Ryan Shiner
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
Boone County Prosecutor Roger Johnson defended his recent record in a lengthy email he sent Thursday afternoon to University of Missouri System President Mun Choi.
Choi had criticized Johnson and city leaders in multiple emails since July 27, the day after a brawl occurred on Walnut and Ninth streets that led to seven people being arrested. At least one person was charged with a felony.
Emails given to ABC 17 News by a university spokesman on Tuesday showed that Choi has criticized city leaders following multiple high-profile incidents this summer that have occurred on or around Walnut Street.
Johnson told ABC 17 News in an interview that criticism over case outcomes is not unusual and that the public often does not have access to all the information prosecutors consider.
“It’s not unusual that we get concerns about outcomes of cases,” Johnson said. “A lot of times there’s just limited information about what happened in the case and even about the process that was involved. Some of these cases are cases that we made a recommendation and the defendant agreed to that. Ultimately, that’s our responsibility. Some of these are cases where the person pled open, which means they rejected our offer and had the judge sentence them and we ultimately can’t control the outcome in those cases.”
Johnson said the public’s frustration with a case often stems from not having the full picture.
“I would say nine times out of ten, when we get people that are mad about a certain case that’s disposed of, it’s either not a case that happened here, it’s a case that was sentenced by the judges or it was a case that just doesn’t match up with the facts or that there are facts that people don’t know about,” Johnson said.
Johnson said he decided to respond to Choi because he believes prosecutors have a responsibility to be transparent about how cases are handled.
“It’s important, as prosecutors, as part of the legal system, to be transparent about what we’re doing. The justice system can’t function unless people understand and trust what’s happening here,” Johnson said. “The president of the university has been involved and concerned about violent crime now for some time. And I think that’s important. The community’s concerned about it. What we would like to do is make sure that we’re using that momentum to move us in a good direction, to continue the work on the violent crime reduction strategies that we’ve been implementing.”
Choi’s email from July took issue with the results of multiple cases, calling the sentences “lenient.” Johnson responded with a lengthy email of his own at 3:29 p.m. Thursday. ABC 17 News received the email through a records request.
Johnson said he understands Choi’s concerns but noted that criticism of his office comes from both sides.
“I certainly understand where he’s coming from. We, though, get complaints all the time,” Johnson said. “We get complaints about people who think we’re doing too much. We get a few complaints from people that think we’re doing too little. I would say we probably get just as many complaints from attorneys and people that think we’re being too harsh as they do, that we’re being too lenient.”
Clark Lane shooting case
The first case involved the probation plea deal of Daevion McCray and Tavion Johnson in connection with a fatal shooting in 2024 on Clark Lane. Johnson indicated in his email that this case was previously discussed with Choi.
“We had discussed this case. It involved an escalating back-and-forth dispute between two groups in which the defendant group and resident/target had exchanged online threats, including the defendant group previously posting images pointing guns at the resident’s house,” Johnson wrote in response to Choi. “The resident later responded with taunts, including ‘If you pull up here, you’re going to get shot.’ In response, the defendants Johnson and McCray along with Orrion Moody and two others went to the neighborhood with guns. The resident came out armed with a Radical Firearms .300 Blackout rifle, and a shootout followed in which Orrion Moody was hit and killed.”
Johnson wrote that the chances of a murder conviction were “well below 50%” and referred to the case as an “unusually difficult self-defense case.”
“While we argued that a substantial prison sentence was the right outcome, the defense disagreed. When the parties don’t agree, the judge decides. Moreover, the judge would ultimately have decided the sentence whether there was a capped plea or we tried the case to a jury and won,” Johnson wrote.
Former Cole County Prosecutor Bill Tackett said the Clark Lane case illustrates why prosecutors can be limited in explaining the reasoning behind their decisions.
“There’s always going to be the public wanting to know what’s happening and why. And with the prosecutor, one of the things we’re stuck with, and I say we because I used to do this, is we know what witness is going to show up or which one is strong for us. We know what evidence we don’t have. And those are things that ethically we can’t talk about in the media,” Tackett said. “You’re in the throes of a lot of cases, hundreds of cases, and you’re trying to get the best result for public safety.”
Gun cases and jury challenges
The next case involved Chauncey Williams, who received probation after being accused of using an AR-15 to threaten family members. Johnson wrote that juries are less likely to convict someone if a shot was not fired.
“In our experience with unlawful use of a weapon (exhibiting) cases, a significant portion of prospective jurors – often 25 to 30 percent – indicate during jury selection that they could never consider a prison sentence for exhibiting a weapon in any case where there wasn’t an actual shooting or injury,” Johnson wrote in response to Choi. “Jurors who do not want to send someone to prison often vote not guilty even though there is a separate penalty phase and so they have not yet heard evidence about why this person should/should not be sent to prison. Further, a growing number of prospective jurors believe you should be allowed to point a gun at someone and have a right to do so under the 2nd Amendment because they think it helps deter crime.”
Columbia defense attorney Ben Faber said prosecutors also face challenges from how individual cases are presented to the public.
“The news cherry-picks their stories to some degree, things that are interesting or unique, or things that people might click on it,” Faber said. “Those are the cases that seem to have Choi’s attention. I think a better way of assessing it would be those cases that were on their radar as arrests, as incidents, how are those cases being resolved rather than just taking a bunch of unrelated cases that happened to come across his Facebook feed and criticizing them without really having understanding background facts.”
Faber also pointed to Missouri’s self-defense laws as another challenge prosecutors face, particularly in cases involving multiple armed people.
“I think the biggest thing that we are seeing is that Missouri self-defense laws are very, very broad. So it can make it very difficult to prosecute cases where there are two people who are perhaps both criminals,” Faber explained. “We actually see it being used by criminals where they will kind of prowl an enemy neighborhood waiting for someone to raise up to them so they can get into kind of this gun fight situation.”
Open pleas and probation
Another case pointed to in Choi’s email involved Kieran Piersee’s probation sentence. Piersee allegedly shot at someone who was cutting through an apartment’s yard. Johnson wrote that an open plea is handled by a judge.
“The defendant entered an open plea, meaning he did not agree to our recommended sentence and argued for something different. The State argued for 7 years in the Department of Corrections and opposed probation; the defense argued for an SIS. The judge granted an SIS,” Johnson wrote.
Johnson also addressed the plea by Candice Robinson, who was accused of an alleged road-rage incident and was given five years of probation.
“That recommendation does not reflect any view that the defendant’s conduct was acceptable. Incidents like this are dangerous both because a weapon is involved and because they occur between moving vehicles,” Johnson wrote. “Notably, Missouri law would have permitted the victim to immediately use deadly force including shooting the defendant when defendant pointed the gun at him. Juries in exhibiting cases do not always appreciate how serious the law itself treats this conduct and the risk of escalation, which affects how these cases are likely to be received at trial. Given the lack of criminal history, lack of reason to suspect involvement in criminal activity overall, and likely results at trial, I stand by the disposition in this case as well.”
Johnson said those individual cases must be weighed against the large number of cases his office handles and the resources available to prosecutors. He said his office works with the Columbia Police Department, Boone County Sheriff’s Department and federal partners to identify and focus on the most violent offenders.
“We as a prosecutor’s office, we receive about 850 cases a month and we have 17 prosecutors to manage those. We have to look for strategies and ways that we can get the most out of the resources we have,” Johnson said. “The people who are committing violent crimes, we’re going to go out on a limb on those cases. And even if we have a slim chance, we’re going to fight those out. We just don’t have the resources to go out on every limb. So we have to pick and choose to try to get the most out of our resources that we can.”
15-year prison sentence
The last case involved a 15-year prison sentence for Kalvin Johnson in connection with a 2024 shooting.
“Because there are still some active cases, I can’t comment on this case. I can only say that the plea offer included an agreement for the defendant to provide information in a case and potentially testify as a witness,” Johnson wrote. “The Defendant pled guilty pursuant to our recommendation for a 15-year sentence on assault 1st. Generally, our recommendation in a case like this would be more years, but the Defendant received consideration for his cooperation.”
Tackett said criticism is part of the job for prosecutors, regardless of whether the public believes they are being too lenient or too aggressive.
“I experienced it constantly. Roger gets it constantly. Every prosecutor in 114 counties in Missouri gets this all the time. They’re really hit with a lot of cases and they have to match the law to the facts. They can’t create facts.”
Tackett also believes the recently passed 1% sales tax could give prosecutors and law enforcement additional tools to build stronger cases.
“This one-cent sales tax is going to help better facts come up because you’re going to have more police officers, more detectives, a way of creating more facts that can be matched up against the law and create a better public safety situation. Everybody is on the same page. It’s just how quickly can we get there?”
Johnson said the criticism can be particularly difficult for prosecutors who dedicate their careers to public service.
“The most disheartening thing about this is our people are working really hard. The prosecutors in this office are dedicating their time and energy. Any one of my people could go into private practice and make twice as much and work less than they do now. But they do this work because they care about it and want to make a difference in the community. It’s disheartening to see when they’re putting all that effort in, people not taking the time to understand what’s happening and instead criticizing those outcomes.”
Johnson added that his office cannot solve violent crime alone and urged community members to help law enforcement gather information.
“I would say to people in the community who are concerned about crime is that as community members, we have to take responsibility for making our communities safer and our neighborhood safer. You can’t rely on the police officers to just go out there around people up. The police do their work based on talking to people who saw what happened. People in neighborhoods who have cameras and are willing to participate. If we want to make our community safer, we have to have people that are cooperating and talking with the police officers.”
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