Former Pennsylvania Death-Row Prisoner Roderick Johnson is Freed After ​‘Egregious’ Prosecutorial Misconduct Bars Retrial

A for­mer Pennsylvania death-row pris­on­er has been freed, one month after the tri­al court barred his retri­al because of ​“egre­gious” pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct by the coun­ty district attorney.

On December 1, 2020, Berks County Court of Common Pleas Judge Eleni Dimitriou Geishauser for­mal­ly dis­missed all charges against Roderick Johnson in the 1996 dou­ble-mur­der of cousins Damon and Gregory Banks in Reading, Pennsylvania and issued an order dis­charg­ing him from cus­tody. Johnson was freed after the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s office declined to appeal the tri­al court’s October 29 order dis­miss­ing the case against Johnson under the dou­ble jeop­ardy pro­tec­tions of the Pennsylvania con­sti­tu­tion. Johnson had been on death row for 23 years.

Johnson was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in 1997 based large­ly on the tes­ti­mo­ny of drug deal­er and police infor­mant, George Robles, who had repeat­ed­ly avoid­ed hav­ing crim­i­nal charges filed against him by coop­er­at­ing with law enforce­ment in oth­er cas­es. Johnson had admit­ted being present at the crime scene but denied any involve­ment in the mur­ders. Robles tes­ti­fied that Johnson owned a hand­gun like one found near the crime scene and had con­fessed to hav­ing the gun with him, wip­ing it down, and dis­pos­ing of it on the night of the mur­ders. District Attorney Mark Baldwin sup­pressed police records doc­u­ment­ing Robles’ uncharged crim­i­nal activ­i­ty and his coop­er­a­tion with police, then lied to the court when the tri­al judge said ​“I think he’s a deal­er of drugs or a paid infor­mant by the Reading Bureau of Police,” call­ing the judge’s state­ment ​“absurd.”

Johnson did not become aware of the police records involv­ing Robles until a fed­er­al judge ordered pros­e­cu­tors to pro­duce the doc­u­ments in Johnson’s fed­er­al habeas cor­pus pro­ceed­ings in anoth­er case. The police reports, which doc­u­ment­ed five sep­a­rate instances in which Robles escaped pros­e­cu­tion for crim­i­nal con­duct, ulti­mate­ly led to the rever­sals of Johnson’s con­vic­tions in both cases. 

On August 12, 2019, Johnson filed a motion to dis­miss the charges on dou­ble jeop­ardy grounds. One month lat­er, pros­e­cu­tors moved to with­draw the death penal­ty from the case. In a scathing opin­ion, Judge Geishauer wrote that she had ​“no doubt that dis­trict attor­ney Mark Baldwin made a con­scious, inten­tion­al, and pur­pose­ful deci­sion to not dis­close” the excul­pa­to­ry police reports. ​“The delib­er­ate nature of his con­temp­tu­ous behav­ior,” she wrote, ​“is evi­dent in the fact that he bla­tant­ly lied about his knowl­edge of the reports direct­ly to the court.” 

“Had these acts been com­mit­ted by a wit­ness,” Judge Geishauer wrote, ​“the indi­vid­ual could have been, and in all like­li­hood would have been, charged with obstruc­tion of jus­tice. Had these acts been com­mit­ted by defense coun­sel, in addi­tion to charges, a dis­ci­pli­nary action would have been ini­ti­at­ed that would poten­tial­ly result in the sus­pen­sion or loss of legal license. Mr. Baldwin’s posi­tion as District Attorney seems to have pro­tect­ed him from such cen­sure. But in this mat­ter, all men are equal before the law and this court ren­ders judg­ment of Mr. Baldwin’s egregious behavior.”

Baldwin with­held the same five police doc­u­ments in the tri­al that set Johnson’s co-defen­dant, Shawnfatee Bridges, to death row. The fed­er­al courts also over­turned Bridges’ con­vic­tion, and he was lat­er released after plead­ing guilty to less­er charges. In December 2019, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court barred pros­e­cu­tors from retry­ing for­mer death-row pris­on­er Chris Williams on dou­ble jeop­ardy grounds result­ing from pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct. Walter Ogrod also was exon­er­at­ed from Pennsylvania’s death row in June 2020 as a result of police and prosecutorial misconduct.