Prosecutor hopes for use of new evidence in rape trial

Boone County prosecutor Dan Knight says videos of other potential sexual assaults should be allowed in an upcoming rape trial.

Joanthony Johnson, 27, is accused of first-degree rape and two felony drug charges. Columbia police arrested him in February for an alleged incident involving a 17-year-old girl at Johnson’s downtown apartment. The victim told police Johnson raped her after coming back to his apartment and doing drugs, which put her in an “incapacitated, drugged state, unable to consent.”

ABC 17 News reported last week when Johnson’s phone turned up potential evidence of other crimes. Johnson faces a sodomy charge in a separate case as a result of a cell phone video. A CPD probable cause statement claims one video on the phone show clips of someone having sex with a woman, face down. A female later identified herself in the videos to investigators, claiming she smoked “dabs,” or highly concentrated THC wax, at Johnson’s apartment, leaving her “violently ill” before the assault occurred.

Judge Jeff Harris will decide whether Knight can use the videos at trial for the February incident, promising he “won’t let it sit for long.” Knight argued the videos, while not directly related to the alleged incident, have value to the case in proving the propensity of Johnson’s actions, and to corroborate the victim’s story.

The admission of the cell phone videos will be a test of the voter-approved Amendment 10 from November 2014. It allowed prosecutors to use propensity evidence, or information not directly related to the crime at hand, at trials involving sex crimes against minors. Since the alleged victim in the February case was seventeen at the time, the use of that amendment qualifies. The videos and stories of other possible victims also match. Harris will have to decide whether those videos would be “unfairly prejudicial” to Johnson at trial.

Police have identified at least three potential victims since accessing the phone, and Johnson could face more charges as the search continues. Knight said many of the videos depict a similar scene to one another. The women make little to no sound, and at least one can be heard saying, “It hurts.”

“They are working as hard as they can to identify these people,” Knight said in court.

Johnson’s attorney Sarah Aplin said this was not the situation voters had in mind when they approved that amendment. The woman involved in the alleged February incident was a few months shy of her eighteenth birthday, and had snuck into Field House that night with a fake ID. The women claiming they are victims in the cell videos are all above 18. Aplin also pointed out several differences in the cases, such as the drugs consumed, the people present in the apartment, and Knight’s characterization of some of the videos.

While police wrote the sheets depicted in the videos were the same ones they found at Johnson’s apartment, Aplin said Johnson isn’t necessarily the person seen in videos having sex with women.

Propensity, or “character,” evidence is reserved for when a defendant is sentenced in court. That includes prior crimes, whether charged or uncharged, and any insight into that person’s personality. Both sides can present character evidence during this part.

Knight has previously advocated the use of character evidence at all abuse cases involving children, not just those limited to sex crimes.

Johnson will next be in court Wednesday on the new sodomy charge.