The attorney for a 73-year-old Vietnam veteran accused of shooting a California man to death earlier in October says Anchorage's justice system is not blind to race. He argues his client Johnie Jones received an unwarranted murder charge due to the color of his skin.
Anchorage Attorney Rex Butler, known locally for taking on high profile cases, including the Mat-Su Valley case involving a trooper who can reportedly smell marijuana from more than a football field away and, more recently, the case of a local soldier accused of leaving her newborn baby in a park to die, cites one of his own previous cases to make his argument.
The older case involves a young man who stabbed and killed a home invader. The stabbing victim tried to steal a large cache of drugs hidden throughout the defendant's apartment. The young man in the 2004 robbery was white. He was never charged with killing the robber.
An assistant district attorney disagreed with Butler's take on the alleged killing. He said the two cases have different fact patterns, and every case is evaluated independently.
Jones was indicted Thursday on charges of second-degree murder, drug offenses and tampering with evidence. He faces up to 99 years in prison.
A report of several gunshots
Anchorage police say the shooting death was drug-related. A grand jury decided to support the prosecution's original charges.
On October 20, police responded to Ingra Street in the neighborhood of Fairview for a report of several gunshots. A caller told police he witnessed an individual exit a four-plex and flee in a dark blue sedan shortly after the shots rang out. Then, a second individual, later identified as victim Sean Mulgrew, exited the building and ran down a nearby alley.
When police arrived they found Mulgrew deceased in the street near the alley from what appeared to be multiple gunshot wounds, according to police reports cited in the charging documents.
Officers say they followed the victim's blood trail back to the four-plex, and just inside a secured door they found Jones, who was wiping fresh blood from the back of the door with a wet rag. Officers say they spotted drops of blood on Jones' shorts, as well as two gun shell casings on the floor of the entryway amid several dark red stains. Jones was arrested and taken to the Anchorage Police Department.
Cut-and-dry self defense
According to Jones' account of the incident, he was sitting at home on the couch watching TV when he heard a knock at his door. He opened the door and an "extremely tall black male adult" was pointing a flare gun at him. He grappled with the man, which occupants from another apartment witnessed, according to officers' recounting of Jones' version of events.
Jones told police he did not realize the man was bleeding until he ran away. Further, he denied shooting the man. He also denied selling, using or possessing drugs.
Still, investigators executed search warrants and found a bucket in the building's laundry room containing two semiautomatic pistols and two bindles of a dark brown substance – one of which field-tested positive for heroin -- and another bindle police believed to be cocaine. Jones denied ownership of the items, according to court documents.
Butler says Jones, his client, is a Vietnam War veteran with a Bronze Star who has a bad back and bad knees from jumping out of too many airplanes. He argues it's a cut-and-dry case of a man defending his home against a robbery.
Police jumped to the conclusion that the incident was drug-related when they found the drug bucket following the shooting, Butler said. Regardless of who owns the drugs, the amount pales in comparison to a similar case from 2004, he said.
Gag prop
Butler was referring to the case of Lonnie Shagena. The attorney defended the then-48-year-old during a subsequent drug trial. The alleged details of Butler's two cases share similar characteristics.
Nine years ago, police reported Shagena stabbed Joshua Clement in the upper part of his body with a kitchen knife after Clement and another man broke into Shagena's Fairview home.
Late night May 12, 2004, police responded to a robbery in progress and a possible stabbing, according to charging documents filed about two years after the incident. They responded and within minutes were speaking with Shagena, who said he'd been the victim of a home invasion.
The man told police he was sitting at home when he heard a knock at the front door. He said he thought it was a friend and grabbed a kitchen knife as a gag prop. When he opened the door, a man, later identified as Clement, said his car broke down and asked to use the phone. Shagena reported seeing a shadow of another person outside the door but still turned around to grab his cell phone.
Shagena was reportedly attacked from behind, struck over the head with a bottle. One of the assailants put him in a choke-hold from behind. Shagena was able to grab the knife off a nearby counter top and stab Clement several times; he told police he felt the knife plunge all the way to its handle.
The two suspects fled the scene, and Clement was found later and died from his wounds, according to the charging documents. Shagena acknowledged drugs in his apartment were likely the reason for the break-in.
At that time, police would not disclose the quantity or value of the drugs they found in the Fairview home, only saying the amount was sizable, according to news reports.
No murder charges filed
Following the stabbing and death of Clement, no charges were filed against Shagena. Assistant District Attorney Clint Campion confirmed that a murder charge was never presented to a grand jury.
It wasn't until January 2006 that the man was charged with four counts of various degrees of misconduct involving controlled substances.
According to the indictment, investigators found drugs hidden throughout the apartment, the scene of the stabbing.
Police found 50 bindles of cocaine inside a peanuts can and 20 more bindles inside a mixed nut can. In a closet, they found a yellow bowl with about 350 grams of individually packaged cocaine. Inside a freezer, they found seven bundles of hallucinogenic mushrooms and 12 plastic bags containing pot. Inside the master bedroom, police found a commercial scale.
Near the dining-room window, officers found 43 $100 bills. And back in the bedroom, they found 50 more $100 bills, according to the indictment.
Shagena pleaded no contest to one of the drug charges. The prosecution tossed the rest.
'A color blind justice system'
Butler asserts that fairness for Jones fell by the wayside while no similar charges were ever filed against his other client.
The most obvious differences between the men must be examined, Butler said. He argues the case highlights a color-biased justice system -- white versus black, when it comes down to it, he said.
Even taking the drugs into account, the difference in the amount of drugs is night and day, Butler said. And a flare gun is still a deadly weapon, he added.
"Something like this can make a person hesitant to defend their homeland. And defending your home has been rule number one since the beginning of time," he said. "People have been able to protect their homes against somebody else."
Campion said his office is ethically bound to make decisions based on the evidence presented by police. "We're absolutely forbidden and, as an office, do not use race or other background factors like gender, religion or sexual orientation to determine whether or not someone will be prosecuted," he said.
The facts of the two cases are different and distinct from Shagena's case, Campion said. A jury will decide whether or not Jones acted in self-defense, or whether evidence supports the state's charges that Jones was appropriately charged, he said.
Campion does not know why a murder charge was never presented to a grand jury in the Shagena case. The 2006 drug case occurred before he became an employee at the state prosecutor's office. He said the attorney who presented the charges no longer works there.
Contact Jerzy Shedlock at jerzy(at)alaskadispatch.com. Follow him on Twitter @jerzyms.