Opinion ID: 2751111
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Johnson’s Proffered Testimony

Text: ¶28. During the voir dire, Johnson testified at length about his law enforcement experience. Johnson is currently a law enforcement consultant and previously served as police chief in Jackson, Mississippi; Jackson, Michigan; and Lansing, Michigan. He was Commissioner of the Mississippi Department of Corrections from 2000 to 2002. Johnson has a master’s degree in public administration, and he graduated from the FBI National Academy and the FBI Law Enforcement Executive Development program. During his career, Johnson performed homicide investigations as a detective and directly supervised homicide investigations. Johnson also developed protocols for criminal investigations. ¶29. Johnson testified that generally accepted standards for homicide investigations exist, and he opined that the investigation in today’s case failed to meet them in various ways. First, Johnson said the investigation lacked management and organization. In support of his contention, Johnson referred to the testimony of law enforcement officers who said the investigation was a “shared responsibility.” Johnson also said the investigation lacked an in18 depth case file, which should have included all original notes and reports. Johnson testified: “There has to be somebody who is the recipient of all the information coming from a variety of sources and is able to correlate that information and further direct the direction that the investigation needs to develop.” He said that the investigation also lacked written reports of events. ¶30. Johnson next criticized the crime scene integrity. Johnson said that the integrity of the crime scene could have been compromised by law enforcement officers and investigators meeting within the crime scene to discuss and organize the investigation. According to Johnson, a crime scene log should have been maintained of who came and went from the crime scene to ensure that it was not contaminated. Next, Johnson testified that he was “concerned” about the investigation’s early focus on one suspect – Flowers – to the exclusion of any other suspects. Johnson said early focus can result in lost evidence: “It’s okay to very quickly focus on one suspect; that happens all the time, you know. But to the exclusion of all else and all others is where it becomes problematic, and you sometimes lose vital evidence that may be had because you haven’t included and kept them in as a potential suspect or person of interest.” ¶31. On cross-examination, Johnson admitted that Mississippi has no minimum standards for criminal investigations. He also admitted that the Justice Department guidelines he mentioned in direct examination were not requirements and that there are no national minimum standards for criminal investigations. Johnson stated that, rather than minimum standards, he based his opinions on generally accepted practices in police work. Further, when asked if he could provide an opinion on whether investigations that lack written reports 19 lead to incorrect results, Johnson said investigations with written reports are “more complete.” He did not, however, state that an investigation without a written report would lead to an incorrect result.