BEL AIR, Md. (AP) — Harford County Circuit Judge Emory A. Plitt Jr. said yesterday he will need days to decide on the guilt or innocence of a murderer already in prison who says insanity caused him to kill a fellow inmate.
Judge Plitt said he must review thousands of pages of documents and hours of video evidence before deciding whether Kevin G. Johns, 25, is criminally responsible for strangling and slashing Philip Parker Jr. on a bus filled with 36 inmates and five correctional officers.
The state conceded during closing arguments that Johns is mentally ill — the first of several criteria for a finding of not criminally responsible.
Still, Baltimore County Assistant State’s Attorney S. Ann Brobst said Johns is criminally responsible because he was capable of controlling his actions and knew he was committing a crime when he killed Parker on Feb. 2, 2005.
As evidence of Johns’ premeditation, Miss Brobst introduced evidence that he swallowed razor blades, then regurgitated them during the trip so he could cut Parker.
That and other evidence of Johns’ rational thought on the day of the crime “supports the point that he was acting with a premeditated intent and that his actions were goal-oriented and intentional,” Miss Brobst said.
A day earlier, Parker, 20, had testified in support of Johns’ request for psychiatric treatment at his sentence for strangling to death his cellmate at the Maryland Correctional Training Center in 2004.
Johns told Washington County Circuit Judge Frederick C. Wright at that hearing that unless he was sent to the Patuxent Institution for psychiatric care, “it will happen again.” Judge Wright refused and instead sentenced Johns to life in prison without parole, negating the possibility of release from custody.
The state contends Johns killed Parker in hopes of winning another shot at a transfer to a psychiatric facility.
“He has nothing to lose if he gets caught killing someone, and he has everything to gain,” Miss Brobst said.
Defense attorney Harry J. Trainor Jr. countered in his summation that because the state seeks the death penalty, Johns could lose his life if he is convicted and found criminally responsible for Parker’s murder.
Mr. Trainor argued that Parker’s death resulted from a “perfect storm of errors” by mental-health workers and court officers. In October 2004, less than four months before the killing, doctors at Patuxent Institution concluded that Johns was faking psychosis and didn’t need anti-psychotic medication, contradicting years of diagnoses and treatment by other mental-health professionals.
Mr. Trainor said the trial in Harford County “is our last chance to get it right.” He asked Judge Plitt to commit Johns to the Clifton T. Perkins Hospital Center, the state’s maximum-security psychiatric hospital, until he is no longer a threat. After that, Johns should be sent back to prison to complete his 35-year sentence for choking and hacking his uncle Robert Purcell to death in 2002, and his life sentence for murdering 16-year-old cellmate Armad Cloude, in 2004, Mr. Trainor said.
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