Johnson due back in court on felony convictions

By By Peggy Harris, The Associated Press

Jonesboro school shooter Mitchell Johnson will try again in November to avoid a lengthy prison sentence for additional felony convictions after he entered guilty pleas this week.

Johnson's youth at the time limited the length of his incarceration for the 1998 deaths of five people, and he was released when he turned 21. Last month, he avoided a 10-year maximum sentence for a federal weapons conviction, receiving four years instead.

Johnson's lawyer, Scott McElveen, said Wednesday he will argue that none of the crimes Johnson committed as a juvenile can factor into his punishment for his latest offenses.

"It's inadmissible," McElveen, a deputy public defender, said.

But Benton County Prosecutor Van Stone says he will seek the maximum sentence and may try to make the schoolyard slayings an issue under a new law that allows juveniles to be punished as adults once they serve their juvenile court sentence.

Benton County Circuit Judge Tom Keith on Tuesday set a sentencing date of Nov. 14, after accepting guilty pleas from Johnson to theft and financial identity fraud, both felonies, and to misdemeanor possession of a controlled substance.

Johnson admitted to taking a debit card left by a disabled man at a Bentonville gas station where Johnson worked and to having some marijuana when he was arrested. He faces a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison on the felonies and one year in jail on the marijuana conviction.

In Johnson's federal sentencing last month, his lawyer argued that to go beyond the sentencing guidelines would amount to "re-sentencing" Johnson for the 1998 crimes. But the judge agreed to revise the sentence upward, finding enough "worrisome" about the current violations to warrant a tougher sentence.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Candace Taylor said Wednesday the four-year sentence was a victory in light of sentencing guidelines and what will hold up on appeal.

"To just get to where we were, for 48 months, was a really big deal," she said.

The judge could deviate, and did, from the recommended sentencing range, she said, but still had to follow sentencing rules designed to prevent the courts from handing down widely different sentences for similar crimes. Johnson's case, being uncommon, complicated the sentencing process, she said.

Woodard could not be reached for comment, but has said previously that her son dwells on what happened at the schoolyard.

"He'd give anything. He'd give his life 100 times over to turn this thing back," she said before Johnson was released from prison three years ago. "The best thing to do is give him a chance. Let him get out there and spread his wings and help other people."

Woodard said Johnson was considering becoming a minister.

Johnson's father, Scott Johnson, has not made a public statements on his son's behalf lately. He was working as a truck driver in Minnesota at the time of the school shootings and made a few appearances at Arkansas court hearings years ago, telling reporters that his son was not "a monster."

Mitchell Johnson told the judge Tuesday that he moved from Rochester, Minn., when he was 11 or 12. He was 13 in 1998 when he and Andrew Golden, then 11, fatally shot a teacher and four pupils at Westside Middle School near Jonesboro. They were convicted in juvenile court of five counts of capital murder. A tearful Johnson read a statement to the judge, expressing his remorse before both boys were placed in state custody.

Johnson was released from prison Aug. 11, 2005. Golden also has been freed.

After his release, Johnson spent time in several states before returning to Arkansas to work at a Wal-Mart. He was arrested Jan. 1, 2007, during a traffic stop after deputies got a tip that the van was carrying marijuana. He was traveling with Justin Trammell, who had been found delinquent after shooting his father to death with a crossbow in 1999. Johnson and Trammell were roommates in Fayetteville.

In January, Johnson was convicted of possessing a firearm while being a user of or addicted to a controlled substance. Besides the four-year sentence, U.S. District Judge Jimm Larry Hendren said Johnson will be under supervision for three years once he is released from prison.