatment program in custody.

“I’ll be happy to recommend a program for him while he is doing his time, but I’m not going to cut him loose to do his program,” Ong said at the time.

The judge explained he was concerned that Johnson had performed poorly on probation in the past.

For instance, Ong said, when Johnson was sentenced to probation in 2015 for battery on the mother of his child, he violated the terms within six months by disobeying a court order to stay away from the victim, according to court documents.

At that point, Johnson asked to speak directly to the judge.

“I have no right to ask for anything, I know,” he said, according to the transcript. “But look. I’m not with the mother of my kids. I’m in a new relationship, and, man, everybody deserves a second chance. I have never been given a chance at a mandated program. If you do that, I will do whatever they tell me so I can keep that relationship.”

Lang, he said, was in the audience. She’d written a letter to the court supporting Johnson, according to the transcript.

That was typical of Lang, according to her mother.

“She was beautiful. She was a good person,” Jones said. “She would help anybody, and that’s her problem. She needed to help herself and not these people who would suck all of the life out of her.”

CALL FROM CORONER

Jones was home in Wisconsin when she got the news of her daughter’s death.

She’d texted Lang earlier the day.

Lang hadn’t called recently and her grandmother was starting to worry about her, the message said.

That night, Jones was watching TV when the phone rang and a caller ID notification popped up on the screen.

It said “L.A. County Coroner.”

“I just dropped,” Jones said. “I knew.”

Soon, Schoen was on a plane to California to tie up the loose ends of his daughter’s life.

He packed up her apartment, loading its contents into Lang’s old car, which she hadn’t yet sold since her current boyfriend bought her a new one.

Before he left Los Angeles on Dec. 14, Schoen stopped at the coroner’s office.

“I picked up her ashes and I came home,” he said.

The same day Schoen left town, Johnson appeared in court for the first time to face the murder charge.

Once again, Johnson interrupted the proceedings, but this time he did not ask for mercy.

“I’m guilty. I want to go upstate,” he said, according to a transcript. “I want to get this over with. Can I — Can you give me a life sentence please? I’m guilty.”

A judge informed Johnson he could not plead guilty that day. Instead they set a new hearing date for a week later.

Since then, Johnson has backed off his request and pleaded not guilty to the murder charge. He could face 59 years to life in prison if he’s convicted.

‘HE SHOULDN’T HAVE BEEN LET OUT’

On his way back to Wisconsin, ferrying his daughter’s ashes for the funeral, Schoen took a break from driving as he passed through Denver.

While he was pulled over, he glanced through the car’s glove compartment.

On top of some papers, Schoen said, he found a picture — a booking mugshot of Johnson.

Schoen didn’t know where the photo came from, but he recognized the man accused of killing his daughter.

As Schoen tells it, there was a list with the picture. It spelled out all of Johnson’s prior convictions, more than 20 in all.

That, Schoen said, is when he began wondering, “How is this guy on the street?”

“He shouldn’t have been let out,” Schoen said.

http://www.presstelegram.com/general-news/20170329/why-was-5-time-felon-spared-prison-weeks-before-allegedly-killing-ex-girlfriend