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Thread: Jesse Lee Johnson - Oregon

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    Jesse Lee Johnson - Oregon






    Facts of the Crime:

    On March 20, 1998, Johnson robbed Harriet Thompson in her home, stabbed her repeatedly, and slashed her throat. Johnson had a long record of violent crime. The defense attacked the prosecution’s circumstantial proof at the guilt phase, and Johnson claimed innocence throughout the proceedings.

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    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    No. 07-7288 *** CAPITAL CASE ***
    Title:
    Jesse Lee Johnson, Petitioner
    v.
    Oregon
    Docketed: October 25, 2007
    Lower Ct: Supreme Court of Oregon
    Case Nos.: (S51313)
    Decision Date: April 19, 2007
    Rehearing Denied: July 24, 2007

    ~~~Date~~~ ~~~~~~~Proceedings and Orders~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    Oct 22 2007 Petition for a writ of certiorari and motion for leave to proceed in forma pauperis filed. (Response due November 26, 2007)
    Nov 26 2007 Brief of respondent Oregon in opposition filed.
    Dec 6 2007 DISTRIBUTED for Conference of January 4, 2008.
    Jan 7 2008 Petition DENIED.

    http://www.supremecourt.gov/Search.a...es/07-7288.htm

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    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Oregon Innocence Project requests new DNA tests for Salem man on death row

    The Oregon Innocence Project is taking on the case of a man sentenced to death after being convicted of murdering a Salem woman in 1998. The group has filed a motion in Marion County requesting the DNA testing and retesting of at least 38 pieces of physical evidence in the case against Jesse Lee Johnson.

    Johnson, 55, was sentenced to death in 2004 for the murder of Harriet Lavern “Sunny” Thompson, 28.

    Thompson’s body was found on March 20, 1998 in her apartment on the lower level of a rental house on 12th St SE, just south of Morningside Elementary School.

    Authorities determined she died from multiple stab wounds.

    The deputy district attorney at the time, Darin Tweedt, said Johnson and Thompson, a nurse’s aide, were acquainted.

    Mike Quakenbush and Craig Stoelk, two Salem police detectives who were investigating the homicide, arrested Johnson a week following Thompson’s killing. He was charged with a probation violation and his clothing was seized by arresting officers.

    Johnson has maintained his innocence throughout the investigation. In 2004, he declined the state’s plea offer for first-degree manslaughter and first-degree robbery.

    The memorandum filed by the Innocence Project stated the following:

    Several pieces of DNA evidence were recovered at Thompson’s home. Some, including a cigarette butt, a bottle of liquor and a dollar bill, matched Johnson’s DNA.

    Johnson admitted to knowing Thompson, and the pieces of evidence were consistent with a social visit.

    However, several key items recovered from the scene did not match Johnson’s DNA. A semen sample taken from a vaginal swab of the victim, a spot of blood by the bathroom sink, blood on the bathroom floor and hairs found on the victim were not a match to Johnson.

    In 2016, at the request of Johnson’s lawyers, one of the vaginal swabs taken from Thompson was submitted to the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System, also known as CODIS. The search returned with one match — for a man not previously investigated as part of Thompson’s murder.

    http://www.statesmanjournal.com/stor...-row/94096554/
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

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    Senior Member CnCP Legend CharlesMartel's Avatar
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    Judge denies Oregon death row inmate's request for new DNA testing in murder case

    By Everton Bailey, Jr.
    The Oregonian

    A Marion County Circuit Judge on Monday denied a death row inmate's request to order new DNA testing in the 1998 fatal stabbing of a Salem woman.

    Judge Channing Bennett wrote in an opinion letter that Jesse L. Johnson's motion for more testing doesn't show a clear defense theory that could lead to a finding that he is actually innocent in the killing of 28-year-old Harriet "Sunny" Thompson.

    Johnson, now 57, asked to test 37 pieces of evidence, including some for the second time. His attorney argued the tests could open new investigative avenues and possibly lead to new suspects.

    But that "chain of 'ifs'" is too weak to constitute a defense, Bennett wrote. Jurors considered the evidence presented during his trial, including his denial, and found him guilty, the judge said.

    "Nothing in the defendant's argument demonstrates that a jury would more likely than not find him not guilty," the judge wrote.

    Thompson was found dead from several stab wounds in her apartment in March 1998. Johnson was later found by police selling some of her jewelry.

    A Marion County jury found Johnson guilty of aggravated murder in March 2004 and sentenced him to death that same month. The Oregon Supreme Court in 2007 upheld his conviction and death sentence on appeal. Another conviction challenge was struck down in 2015.

    In 2016, attorneys with the Oregon Innocence Project were appointed as his lawyers and they filed a motion in Marion County Circuit Court for new DNA testing. They argued that advances in forensic science and updated techniques could lead to Johnson's exoneration. They noted DNA analysis and other tests of at least 11 items in the case found no ties to Johnson.

    Prosecutors asked the court to the deny the motion last year. Both sides argued their points before Bennett in October.

    "The defendant's inability to articulate a recognized theory of defense that DNA testing would support is fatal to the instant motion," the judge said.

    Johnson knew before his 2004 trial that all of the collected evidence had not been analyzed for DNA, but didn't request the testing before his trial or during his appeal, Bennett wrote. Johnson also didn't identify any DNA evidence
    that was improperly presented to the jury, according to the judge. Jurors also knew that some of the evidence tested, such as the object likely used to kill Thompson, didn't have Johnson's DNA.

    Johnson remains held at the Oregon State Penitentiary. He is one of 33 Oregon inmates on death row.

    http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-no...death_row.html


    Court reverses man’s murder conviction, death sentence

    SALEM, Ore. (AP) — Oregon’s court of appeals reversed the murder conviction and death sentence of a Black man Wednesday, saying his defense team failed to interview a key witness who saw a white man fleeing the victim’s home.

    Jesse Johnson was accused of stabbing Harriet Thompson, a 28-year-old Black nurse’s aide, to death in her Salem home in 1998. He has repeatedly claimed innocence and refused a plea deal.

    Ryan O’Connor, Johnson’s attorney during the appeal phase, said racism and police misconduct contributed to his wrongful conviction. The lawyer told Johnson of the appeals court’s decision in a phone call to the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem.

    “He’s happy. It feels like it’s long overdue. He’s been in prison for a long time for something he didn’t do. He said this is what he’s been waiting for,” O’Connor said.

    But the decision doesn’t mean Johnson will be freed immediately, if at all. O’Connor said Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum could appeal the ruling to the state Supreme Court. Her spokeswoman Kristina Edmunson said they are reviewing the decision. If it doesn’t go to the Supreme Court, the Marion County district attorney could order a new trial or dismiss the charges, O’Connor said.

    Johnson’s appeal centered on a claim that his lawyers were deficient in representing him because the jury never heard that the victim’s neighbor, Patricia Hubbard, had seen a white man park his van in Thompson’s driveway around 3:45 a.m. March 20, 1998, and go inside. Seconds later, Hubbard heard screaming coming from Thompson’s house, a thud and then silence.

    She told investigators, who found and contacted her after Johnson was convicted, that she saw the white man run from the house and a few minutes later, a Black man walk down the driveway. She did not identify him as Johnson.

    The jury didn’t know all this because Johnson’s trial lawyers failed to find Hubbard and speak to her. Police didn’t interview her either, even though on the day of the killing she had approached a police officer and said she had information, only to be told he didn’t need her help and to go home.

    Soon after the murder, another neighbor of Thompson’s brought a Salem police detective to Hubbard’s house. When Hubbard began describing what she had seen, the detective allegedly said, twice using a racial epithet, that a Black woman got murdered and a Black man is “going to pay for it.”

    O’Connor said “racism and police misconduct played a significant role in Mr. Johnson’s wrongful conviction ... Jesse Lee Johnson is an innocent man who has spent more than 20 years in prison sentenced to death for a murder he did not commit.”

    The appeals court said that a post-conviction court erred in concluding that the failure of Johnson’s lawyers to properly investigate did not prejudice Johnson’s case.

    “A reasonable investigation would likely have led to finding and interviewing Hubbard, which in turn would have led to evidence and testimony that could have tended to affect the outcome of the trial,” the appeals court said.

    Former Gov. John Kitzhaber declared a moratorium on executions in 2011, and current Gov. Kate Brown extended it, so prisoners sentenced to death are no long on death row at the Oregon State Penitentiary. Johnson was pulled from the general prison population to take O’Connor’s call Thursday in the prison’s law library.

    “Because of COVID, they’re not doing in-person visits and the legal calls are really booked, so we had to scramble to get a call in,” O’Connor said. “He wasn’t expecting this call today. We’ve been waiting over two years for this opinion to come out. It was a pleasant surprise.”

    O’Connor himself had learned of the appeals court’s Reynold’s ruling only by constantly checking the court’s website, where rulings are published every Wednesday.

    “So I was in my kitchen, getting my kids ready for school and refreshing the appeals court website on my phone,” O’Connor said. “I was so happy. Mostly it is a feeling of relief because this is the right decision under the law and it’s the just decision, and I strongly believe in Mr. Johnson’s innocence.”

    There is also another attempt that is ongoing to prove Johnson’s innocence.

    Johnson’s DNA wasn’t on any of the tested murder evidence. The Oregon Innocence Project has asked a court to allow additional DNA testing of crime-scene evidence in the case. That appeal remains pending.

    https://apnews.com/article/salem-ore...9aeb9e8f590eb7
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  5. #5
    Moderator Bobsicles's Avatar
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    Charges against Salem man for 1998 murder dropped

    By Whitney Woodworth and Virginia Barreda
    The Salem Statesman-Journal

    After 25 years in prison, a Salem man once convicted of murder and placed on death row walked free Tuesday, the murder charge for the death of a local woman now dismissed.

    Jesse Lee Johnson, now 62, was sentenced to death in 1998 for the murder of Harriet Lavern "Sunny" Thompson, 28, in her apartment on 12th Street SE in Salem.

    Johnson, who is Black, has maintained his innocence for more than 20 years and has made multiple attempts to prove it.

    His case was sent back to Marion County Circuit Court in 2021 after the Oregon Court of Appeals reversed his conviction, putting it back in the hands of county prosecutors to determine whether to retry the case.

    The Oregon Court of Appeals judge found that during Johnson's trial, his attorneys to investigate evidence that could have changed the outcome.

    Specifically, Johnson's lawyers failed to include testimony from Thompson's neighbor who witnessed another man run out of Thompson's house on the night of her murder. The post-conviction court, which initially denied Johnson's motion for post-conviction relief, should have determined that the lawyers' deficient performance could have affected the outcome of Johnson's case, presiding Court of Appeals Judge Rex Armstrong said.

    "Today’s opinion is a long-overdue step toward righting a terrible injustice," Johnson's lawyer, Ryan O'Connor, of O'Connor Weber LLC law firm in Portland, said in a statement in 2021. "The evidence in this case shows that racism and police misconduct played a significant role in Mr. Johnson’s wrongful conviction in 2004."

    The Marion County District Attorney's Office initially filed new charges against Johnson. But on Tuesday, deputy district attorneys Katie Suver and Matthew Kemmy filed a motion to dismiss without prejudice.

    In the motion, they said while preparing for a new trial, they determined certain evidence was unavailable and many critical witnesses are now dead.

    "Based on the amount of time passed and the unavailability of critical evidence in this case, the state no longer believes that it can prove the defendant's guilt to 12 jurors beyond a reasonable doubt," Suver and Kemmy said in the motion. "Thus, in the interests of justice, the state must move for dismissal of this case."

    The 1998 murder of Harriet Thompson

    Thompson’s landlord discovered her lifeless body on March 20, 1998, in her apartment on 12th Street SE, just south of Morningside Elementary School.

    Salem Police determined she died from multiple stab wounds. Her throat had been slashed and her hands were covered in defensive wounds from trying to fight back.

    Her couch was soaked in blood, and specks of blood dotted the apartment's linoleum floor.

    Investigators later learned Thompson, a nursing aide and mother of five, had slowly bled to death.

    The Marion County deputy district attorney at the time, Darin Tweedt, described the aftermath of the brutal crime as being like "a scene from a slaughterhouse."

    Johnson, who was arrested a week later, acknowledged he knew Thompson, but denied killing her or ever going to her apartment.

    Tweedt said the residence was ransacked and stated the motive was robbery. He said Thompson’s stolen jewelry was traded for drugs and some pieces were found at Johnson’s girlfriend’s home.

    The case was a drawn-out affair, taking six years from Thompson's death to Johnson's conviction.

    Johnson maintained his innocence throughout the investigation. Before his 2004 trial, he declined the state’s plea offer for first-degree manslaughter and first-degree robbery.

    Jurors took six hours over the course of two days to come to a unanimous verdict on March 18, 2004: Johnson was guilty of aggravated murder in Thompson’s stabbing death.

    Although he declined to testify during the trial, Johnson stood and spoke during his sentencing hearing.

    "I'm innocent of this crime," he said. "I didn't kill Harriet."

    Johnson was sentenced to death.

    Multiple attempts have been made to prove Johnson's innocence.

    In 2016, for example, lawyers Steve Wax and Brittney Plesser from the Oregon Innocence Project filed a motion in Marion County to request the DNA testing and re-testing of at least 38 pieces of physical evidence in the case against Johnson.

    Several pieces of DNA evidence were recovered at Thompson’s home. Some, including a cigarette butt, a bottle of liquor and a dollar bill, matched Johnson’s DNA.

    Officers collected a bloody sweater, two bloody towels and a broken knife from Thompson’s bathroom. A serrated steak knife was found in the toilet.

    Several key items recovered from the scene did not match Johnson’s DNA.

    A semen sample taken from a vaginal swab of the victim, a spot of blood by the bathroom sink, blood on the bathroom floor and hairs found on the victim were not a match to Johnson.

    After an unsuccessful appeal, Johnson filed for post-conviction relief in 2008.

    The arguments, which were rejected by the post-conviction court, were subsequently appealed by Johnson.

    In one of his arguments, Johnson claimed he was denied the right to adequate and effective counsel because of his lawyer's failure to interview Thomspon's neighbor, Patricia Hubbard.

    Hubbard, who lived across the street and two houses down from Thompson, was sitting on her porch the night Thompson was murdered, she said in a deposition taken in 2013 on the post-conviction case.

    Hubbard said she saw a white man drive up and park his van in the victim's driveway, adding she'd noticed the man come to Thompson's house many times before. Within seconds, she heard shouting and screaming coming from inside the home, as well as what sounded like pots and pans crashing inside.

    She heard screaming, followed by a thud and then silence.

    The man, Hubbard said, came out the back door and took off running.

    Ten to 15 minutes later, she saw a Black man walking down the driveway, though she couldn't say whether he'd come from inside the house. When Johnson's post-conviction attorneys showed Hubbard his photograph approximately 12 years after the murder, Hubbard said that he did not look like the person she had seen that night.

    One day after the murder, Hubbard approached a Salem police officer to explain what she witnessed, but the officer told her he didn't need her help. She tried to tell police what she saw on another occasion but was told her statement wouldn't be necessary, according to the deposition.

    She also recounted the detective saying: "A n***** got murdered, and a n*****'s going to pay for it."

    Hubbard said she would have testified what she witnessed at trial.

    The defense in the appeals case said the six hours defense investigators spent canvassing Thompson's neighborhood was enough and that initial police reports showed no one at Hubbard's address had any useful information.

    Johnson's lawyers argued any "reasonable" defense attorney would've known how important it was to interview the residents surrounding Thompson's home and that it was unreasonable to stop canvassing after only six hours.

    At the time, the post-conviction court agreed the counsel "failed to use a reasonable skill" by not interviewing Hubbard, but concluded Johnson wasn't prejudiced by their "deficient" performance.

    The court stated the trial produced evidence that coincided with what Hubbard would have testified and that there was a long period of time between the killing and her interview.

    In his opinion in 2021, Armstrong disagreed with the post-conviction court's decision.

    He said having determined that Johnson's lawyers failed to interview a witness, the post-conviction court should also have determined that the lawyers' deficient performance prejudiced Johnson — and that he should have been granted relief on that basis.

    "A reasonable investigation would likely have led to finding and interviewing Hubbard, which in turn would have led to evidence and testimony that could have tended to affect the outcome of the trial," Armstrong wrote.

    It seems unclear whether any final answers will be found in the case.

    "Throughout the duration of this case, despite ongoing investigation, no other suspect has been identified in Harriet Thompson's murder," prosecutors said in the dismissal.

    In its motion for dismissal, the Marion County District Attorney's Office requested the case be dismissed without prejudice, meaning if new evidence is discovered or becomes available, the state would be allowed to present the case to a grand jury.

    Judge Tracy Prall allowed the motion for dismissal on Tuesday, and Johnson walked free out of Marion County jail.

    “I’m happy and excited and ready for the next phase now," he told Oregon Public Broadcasting. "Been a lot of years for something I didn’t do."

    https://www.statesmanjournal.com/sto...d/70778423007/
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