Prosecutor says murder, rape suspect’s $80,000 bail is too low

Wednesday, June 8, 2005 | 9:09 a.m.

A man who had initially been held without bail on charges of murder and two rapes, now is expected to get out of jail after District Judge John McGroarty set his bail at $80,000.

The judge's decision prompted an unusually strong public reaction from the prosecutor on the case who said the defendant should have remained in jail without bail.

Jerry B. Johnson faces multiple charges in connection with the January 1997 murder of 40-year-old Diane Vitt near Yale and Harmony streets and the October 1999 sexual assault of a Las Vegas 16-year-old girl at a school bus stop near Orr Junior High School.

Johnson is paraplegic and confined to wheelchair as result of being shot in the back last year, but that should not have affected his bail, Chief Deputy District Attorney Vicki Monroe said.

"It's distressing that a man is given $80,000 bail when DNA evidence links him to two rapes and a murder," Monroe said. "We were opposed to any change in his (Johnson's) bail status, paraplegic or not."

In addition to one count of murder with use of a deadly weapon and two counts of sexual assault Johnson is also charged with robbery, battery, kidnapping all with use of a deadly weapon, two counts of battery with intent to commit a crime and two counts of battery with substantial bodily harm.

Johnson has pleaded not guilty to the charges and is scheduled to stand trial before McGroarty in August.

Analysis conducted in 2001 determined that the same man who killed Vitt had raped the teen, but authorities at that time were unable to establish the suspect's identity, police said. But evidence at the scenes of the crimes would later match a DNA sample Johnson provided in 2003 as a condition on his release from prison on an unrelated battery charge.

Johnson was arrested March 19 by the Criminal Apprehension Team, a joint local and federal task force, more than two weeks after a warrant was issued for his arrest.

The arrest was the first time a DNA sample required from an inmate was used to identify a suspect in a cold case since the department received more than $750,000 from the Justice Department in September, police said. The money was part of a grant to help Metro sort through the backlog of DNA samples from 197 active cases.