Jury weighs new penalty for killer of four men

By Matt Pordum

Thursday, May 5, 2005 | 9:07 a.m.

After a week of testimony and evidence, a jury has gotten to know Donte Johnson, and now they must decide if the man convicted of killing four young men execution style should be sentenced to death.

In closing arguments Wednesday for Johnson's penalty phase, it became clear the jurors would have to decide if Johnson was a cold blooded killer with no redeeming qualities or a man who is the product of poverty, abuse, drugs and gang life in South Central Los Angeles.

Prosecutor Robert Daskas said that while defense attorneys have argued there was no way to put a value on someone's life, Johnson apparently had no problem determining what the lives of his four victims were worth.

"What value do we place on the four victims here?" Daskas asked the jury. "Donte Johnson decided their lives were less than a VCR and a Sony Play Station."

Johnson was previously convicted by a jury for the 1998 murders of Matthew Mowen, 19, Jeffrey Biddle, 19, Tracey Gorringe, 20, and Peter Talamantez, 20.

Johnson was found with a VCR and Play Station from the victims' home on Terra Linda Drive in southeastern Las Vegas.

Daskas said Johnson's decision to murder the four young men was based on greed, to get money and drugs he believed the victims' possessed.

The prosecutor rejected the defense argument that Johnson was motivated by his rough childhood and gang involvement.

"Nobody ordered Donte Johnson to move here (Las Vegas)," Daskas said. "He didn't have to cross through gang territory to get to the Terra Linda house and he didn't have to go there to protect his family."

"He (Johnson) went there to get drugs and money and when he didn't get it someone had to pay."

Daskas said he agreed with Johnson's attorneys that the death penalty is never required, "but on behalf of the state of Nevada I would suggest sometimes it's absolutely necessary."

The prosecutor said sentencing Johnson to life in prison would be giving Johnson "what he wants."

"We're not here to rehabilitate (Johnson) or to protect society or determine if he (Johnson) can be safely housed (in prison)," Daskas said. "You are here to penalize Donte Johnson for his criminal conduct."

Daskas said because that conduct involved duct taping four young men and shooting them as they laid helpless, face down on the floor, the death penalty was the only punishment.

He asked rhetorically what kind of "message do we send to would-be criminals" if the jury were to come back with any sentence other than death for Johnson.

Special Public Defender Alzora Jackson said she had been studying the faces of the jury as they listened to the prosecutors closing argument and wondered if "this jury has already made up its mind."

Jackson said she had an "awful feeling" the jury, as several studies have found, decided in the "first day or so" what the fate of Johnson would be.

She said because Johnson's mother was a drug addict, alcoholic, mentally retarded woman who cared more about getting high than Johnson's needs and his father was a "monstrous man" who would beat her and Johnson, her client never had a chance.

"He's been serving a life sentence since the day he was born," Jackson said. "Let him go to Ely (state prison) and just finish that sentence."

Jackson said although she wishes the lives of the four young men were not taken, "you can't give them (the victims' families) back what is taken."

She continued on about how the victims all came from loving families and "had very good upbringings," but even "with all that the love all that upbringing they (the victims) still turned into drug dealers and drug users."

Jackson asked the jury to consider that since Johnson had no love, no one to care for him while he was growing up, "what kind of chance do you think he had?"

The special public defender said she has never tried to excuse Johnson for the murders he committed, but instead simply tried to show that "despite all of this he is still a person."

She referenced professional football player Pat Tillman, who gave up millions of dollars in the NFL to serve his country in Iraq, only to be killed, in arguing that killing Johnson to atone for the murders he committed dishonored Tillman's deeds.

"He (Tillman) gave his life for something bigger than revenge," Jackson said. "Did Pat Tillman die for Donte Johnson, too, or just for those who live in Summerlin?"

Jackson asked for the jurors to show Johnson mercy, saying although they might hate what Johnson did, "people who need mercy are the people we hate."

As Jackson concluded, she recalled watching television with a friend and their 5-year-old son when Saddam Hussein was being captured by U.S. soldiers in Iraq. She said while Hussein was getting a physical exam, the boy asked "why are they helping him, why don't they just kill him?"

His father turned to the son and said, "Son, that's what we do."

Jackson urged the jury to follow that mindset and said "don't kill my client."

Johnson's previous criminal history includes convictions for robbery, stealing a car, armed bank robbery, and battery with use of a deadly weapon for the shooting of a man he sold drugs to in Las Vegas. That man was left a quadriplegic and died years later as a result of the shooting.

Prosecutors also alleged at the penalty phase that Johnson helped another inmate throw a convicted sex offender off a second-floor balcony at the Clark County Detention Center and also punched another inmate in the face.

Johnson previously had been sentenced to death by a three-judge panel for the murders of the four people. 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.

The jury began deliberations Wednesday afternoon, but opted to go home at roughly 8:00 p.m. They are expected to resume deliberations this morning to determine whether to sentence Johnson to death, life in prison without the possibility of parole, life with the possibility of parole or a set term of 40 to 100 years.