CENTENNIAL | Arapahoe County prosecutors will seek the death penalty against a man accused of killing his 6-year-old son and raping his ex-girlfriend earlier this year.
Brandon Jamaal Johnson, 27, faces multiple charges, including first-degree murder of a child and sexual assault, stemming from the Feb. 10 incident at an apartment on East Harvard Avenue in unincorporated Arapahoe County.
During a court hearing Friday, Arapahoe County District Attorney George Brauchler said he planned to seek the death penalty against Johnson.
Lawyers for Johnson don’t dispute that he killed his son, Riley, but say he acted impulsively and not with deliberation.
They also said they offered to plead guilty to the charges and accept a sentence of life in prison without parole if prosecutors agreed to take the death penalty off the table.
Prosecutors declined the offer.
Johnson’s lawyer, Stephen McCrohan, also said Riley’s mom, as well as the rape victim, didn’t want prosecutors to seek the death penalty.
Riley’s mother, Rachel Johnson, said after the hearing she wasn’t sure whether she supported Brauchler’s decision.
“I don’t know what I want,” she said as she hustled away from the courtroom.
She later said “I just want it all to be over.”
Brauchler said he couldn’t comment on specifics about why he opted to seek Johnson’s execution but said in court that the fact that the victim was a child younger than 12 was one of the aggravating factors that makes the case death penalty eligible.
Brauchler said the death penalty is the law and he is tasked with applying that law.
“This is Colorado’s law, this isn’t my law,” he said.
A case like this one should be decided by members of the community where the crime occurred, he said.
“At the end of the day the public will decide … I think that’s appropriate here,” he said.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado quickly condemned Brauchler’s decision, issuing a statement criticizing Brauchler before Friday’s hearing had even ended.
“Brauchler is once again seeking to put the 18th Judicial District of Colorado on the map for all the wrong reasons. Currently, Colorado’s death row is occupied exclusively by black men sentenced in the 18th Judicial District,” ACLU Colorado executive director Nathan Woodliff-Stanley said in a statement. “If Brauchler secures a death sentence in this case, he will add yet another black man from the 18th Judicial District to the row.”
Brauchler declined to respond to the ACLU’s statement.
Brauchler’s decision marks the first time his office has sought capital punishment since seeking the death penalty for James Holmes, the man who killed 12 and wounded dozens more during a 2012 attack at an Aurora movie theater. In that case, a jury couldn’t reach a unanimous verdict on whether the gunman should be sentenced to death. He was sentenced instead to life without parole.
Johnson pleaded not guilty to the charges against him earlier this year but later withdrew that plea when prosecutors said they were considering the death penalty.
He was slated to enter a plea again Friday morning but the hearing was spent on testimony about whether there was enough evidence for Johnson to stand trial on an added murder charge. Prosecutors initially charged Johnson only with killing a child but later added a count accusing him of first-degree murder after deliberation. Both charges stem from 6-year-old Riley Johnson’s killing.
Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office Lt. Richard Anselmi said when he arrived at the apartment he found Riley sitting on the floor leaning up against his bed wearing blue pajamas. The boy had a “very severe” gash on his neck, Anselmi said, and was dead when emergency crews got there.
Johnson was laying on the floor near his son under a blood-soaked Scooby Doo blanket with a gash on his neck, according to testimony.
Investigators who interviewed Johnson’s former girlfriend testified that she said she and Johnson had broken up a few weeks before the crime, but still lived together while Johnson tried to figure out a place to live with Riley. Riley was Johnson’s son from a previous relationship and he and the woman had a 2-year-old son together. She slept in one room with her and Johnson’s 2-year-old son, while the defendant and Riley slept in another room, according to testimony.
Johnson’s ex-girlfriend told investigators that, on the night of the crime, Johnson came home in the early morning hours from his job as a bouncer and woke her up.
Johnson, who was armed with a knife, ordered the woman to the couch and raped her at knife point, threatening to kill “everyone in the house” if she screamed.
The woman said, after Johnson raped her, he walked into the room he shared with Riley. She grabbed Johnson’s Hello Kitty cell phone and tried to call 911 but she didn’t know the passcode to unlock the phone.
The woman said she then went into her bedroom where her 2-year-old son was sleeping and she heard Riley scream loudly.
Johnson then came into her room and told her, “All I wanted was a family,” before walking back into the room he shared with Riley.
The woman then fled to a neighbor’s apartment and called 911.
On a 911 tape played in court Friday, the woman told dispatchers that Johnson was in the home with both children.
“He raped me and said he was going to kill his kids,” she said on the tape.
It didn’t appear from testimony that the 2-year-old was physically harmed during the incident.
Johnson appeared in court Friday wearing street clothes with a breathing tube attached to the front of his neck. He sat quietly at the defense table throughout the testimony.
The trial is slated for two weeks starting in June but that date will likely be pushed back. Death penalty cases typically move slowly through the courts and Johnson’s defense team said Friday they expect to waive his right to a speedy trial.