<!--Rick Pfeiffer--><table width="234" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" background="http://static.cnhi.zope.net/flashpromo/niagaragazette/images/byline_234x60.jpg" height="60"><tr><td><div align="center"><font size="3" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">By Rick Pfeiffer</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><br /></font><font size="1" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><a href="mailto:rick.pfeiffer@niagara-gazette.com">rick.pfeiffer@niagara-gazette.com</a></font></div></td></tr></table>
A Niagara County Court jury took just over four hours to find Robert Johnson guilty on murder and weapon possession charges in the slaying of his wife.
The jury of eight women and four men began deliberating at 3:30 p.m. and returned with a verdict about 7:30 p.m. to a courtroom packed with family members of both the victim and the defendant. While some members of the audience cried at the verdict, Johnson showed no emotion.
Johnson, 26, formerly of the Falls and now of Buffalo, had faced one count of second-degree murder and three counts of fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon in the stabbing death of his wife, Ahkenya, in their Jordan Gardens apartment on Jan. 17.
“He maintains his innocence,” defense attorney Michael McNelis said, “and we will file the appropriate appeals and go from there.”
The jury heard almost two hours of closing arguments Monday morning from McNelis and Assistant District Attorney Lisa Baehre.
With a grisly photo of the nearly decapitated head of Ahkenya Johnson projected on a screen behind her, Baehre stared down the jury and told them what they were looking at was “a morbid work of art.”
“This wasn’t some burglary,” she said, her voice choked with emotion. “On Jan. 17, someone cut (Johnson’s) throat from ear to ear and then savagely plunged a knife, 49 times, into her body.”
As family members of the victim sobbed in the spectator section of the county courtroom in Lockport, Baehre summed up her case against Johnson.
“One knife wasn’t enough,” the veteran prosecutor said, her voice rising slightly. “It was a brutal murder driven by rage, hatred, jealousy and vengeance.”
With the murder trial entering its third week on Monday, McNelis said the entire case was based on cynicism and speculation.
“It was a classic rush to judgment,” McNelis told jurors. “Niagara Falls police implicated Robert Johnson in this case, they convicted him and, I suggest, they implicated an innocent man.”
McNelis said the rush to judgment was spurred by the fact that the Johnson slaying was the second homicide in the Falls in a two-week period and police were concerned about the public’s perceptions.
“This was the second murder in two weeks,” McNelis said, “They’re motivated to solve it fast because they were afraid of what the newspaper is going to say.”
The defense attorney also complained that DNA and other forensic evidence in the case had been contaminated by police.
“It’s contaminated, disregard it,” McNelis said. “The blood on (Johnson’s) clothing is nothing but secondary transfer based on mishandled evidence.”
Baehre fired back in her summation that McNelis’ theory was an impossibility.
“Stains don’t jump, dry stains don’t leave stains,” Baehre said.
The prosecutor also cautioned the jurors that what was taking place was not like what the see when they watch shows like “Law & Order” and “CSI” on TV.
“This was Akenya Johnson’s reality,” Baehre said.
