BEL AIR, Md. (AP) — A two-time convicted murderer who killed for sexual gratification confessed to an investigator that he strangled another inmate aboard a state prison bus, just as he said he would, a prosecutor said yesterday as the capital murder trial began.
A defense attorney said Kevin J. Johns can’t be held responsible for the Feb. 2, 2005, slaying of Philip Parker Jr. because Johns is insane and couldn’t control himself.
The opening statements in Harford County Circuit Court revealed details about the grisly crime, which led the Division of Correction to fire three officers.
Johns, who faces a possible death penalty if convicted, yesterday waived his right to a jury trial, leaving Judge Emory A. Plitt Jr. to decide his guilt or innocence and whether Johns was criminally responsible for Parker’s death. If convicted, Johns would decide whether to be sentenced by the judge or a jury.
The trial is expected to last three to four weeks, Baltimore County Assistant State’s Attorney S. Ann Brobst said. Her office is prosecuting the case because investigators determined that Parker was slain in Baltimore County as the Division of Correction bus rolled through the pre-dawn darkness, carrying 36 prisoners from Hagerstown to Baltimore. The trial was moved to Harford because the state grants an automatic change of venue in death-penalty cases.
Johns, 25, is serving a 35-year-sentence for choking and hacking his uncle, Robert Purcell, to death in 2002, and a life sentence for strangling cellmate Armad Cloude at the Maryland Correctional Training Center near Hagerstown in 2004.
A day before the bus slaying, Johns told a judge in Hagerstown he would kill again unless the judge ordered psychiatric treatment. The judge refused.
Ms. Brobst said Johns was angry, and that he strangled Parker with his handcuff chains and slashed him with smuggled razor blades partly in hopes of getting better treatment in prison.
She said evidence also would show that Johns got a kick out of killing.
“The killing of the individual causes him to become sexually aroused,” she said. “He did it because he enjoys doing it.”
Defense attorney Harry J. Trainor Jr., a lawyer in private practice who was appointed by the Office of the Public Defender to represent Johns, argued Johns couldn’t control his homicidal impulses. Ticking off a mental medical history that included hallucinations by age 8 and a suicide attempt at 14, Mr. Trainor said Johns needs anti-psychotic drugs and treatment in a secure facility — not capital punishment.
With proper care, Johns is capable of rational thought and behavior, as he proved by earning a high school diploma while in a state institution as a teenager, Mr. Trainor said.
“Kevin Johns has suffered from long-term psychiatric problems his entire life,” Mr. Trainor said. “Without proper medication, his behavior is totally unpredictable.”
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