Man a step closer to being executed

By Matt Pordum

Friday, April 29, 2005 | 10:47 a.m.

A man convicted of tying up and killing four young men is eligible for the death penalty, a jury determined Thursday.

The same 12 jurors will now decide whether the state should execute Donte Johnson, who was previously convicted of the 1998 murders of Tracey Gorringe, 20-year-old Peter Talamantez and Matthew Mowen and Jeffrey Biddle, both 19.

Some of the victims' family members have been privately complaining that the judge presiding over the case, District Judge Lee Gates, appears to be favoring the defense with the way that he has structured the penalty phase and in the way he has been handling the case.

Prior to the jury's announcement Thursday, the tension in the courtroom had mounted as everyone had to wait about 90 minutes for Gates' arrival.

Gates offered no reason for his tardiness to those who packed the courtroom. Later in the day he said, "Nothing was wrong it's just the wheels of justice move slowly."

For victim Matt Mowen's father, David, Gates failure to address why he was so late to court was inexcusable, but not unusual.

"I've been in and out of that court so many times and I can't remember it ever starting on time," David Mowen said. "I actually come 30 to 40 minutes after when the judge says a hearing will start and still I have plenty of time.

"To have the taxpayers' money and time wasted just sitting around with no explanation is inexcusable. And we wonder why the courts are overwhelmed."

Gates' late arrival and was not the only thing that had people in the gallery talking. Gates also asked Chief Deputy District Attorney Robert Daskas to have the brother of victim Tracey Gorringe removed from court. Daskas asked Gorringe to leave the courtroom, and he did.

A day earlier Nick Gorringe had fallen from his seat to the floor and cried after a photo of his brother bound in duct-tape with a bullet hole in the back of his head was shown on a television screen in court.

Also after the jury found Johnson was eligible for the death penalty clerk, the judge took the unusual step of unilaterally polling the jury. Under normal courtroom procedure a judge only polls a jury if the defense attorneys and the prosecutors request it.

Upon hearing the jury's determination that Johnson would face the possibility of a death sentence, David Mowen said he was relieved.

"All of the family members are ecstatic," David Mowen said. "We all kind of expected it, but it's certainly a huge relief. Now the jury will all be able to hear the whole story about Donte Johnson."

Johnson previously had been sentenced to death by a three-judge panel. But now his fate is being reconsidered as a result of a U.S. Supreme Court decision that said only juries can levy the death penalty in such cases.

In the current proceeding, Gates split the penalty phase, the jurors had to first weigh the "aggravators" in the case against the mitigating evidence presented.

During the first phase of the penalty hearing the jurors were only told the details of Johnson's quadruple homicide and information about Johnson's background growing up in South Central Los Angeles.

The jury will now get to hear about Johnson's extensive criminal history and will hear testimony from family members of the victims and Johnson as they choose between death, life in prison with the possibility of parole, life without the possibility of parole and a set term of 40 to 100 years in prison for Johnson.

Gates, however, has placed a limit of two family member speakers on each of the four victims in the case and has said he would impose a time limit on how long they can talk. The judge made no such restriction on the number of Johnson's family members who spoke during the first phase of the hearing.

Daskas had told the jury during opening arguments of the second phase of the penalty hearing on Thursday afternoon that the four murders Johnson committed on Aug. 14, 1998 was not "just one bad night for Donte Johnson" but the end in what had been a life of crime.

Daskas said Johnson's criminal history began when he was 14 and arrested for robbery. After serving seven months in a juvenile rehabilitation camp he was placed on probation, but violated his probation by being caught with a handgun at school.

The prosecutor said Johnson was then arrested for stealing a car before moving forward to a more "sophisticated crime" in June 1993 when he was 16-years-old.

Daskas said Johnson took part in planning and executing an armed bank robbery in which he and two others invaded a bank in Marina Del Rey, Calif., and forced innocent people down on the ground before he stole money from the bank.

Daskas said Johnson served 26 months in a California Youth Authority confinement camp before being placed on parole. Johnson, however, failed to follow the conditions of parole and when a warrant for his arrest was put out he decided to flee to Las Vegas.

The prosecutor said in 1998 Johnson was selling crack in Las Vegas and proceeded to shoot one of his buyers in the face and back. Johnson would ultimately enter an Alford plea to battery with use of a deadly weapon for the shooting of Derrick Simpson, which left Simpson a quadriplegic, and was also the cause of his death a few years later.

Three months after shooting Simpson, Johnson's "criminal career culminated with the quadruple homicide," Daskas said.

Daskas said being incarcerated didn't make Johnson any less of a threat as he helped another inmate throw a convicted sex offender off a second floor balcony and also punched another inmate in the face.

"Nobody is safe from Donte Johnson," Daskas said. "Regardless of race, gender, socio-economic status, inmate or innocent bystander if Donte Johnson is alive others are in danger."

Special Public Defender Alzora Jackson said Johnson was forced into a life of crime because at an early age he joined a street gang to save the rest of his family from being harassed by the gang.

Jackson said "criminals are not born, but made" as described how Johnson was essentially made a slave by the gang and ordered to commit crimes or suffer beatings and threatened with death.

She said that when violence is the only thing a child knows "it becomes no big deal."

Jackson said the gang life Johnson was thrown into, coupled with the fact his parents were drug addicts and he was forced to live in a foster home before placed in the custody of his grandmother along with 11 other children, added up to a "nightmare life."

"The evidence will show there is nothing to be gained by killing my client," Jackson said. "The evidence will show Donte Johnson has value and can speak to others in South Central about what not to do."

As she urged the jury to "stop the killing" by rejecting the death penalty, Jackson said Johnson was her friend and she was "proud to represent" him .

The second phase of Johnson's penalty hearing is scheduled to begin this morning.