NEWS

After 17 years on death row, killer's life spared

Kevin Grasha, and Rebecca Butts
Cincinnati
Rayshawn Johnson and attorney Will Welsh during his sentencing in Hamilton County in 2012.

The Ohio Supreme Court has overturned the death sentence of a Cincinnati man who killed his neighbor with a baseball bat, finding that mental illness, his age and "corrosive upbringing" were mitigating factors.

Rayshawn Johnson was 19 when he killed Shanon Marks in 1997 by bludgeoning her with a baseball bat in the bathroom of her East Walnut Hills home. After the killing, he emptied Marks' purse and left with maybe $50, court documents state. Johnson was convicted in 1998 in Hamilton County Common Pleas Court of aggravated felony murder and sentenced to death.

Johnson appealed his death sentence, and after Ohio courts upheld the sentence, he asked a federal court to intervene.

In 2006, the U.S. District Court in Cincinnati agreed with Johnson that he received ineffective assistance of counsel during the mitigation phase of his trial, where jurors hear evidence about whether the death penalty is appropriate. The federal court ruled that Johnson's death sentence should be commuted or there should be a new mitigation hearing.

At a second mitigation hearing, a new jury recommended a death sentence, and Judge Ralph "Ted" Winkler imposed the death penalty in January 2012.

Rayshawn Johnson sentenced to death

On Tuesday, the Ohio Supreme Court, in a 4-3 decision, vacated the death sentence. A new sentencing will be held, and Johnson, 37, now faces a maximum of life in prison without parole.

Justice Paul Pfeifer, writing for the majority, said Johnson was "doomed from the start due to his upbringing." That upbringing included abuse, a completely absent father, and a mother who fed him prescription drugs and heroin to make him sleep when he was a baby and later how to smoke marijuana and sell drugs.

Johnson had mental health problems that were never treated, Pfeifer wrote, and his age at the time of the killing "means that he was not far removed from that corrosive upbringing when he committed the crime."

Rayshawn Johnson

Pfeifer added that there is evidence Johnson "has changed" in prison and has also "expressed sincere remorse for his crimes."

Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters, who helped prosecute Johnson in 1998, said at a news conference Tuesday that the state Supreme Court's ruling was difficult to understand. He noted that the high court had previously upheld Johnson's death sentence in a unanimous ruling, and two different juries had recommended the death penalty.

"It really affects your faith in the system," Deters said.

Deters said Justice William O'Neill, among the four justices in the majority, has openly opposed the death penalty.

"He should not be hearing death penalty cases," Deters said. "If he can't follow the law, he shouldn't be hearing them."