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Thread: Martin Allen Johnson - Oregon

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    Martin Allen Johnson - Oregon




    Facts of the Crime:

    Sentenced to death for the February 24, 1998 murder of Heather Fraser, a Portland-area teenager. A forensic pathologist examined the body and concluded that Fraser had died by strangulation.

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    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    On May 25, 2007, Johnson filed a habeas petition in Federal District Court.

    http://dockets.justia.com/docket/ore...cv00779/83592/

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    On October 11, 2012, Johnson filed an appeal in the Ninth Circuit over the denial of his habeas petition in Federal District Court.

    http://dockets.justia.com/docket/cir.../ca9/12-35826/

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    Court orders new trial for death row inmate convicted in Tigard teen's 1998 killing

    A Marion County judge has ordered a new trial for a death row inmate convicted in the 1998 killing of Tigard-area teen Heather Fraser.

    Martin Allen Johnson, 56, was convicted in 2001 of drugging, raping and strangling Fraser and then throwing her body off the Astoria-Megler Bridge into the Columbia River.

    Fraser's body washed up on a beach at Fort Stevens State Park in Clatstop County early Feb. 24, 1998, the day after she had gone to Johnson's home to use the Internet on his computer.

    Johnson, incarcerated at the state penitentiary in Salem, unsuccessfully appealed his conviction to the Oregon Supreme Court in 2006. According to the state Department of Justice, a post-conviction relief process is available to criminal defendants who have gone through the appellate process and wish to raise new challenges.

    Marion County Circuit Judge Don Dickey heard Johnson's post-conviction relief case last June and after taking the case under advisement in November, granted the inmate's petition last week.

    Johnson's lawyers did not adequately defend him in his Washington County Circuit Court aggravated murder trial, Dickey wrote in his decision. The defense attorneys disagreed with prosecutors' theory that Johnson killed Fraser by strangulation. Instead, they argued that Fraser drowned in the Columbia River after Johnson threw her in alive. They asked jurors to acquit Johnson on a technicality because the death occurred in Clatsop County, not his Washington County home in Aloha.

    "In deciding the theme of the case, trial counsel relied upon a single defense, one that was highly likely to fail," Dickey wrote in an 88-page court order last week. "That defense was essentially: 'Petitioner killed Heather Fraser, but he did not kill her in the county alleged in the Indictment.'"

    The jury heard testimony that Johnson met underage girls at nightclubs and by getting them to sign a petition to lower the drinking age. Many girls testified that he gave them drugs and alcohol, slipped morphine into their drinks or knocked them out with ether-soaked rags. When they regained consciousness, they found Johnson sexually assaulting them.

    Fraser's body was found with enough morphine in it to have knocked her out before she was strangled. The deputy state medical examiner who testified at trial said there was no evidence of drowning. Bruising on Fraser's neck and hemorrhages around her eyes, he said, corresponded with strangulation.

    Jurors convicted Johnson of eight counts of aggravated murder. At the conclusion of the sentencing phase, they deliberated two hours before voting to impose the death penalty.

    The medical examiner testified Fraser's morphine level was non-fatal, but Johnson's attorneys in his post-conviction relief case argued that some experts would disagree. The possibility of a drug overdose is among the reasons Johnson should have a new trial, Dickey wrote in his order.

    Jeffrey Ellis, the director of the Oregon Capital Resource Center, said the judge’s decision is noteworthy because it acknowledges that Fraser may not have been murdered.

    “I think it’s a pretty significant case because what the judge really finds at his core is that there’s a substantial chance that the defendant, Mr. Johnson, is innocent,” he said.

    The judge points out that Johnson’s trial lawyers could have presented a convincing case of innocence, Ellis said, but did not.

    “His analysis is pretty powerful and really raises the specter of an innocent man being convicted and sentenced to death,” he said.

    Fraser is one of 37 inmates awaiting execution.

    http://www.oregonlive.com/tigard/ind...l_for_dea.html
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    Death row inmate who dumped Tigard teen off bridge to get new trial, appeals court rules

    The Oregon Court of Appeals agreed last week that a death row inmate -- who authorities say raped and murdered a 15-year-old girl in 1998 before throwing her body off an Astoria bridge -- should get a new trial.

    The appeals court agreed with a lower court decision that Martin Allen Johnson's original defense attorneys failed to thoroughly investigate the possibility that Heather Fraser died of an accidental morphine overdose -- an argument Johnson contends might have persuaded a jury that he wasn't guilty of aggravated murder. During a 2001 trial, prosecutors persuaded a jury that Johnson had strangled Fraser.

    According to an appeals court summary of the case, Fraser left her Tigard-area home at 2:30 a.m. on Feb. 23, 1998, to visit a friend -- later determined to be Johnson, who lived in Aloha -- to play on a computer. One of Fraser's friends told investigators that the man they knew as "Marty" was an "older guy" who always was "hitting on" Fraser and had given her drugs and alcohol in the past.

    Johnson was 41 at the time -- 26 years older than Fraser.

    Fraser's body was found the next day -- Feb. 24, 1998 -- in the surf on a beach in Warrenton. Investigators matched DNA from blood found in Johnson's car to Fraser. Investigators also learned that Johnson had "habitually preyed on underage girls, taking them to nightclubs, providing them with alcohol and drugs, engaging them in consensual sexual relations when possible and, most significantly, sexually abusing them while they were rendered unconscious by drugs that he had provided to them," according to the summary of the case.

    Based on that -- as well as the high level of morphine in Fraser's body and DNA evidence that Johnson had had sex with her -- the prosecution argued during his 2001 trial that Johnson had incapacitated Fraser with drugs, took sexual advantage of her and then strangled her.

    Johnson, however, told his attorneys that Fraser had died of an overdose, according to the appeals court summary of the case. Johnson said he found her "dead in bed and wrapped her body in a blanket, put her in the trunk of his car and drove her body to the coast and threw her in the water from the middle of the Astoria Bridge," the summary states.

    But no experts were called to the stand during his trial to support Johnson's contention that Fraser had died of an overdose. The state's expert opined that Fraser died of strangulation in Washington County. The defense expert testified she had drowned -- and defense attorneys used that testimony to support the theory that Fraser was still alive when Johnson threw her off of the Astoria-Megler Bridge in Clatsop County.

    Johnson's defense attorneys were hoping to get him acquitted based on a legal technicality.

    "In other words, the sole defense presented at petitioner's criminal trial was that the victim was still alive when petitioner threw her into the Columbia River and, therefore, she died in Clatsop County, not Washington County as alleged in the indictment," the appeals court ruled.

    Prosecutors, however, had acquired a new indictment before trial that allowed the proceeding to be held in Washington County even if it couldn't be determined where the killing took place.

    Jurors convicted Johnson of aggravated murder, and decided he should be sentenced to death. During a post-conviction trial in Marion County Circuit Court, Johnson argued that the defense strategy -- to argue Fraser died in Clatsop County rather than Washington County -- was further evidence that his defense attorneys did a bad job.

    Johnson also argued that his defense attorneys were inadequate and ineffective because they failed to seriously consider a theory that Fraser died of a morphine overdose. At the post-conviction trial, 2 new experts for Johnson testified that was the likely cause of death. Last week, the Court of Appeals ruled that Johnson should get a new trial based on his defense attorneys' failure to adequately investigate the overdose defense.

    The appeals court noted that if defense attorneys had put on that defense, Johnson might not be sitting on death row today. In other words, jurors might have convicted him of a lesser crime, such as manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide or murder that would have netted a sentence ranging from years to life in prison.

    Or, based on evidence that Fraser died of an overdose and not strangulation, jurors might have dealt him a more lenient penalty: Life in prison without the possibility of release, instead of death row, the appeals court wrote.

    Prosecutors can appeal last week's Court of Appeals decision to the Oregon Supreme Court. If the high court decides to hear the case, it could be another two to three years before justices issue their ruling. If the supreme court doesn't agree to give him a new trial, he still has years' worth of appeals left in the federal court system.

    Fraser died 18 years ago. Johnson, now 59, has been on death row for more than 14 years.

    Of the more than 30 people on death row, Randy Lee Guzek has been there the longest: 28 years. Currently, executions are on hold given Gov. Kate Brown's moratorium.

    http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/i...dumped_ti.html

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    On November 23, 2016, Johnson filed another appeal before the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

    https://dockets.justia.com/docket/ci...s/ca9/16-35970
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    Death row inmate's inadequate representation warrants new trial, Supreme Court says

    The Oregon Supreme Court on Thursday upheld an Appeals Court ruling overturning the aggravated murder conviction of death row inmate Martin Allen Johnson, who was found guilty in 1998 of killing a 15-year-old girl and throwing her body over the Astoria-Megler Bridge.

    The high court agreed with the appeals court that Johnson didn't have adequate representation at his 2001 Washington County trial in the death of Heather Fraser. The appeals court ordered a new trial for Johnson.

    Johnson's original defense team should have sought more information about the drugs in the girl's system to investigate Johnson's claims that she died of an accidental morphine overdose, the Supreme Court said. Had they sought a toxicology expert's opinion, the defense could have developed a theory that Fraser's death was unintentional or not the type of crime that carried the death penalty, according to the court.

    Washington County Senior Deputy District Attorney Bracken McKey noted the Supreme Court ruling didn't find error in any rulings made by the trial judge or evidence presented by the prosecution.

    "Nothing has changed on our end," McKey said. "Martin Allen Johnson was indicted by a Washington County grand jury for the rape and aggravated murder of Heather Fraser. When Johnson is returned from prison, we will prosecute him again for those crimes."

    Daniel J. Casey, who represents Johnson, declined comment.

    A Washington County jury sentenced Johnson, now 60, to death. Prosecutors said Johnson drugged Fraser with morphine, raped her and strangled her to death in Aloha and then threw her body off the bridge near Astoria. Her body was found the next day floating in the Columbia River near Warrenton.

    A high level of morphine was found in Fraser's body as well as traces of Johnson's DNA.

    Fraser had left her Tigard-area home at 2:30 a.m., telling friends she was going to the home of an older man they knew as "Marty" to play games on his computer. Johnson lived with his mother in Aloha at the time. One of Fraser's friends told investigators that Marty was always "hitting on" Fraser and had given her drugs and alcohol in the past.

    Authorities said Johnson routinely targeted young girls and went to concerts and carnivals with fake petitions advocating to lower Oregon's legal drinking age to 18 as bait to gain their contact information, including Fraser's. Among the evidence seized by investigators were computer spreadsheets that listed the names and personal information for nearly 200 girls.

    Several teen girls testified during the 2001 trial that Johnson took them to Portland dance clubs, bought them presents, supplied them with alcohol, slipped morphine into their drinks or knocked them out by making them smell drugged-soaked rags. Some said they awoke to find Johnson sexually assaulting them.

    Johnson is one of 34 inmates on Oregon's death row.

    http://www.oregonlive.com/washington...dequate_t.html
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    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    New Oregon Death Penalty Rules Affect Old Cases, DOJ Finds

    By Dirk VanderHart
    OPB

    A new law curbing use of the death penalty in Oregon now appears to go further than its supporters intended, after a recent ruling that a former death row inmate cannot be sentenced to death upon retrial.

    Now the Oregon Department of Justice is warning of unintended consequences from the law, and the state’s prosecutors are working to determine how many murder cases could be affected.

    “We are scrambling,” said Tim Colahan, executive director of the Oregon District Attorneys Association. “DAs around the state, particularly those that have pending cases, are scrambling to try to decipher and see what exactly this means.”

    Meanwhile, lawmakers behind the new law said Tuesday they were surprised by the snafu and would seek a fix as soon as possible — even asking the governor to call a one-day special session next month.

    In passing Senate Bill 1013 this year, lawmakers limited use of capital punishment to a narrow set of circumstances, including terrorist acts and murders of children or law enforcement officers. But officials also appeared to take pains to ensure those changes would apply to sentences moving forward — not cases where a sentence was pending or those where a punishment had already been handed down, but which were returned to a lower court.

    They didn’t succeed, according to a memo sent to state prosecutors Aug. 9 by DOJ Solicitor General Ben Gutman.

    “We at DOJ have concluded that the new, narrower definition of aggravated murder in SB 1013 does apply to pending cases — including cases that have been sent back for new penalty or guilt phases,” Gutman wrote in the memo, which was first reported on by the Oregonian/OregonLive but independently obtained by OPB. “That means that most of those cases could no longer be prosecuted as capital aggravated-murder cases; they presumably would have to be prosecuted as first-degree murder cases instead.”

    Aggravated murder is the only capital crime on the books in Oregon. Rather than seeking to do away with the death penalty entirely, which would require a public vote, death penalty opponents in the Legislature took a more novel approach this year: changing the definition of aggravated murder.

    Once the law kicks in on Sept. 29, only terrorist acts that kill at least two people; premeditated murders of children under 14 years old or law enforcement; and killings in prison by convicted murderers will qualify for the death penalty. Moving forward, many crimes that currently qualify as aggravated murder will be considered murder in the first degree, not punishable by death.

    But lawmakers sought to make clear that crimes already prosecuted under current aggravated murder laws would not be affected. The Legislature even included a provision in a second bill, Senate Bill 1005, that many believed ensured that the changes would not apply to people receiving their original sentences before Jan. 1, 2020, or who were resentenced because of an appeal or post-conviction relief hearing.

    Gutman’s memo says the DOJ first thought lawmakers had succeeded. The office took another look after a recent ruling in a 1998 Washington County murder case. In that case, Martin Johnson was convicted in 2001 of murdering a 15-year-old girl and sentenced to death. But the Oregon Supreme Court ruled in 2017 that Johnson did not have adequate representation at his initial trial and ordered a retrial.

    In a recent motion, Johnson’s defense attorneys successfully argued the death penalty was no longer an option for their client.

    “When you look at the plain language of [SB] 1005, it just doesn’t apply to our case,” said Dean Smith, one of the public defenders representing Johnson. “I don’t know what the intention of the legislators was, but if they wished to make it so that [SB] 1013 did not apply to people like Mr. Johnson, that was not that hard to do.”

    The DOJ has since come to agree. Gutman wrote to district attorneys that SB 1005 did not do what lawmakers intended.

    “I know that I have had conversations with many of you in which I suggested otherwise,” he wrote, “but after careful review of the issue in a Washington County case where the court ruled that the death penalty was not available, we have concluded that we don’t have a plausible basis for an appeal … .”

    Gutman added: “This was a surprise to me. Many of us, myself included, were under the impression that SB 1005 ensured that SB 1013 would not apply to cases that had previously been tried and were being retried after an appeal or post-conviction relief.”

    The DOJ’s position has a lot of weight. When murderers appeal their convictions, it is DOJ lawyers that typically take the lead on defending those sentences.

    Sen. Floyd Prozanski, D-Eugene, and Rep. Jennifer Williamson, D-Portland, two of the central legislative champions of SB 1013, issued a statement Tuesday addressing the matter.

    “As our statements throughout the legislative process make clear, we always intended and were advised (by counsel) that this bill did not apply to re-sentencing and is not retroactive,” the statement said. “This is an unfortunate technical drafting error that we are glad the DOJ has identified. We will work to fix this issue as soon as possible.”

    In a subsequent conversation, Prozanski told OPB he’ll ask Gov. Brown to call a special session next month to pass a tweak to the law.

    “I’m calling upon my leadership and I will be calling upon the governor and her staff to do that,” Prozanski said. “I’m ready for us to move forward and fix the issue that was never intended to be an issue.”

    Lawmakers are scheduled to be at the Capitol from Sept. 16-18 for legislative committee days, routine meetings where legislators take care of housekeeping matters between sessions.

    Prozanski believes the Legislature can pass a tweak to the death penalty law in a single day, Sept. 18, before SB 1013 is scheduled to take effect.

    Such one-day sessions aren’t unheard of — Brown called one in May 2018 to address a tax issue — but they require lawmakers of both parties to agree to suspend regular legislative rules and rely on a level of goodwill that was hard to come by in Salem at the end of this year’s legislative session.

    Prozanski believes it’s possible, and planned to discuss the matter with Senate President Peter Courtney on Wednesday.

    “Why would anyone want to extend some type of benefit to a person convicted of aggravated murder who should not be getting that benefit?” he said. “I don’t see why we would have difficulty.”

    Absent a special session, no changes could be put in place before the legislative session scheduled in early 2020.

    Colahan said the ODAA, which staunchly opposed the death penalty bill, is first working to determine how many cases could be impacted by the changes. Then it will work to figure out how the apparent gaffe happened.

    “This was a bill that the DAs did not support,” said Colahan, the former longtime district attorney of Harney County. “We felt if there were going to be changes to the death penalty, it needed to be referred to the voters, but more importantly it needed much more vetting and review than what those bills got during the session.”

    Death penalty opponents have made the case that Oregon’s capital punishment laws are problematic, ineffective and a waste of money. In signing the bill earlier this month, Brown echoed those arguments.

    “Oregon’s death penalty is dysfunctional. It is costly and immoral,” Brown said. “Our state’s criminal justice system continues to impose death sentences, and send people to death row, even as we know that no one has been executed here in a generation.”

    Only two inmates have been executed in the state in the last 50 years, and both had ceased fighting their sentences. As governor, Brown has continued a moratorium on executions put into place in 2011 by then-Gov. John Kitzhaber.

    https://www.opb.org/news/article/ore...nt-of-justice/
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    Former Oregon death row inmate first to face new trial and lesser murder charge after change in law

    By Noelle Crombie
    The Oregonian

    The decades-old killing of a Tigard girl whose body washed up on a spit of land where the Columbia River meets the Pacific Ocean was back in court Tuesday, the first major case affected by Oregon’s new and narrow definition of aggravated murder.

    Martin A. Johnson, 62, was already convicted once, in 2001, of aggravated murder in the killing of 15-year-old Heather Fraser. Johnson, a sewage treatment plant worker, was sentenced to death for the 1989 killing.

    Johnson is now accused of first-degree murder, which carries a sentence of life in prison with a minimum of 30 years unless a judge determines the defendant should serve true life. The person would be eligible to apply for a parole hearing after 30 years.

    Prosecutors at the first trial argued that Johnson drugged Fraser with morphine, sexually assaulted her and tossed her body off the Astoria-Megler Bridge.

    Johnson exhausted his direct appeals. Then in 2013 a Marion County judge heard his case in a process known as post-conviction relief. The process is available to criminal defendants who have gone through the appellate process and want to raise new challenges.

    Judge Don Dickey found that Johnson’s lawyers failed to adequately defend him. His lawyers had argued that Fraser drowned in the Columbia River after Johnson threw her in alive and asked jurors to acquit him on a technicality because the death occurred in Clatsop County, not in Washington County, where he lived and was tried. In his opinion, Dickey wrote that Johnson’s trial attorneys could have presented a convincing case of innocence but did not.

    The state Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court agreed. A new trial was ordered.

    This time, the case is unfolding in a legal landscape reshaped by the Oregon Legislature.

    Senate Bill 1013 went into effect on Sept. 29 and restricts the types of murders eligible for the death penalty. Under the state’s new aggravated murder law, the charges facing Johnson are no longer capital crimes because they don’t meet the criteria. Aggravated murder is now limited to defendants who kill two or more people as an act of organized terrorism; kill a child younger than 14 intentionally and with premeditation; kill another person while locked in jail or prison for a previous murder; or kill a police, correctional or probation officer.

    Johnson was not in the packed courtroom as the trial got under way at the Washington County Courthouse in Hillsboro. He told officials with the Washington County Jail, where he is being held, that he did not want to go Tuesday.

    In his opening statement, Chief Deputy District Attorney Bracken McKey acknowledged the passage of time. He said Fraser was killed in another era, one where landline telephones were the norm, interviews were recorded on tape and the “internet was a novelty.”

    The state’s case, however, hasn’t changed. Prosecutors said they would present evidence showing Johnson had drugged Fraser with morphine, sexually assaulted her and drove her body to the Oregon coast, where he dumped her off of the bridge.

    Fraser had left home about 2:30 a.m. on Feb. 23, 1998, telling friends she was going to the home of an older man they knew as “Marty” to play games on his computer. One of Fraser’s friends told investigators that the man was always “hitting on” Fraser and had given her drugs and alcohol in the past.

    McKey said Johnson had access to morphine due to his father’s terminal illness. He said a search of Johnson’s computer showed he had looked up tide tables for Astoria. The prosecutor told jurors that police found books with tips on creating a new identity, as well as “running, hiding, surviving and thriving forever,” in Johnson’s possession when he was arrested. DNA evidence linking him to the sexual assault and killing were also found, he said.

    “You are going to learn he was selfish, he was smart, he was deceptive,” McKey said.

    McKey called Fraser a fighter. “You are going to learn that she continued to fight even after her death; her body made its way to shore on the last spit of land on the south side of the coast before the Columbia River washes out to sea,” he said.

    In his opening statement, defense attorney Steven Eberlein acknowledged that Johnson was “a nightmare for parents, especially parents of young daughters.” He said Johnson “lived in a twisted normal” world where underage girls, sex and drug use were intertwined.

    “He was a loser,” Johnson’s lawyer told jurors.

    “But,” he added, “that’s not the whole story.”

    He said other girls who knew Johnson at the time described him as easily manipulated and generous. He showered them with gifts, alcohol and rides, Eberlein said.

    One woman, Eberlein said, credited Johnson with encouraging her to manage her money better and helped her get an apartment. The women said Johnson was not dangerous or violent, Eberlein said.

    Fraser had lethal levels of morphine at the time of her death, Eberlein said. But he said the evidence doesn’t show that the girl was strangled, drowned or died from a blow.

    Fraser’s mother, Ronda Fraser, listened to opening statements from a seat in the back of the courtroom, then she took the stand.

    She testified that her daughter was happy and in love with a girl when she last saw her. She recounted how her daughter told her she was going to see her friend ‘Marty.’ It was about 3 a.m. when Ronda Fraser hugged her daughter goodbye and watched her walk down the driveway, get into a car and drive off. She said she didn’t know who was in the car.

    The trial is expected to continue for two weeks.

    https://www.oregonlive.com/washingto...ge-in-law.html

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    Man retried for 21-year-old murder found guilty of killing girl

    By KATU.com Staff

    HILLSBORO, Ore. — A man who was convicted of aggravated murder for the 1998 rape and killing of a 15-year-old girl was retried for the crime and was found guilty of first-degree murder Friday, according to the Washington County District Attorney’s Office.

    In 2001, Martin Johnson was convicted of raping and murdering Heather Fraser. He was sentenced to death.

    But the Oregon Supreme Court upheld a ruling by the state Court of Appeals overturning his conviction, stating that Johnson’s defense attorney did not adequately investigate.

    Johnson was retried under a new Oregon law passed this year that kept prosecutors from seeking the death penalty. Instead, he was charged with eight counts of first-degree murder.

    The DA’s office said the jury found him guilty on all counts in less than three hours.

    Martin drugged, raped and killed Fraser before throwing her body off a bridge and into the Columbia River. Her body was found in the water near Warrenton, Oregon on Feb. 24, 1998.

    He's schedule to be sentenced Wednesday, Nov. 13.

    https://katu.com/news/local/martin-j...heather-fraser
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