State v. Johnson
| Decision Date | 28 April 2021 |
| Docket Number | 2020 KA 0679 |
| Parties | STATE OF LOUISIANA v. TONY JOHNSON |
| Court | Court of Appeal of Louisiana — District of US |
NOT FOR PUBLICATION
Appealed from the Twenty-first Judicial District Court In and for the Parish of Tangipahoa State of Louisiana
Honorable Robert Morrison, III, Judge Presiding
Scott M. Perilloux
Zachary Daniels
State of Louisiana
Mary E. Roper
Baton Rouge, LA
Jane L. Beebe
Tony Johnson
BEFORE: WHIPPLE, C.J., WELCH, AND CHUTZ, JJ.
Defendant, Tony Johnson, was charged by grand jury indictment with second degree murder, a violation of LSA-R.S. 14:30.1. He pled not guilty. After a trial by jury, defendant was unanimously found guilty as charged. The trial court imposed a sentence of life imprisonment. Defendant now appeals. For the following reasons, we affirm the defendant's conviction and sentence as amended and remand with instructions.
On August 19, 2016, Jeanette Scott, sister of victim Christopher Franklin, Jr., arrived home from work around midnight. She lived in a Ponchatoula, Louisiana apartment with her brother and her boyfriend. She saw that the window screen was on the ground, the window was open, and the door was partially ajar. She called out to her brother through the partially open door, but did not receive a response. She had never before arrived home to ñnd the door or window in that condition. She called her step-father, who told her to go to a nearby Walmart and await his arrival, Lyntrell Hemphill, Scott's step-father, entered the house along with her boyfriend, Don Tolbert. Upon entering, they observed the apartment to be in disarray. In Franklin's bedroom, Hemphill observed Franklin's body on the bedroom floor, behind a door with a hole in it. He was unable to open the door more than a small crack, due to Franklin's body blocking it. Hemphill immediately left the house and told Scott to call 911, which she did. Scott testified that the last communication from Franklin was a Facebook post made at 9:24 p.m. on August 18th, 2016.
Ponchatoula Police Department ("PPD") Sergeant Carol Wilson responded to the 911 call. After entering the apartment and looking into Franklin's room through the doorway, she saw Franklin's body on the ground with a gunshot wound to the left side of his head. Sgt. Wilson observed "[t]he majority of hisskull and brain was gone." It appeared to her that he had been dead for some time. On the outside of the house, Sgt. Wilson saw the open window with the window screen detached. She secured the crime scene, assisted by PPD Sergeant Damieon Tanner. Sgt. Tanner and Detective Randy Hills recorded the names of everyone entering or leaving the crime scene. Det. Hills also collected voluntary DNA swabs from Scott and Tolbert, as both lived at the address. Detective Jeffery Miller of the PPD was initially the lead detective and assisted in collecting fingerprints from Hemphill, Scott, and Tolbert in order to eliminate them as contributors of other fingerprints found within the house. Det. Miller worked on the case for about five months before handing it off to the Louisiana Attorney General's Office, Bureau of Investigations.
State crime scene technicians took photographs and collected fingerprints, DNA samples, and other evidence from the apartment. Finger and palm prints, in addition to DNA samples, were recovered from the window. Defendant was later determined to be the person who left the finger and palm prints, in addition to DNA found on the window. Stephanie Hemphill, the victim's mother, explained that Franklin knew defendant from school, and was dating Sandrina Jones, the cousin of co-defendants Dkerian Thompson and Jeremiah Ray.
Forensic testimony revealed that the hole in Franklin's bedroom door was consistent with a single 12-gauge shotgun blast, and the position of Franklin's body, brain matter, and blood indicated the left side of Franklin's head was close to the door where the shot passed through. Based on the blood spatter, location of the hole, and position of the body, Franklin apparently was bracing himself against the door in an attempt to prevent someone from making entry into the bedroom when he was shot. There was no indication anyone had entered the room before Franklin's body was recovered by investigators.
Six months after Franklin's death, and after officials learned defendant left fingerprints on the window of Franklin's residence, Special Agent Matthew Vasquez with the Louisiana Department of Justice began investigating the case. He first interviewed Mario Tate, Franklin's neighbor. Tate informed Special Agent Vasquez that he observed two armed African-American men being dropped off by a pickup truck on the night of the killing. One was armed with a handgun and the other was armed with a shotgun. He saw the man carrying the shotgun open the window and enter, bringing the shotgun along with him.
Special Agent Vasquez met with defendant for a custodial interrogation. Defendant was given a form detailing his Miranda1 rights, and defendant waived his rights and spoke to Vasquez without an attorney present. The interview was recorded and played for the jury. In this interview, defendant initially denied being at the apartment building, being involved in a shooting, or ever having used a shotgun. He also said he did not know Franklin and was not in Ponchatoula during August 2016. Later in the interview, defendant admitted his fingerprints may have been at the scene because he may have broken into the apartment at some other time and stolen things and that he at least "kn[e]w of" Franklin from school. A DNA sample was taken from defendant pursuant to a search warrant.
Later that day, after Special Agent Vasquez left, defendant indicated he wanted to speak with him again. Vasquez returned, and defendant was again read his Miranda rights, and he again waived them. During the second interview, defendant admitted to entering the apartment through the window and firing the shotgun, and he detailed the participation of his accomplices. Defendant alleged he did not intend to shoot anyone, but that he was afraid Franklin would start shooting. He alleged that he did not know the shotgun was loaded. He expressed regret that the window was left unlocked, reasoning that the murder would nothave happened otherwise. The second interview was also recorded and played for the jury.
In a third statement taken less than an hour after the second interview concluded, defendant went through his Facebook account to identify other subjects involved in the robbery and killing. Defendant identified his co-perpetrators by their Facebook profiles, and they were subsequently arrested and charged. Co-defendant Shauna Broussard was later located and arrested, and Special Agent Vasquez testified that in her interview, she confirmed much of defendant's story. Three days after the third interview, defendant was interviewed for a fourth time after again waiving his Miranda rights. In that interview, defendant identified his co-perpetrators from photographs presented to him by law enforcement. The interview was recorded and played for the jury.
The investigation also revealed that from about 9:58 p.m. to 10:32 p.m. on August 18, 2016, defendant's cell phone was located in the area near the apartment in which Franklin's body was found. Furthermore, two jail calls linked to defendant were played for the jury. In the calls, defendant acknowledged to an unknown female that somebody saw him and his accomplice at the apartment, and that he shot and killed the victim when the gun "just went off."
Assignment of Error No. One:
Insufficient Evidence
In his first assignment of error, defendant contends the State failed to present sufficient evidence to establish he had the specific intent to commit second degree murder, but instead only proved that he committed manslaughter or negligent homicide. Defendant asserts that the evidence shows that he did not know anyone was home or that the shotgun was loaded, and that he only went to Franklin's apartment to commit a burglary. Defendant alleges he was surprised to findFranklin home and "went into a fight mode and as a near juvenile himself lacked the impulse control and reason to avoid compounding his poor decisions made thus far."
The State argues it proved every element of second degree murder, either by proving a specific intent to kill or that defendant committed felony murder. The State reasons that the jury was presented with, and rejected, defendant's theory of manslaughter or negligent homicide. The State also notes that although much of the evidence was circumstantial and if presented alone would require the State to exclude every reasonable hypothesis of innocence, defendant confessed to the killing more than once, which is direct evidence of defendant's guilt.
A conviction based on insufficient evidence cannot stand, as it violates Due Process. See U.S. Const. amend. XIV; La. Const. art. I, § 2. The standard of review for the sufficiency of the evidence to uphold a conviction is whether, viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution, any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 319, 99 S. Ct. 2781, 2789, 61 L. Ed. 2d 560 (1979). See LSA-C.Cr.P. art. 821(B); State v. Ordodi, 2006-0207 (La. 11/29/06), 946 So. 2d 654, 660; State v. Mussall, 523 So. 2d 1305, 1308-09 (La. 1988).
The Jackson standard of review, incorporated in LSA-C.Cr.P. art. 821, is an objective standard for testing the overall evidence, both direct and circumstantial, for reasonable doubt. When analyzing circumstantial evidence, LSA-R.S. 15:438 provides that in order to convict, the factfinder must be satisfied the overall evidence excludes every reasonable hypothesis of innocence. See State v. Patorno, 2001-2585 (La. App. 1st Cir. 6...
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