BLOUNTVILLE, Tenn. – More than two years after his conviction for slaying a Bristol, Tenn., police officer, Nickolus Johnson is seeking an acquittal or a new trial.
Lawyers representing Johnson have raised a host of judicial process objections, including that a prosecutor’s comments about abortion may have prejudiced the jury against the defendant.
Johnson, 31, was convicted of the premeditated first-degree murder of Officer Mark Vance and sentenced to death in April 2007. He appeared in Sullivan County Criminal Court Thursday, but left the talking to his defense attorneys, Jim Bowman and Stacy Street.
Vance, 30, had been responding to a domestic call on Nov. 27, 2004, when he arrived at the residence where Johnson was enraged at his girlfriend’s refusal to get an abortion. Johnson shot Vance in the head at point-blank range within moments of the officer’s entry.
Among the list of 20 judicial process errors Johnson’s attorneys cite is a comment that Sullivan County District Attorney General Greeley Wells made in his closing argument during the sentencing phase: Noting that Johnson had tried to persuade the pregnant girlfriend to have an abortion, the prosecutor asked how “good of a father” the defendant was.
Bowman and Street objected immediately, and Judge R. Jerry Beck sustained the objection, instructing jurors to disregard it in their deliberations.
“Some things juries can’t disregard even if the court instructs them to,” Bowman argued Thursday. “For people who have strong feelings on the matter, it may be difficult or impossible to put something like that out of their minds.”
Wells, after the hearing, noted that the jury had already heard testimony about Johnson’s efforts to persuade the woman pregnant with what turned out to be triplets before he made his closing argument. He made the abortion comment, he said, to rebut the testimony of defense witnesses who described Johnson as a good father.
“It seemed to me to be logical to point out that that was not necessarily the case,” Wells said. “I thought, and I still do think, it was relevant.”
The long list of errors argued by Johnson’s defense attorneys ranges from Beck’s decision not to limit the prosecution’s evidence to black and white photographs, to not authorizing funds for hiring an expert to conduct a “poll of the community to gauge [the] extent of pre-trial publicity.”
But Bowman and Street devoted the most space in their written motion to evidence concerning Johnson’s mental health, which was never presented to the jury. Johnson himself instructed his attorneys not to present this evidence, and Beck allowed him to block it.
His attorneys contend that Johnson’s mental health was a crucial mitigating factor that might have led a jury to spare his life.
“The court was aware of the mental health history and the experts report” through the defense’s offer of evidence and sealed court documents. “The court had also witnessed the defendant’s previously unexplained outburst in court.”
Bowman on Thursday acknowledged that Tennessee law does not require a judge to hear mitigating evidence against the wishes of a defendant, but he argued that it was nonetheless “constitutionally required.”
Beck did not rule on the motion Thursday. He will take it under advisement before issuing a written opinion.
dgilbert@bristolnews.com | (276) 645-2558
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