Deeply Rooted Oklahoma Case Spotlight: Malcom Rent Johnson

Malcom Rent Johnson

Malcolm Rent Johnson, a Black man, was tried, con­vict­ed, and sen­tenced to death by an all-white jury for the rape and mur­der of an elder­ly white woman in Oklahoma City in 1982.[1] Johnson was tried by Bob Macy, and his con­vic­tion was based in part on tes­ti­mo­ny from Joyce Gilchrist. Johnson was exe­cut­ed in January 2000, only a year before Gilchrist’s wide­spread mis­con­duct came to light. [2] Doubts about Johnson’s guilt still linger today. 

At tri­al, Gilchrist tes­ti­fied that semen found at the victim’s apart­ment was con­sis­tent with Johnson’s blood type and that strands of hair found at the crime scene were ​“con­sis­tent micro­scop­i­cal­ly” with Johnson’s.[3] Johnson request­ed funds to hire his own foren­sic expert to review the evi­dence but was denied.[4] During fed­er­al habeas pro­ceed­ings, Johnson was able to secure affi­davits from two foren­sic experts that under­mined Gilchrist’s find­ings, but the court ruled that this evi­dence was not enough to change the out­come of the tri­al.[5] Johnson was exe­cut­ed with­out fur­ther scruti­ny of his claim. 

When Gilchrist’s mis­con­duct came to light, the Oklahoma City Police Department reviewed the evi­dence used in Johnson’s case. In a July 2001 inter­nal mem­o­ran­dum, foren­sic chemist Laura Schile wrote that a review of the semen evi­dence showed that sperm was not present in the sam­ples. Schile’s find­ings were cor­rob­o­rat­ed by three oth­er sci­en­tists at the foren­sics lab. [6] At the time, for­mer Oklahoma County Chief Public Defender Robert Ravitz said that the review ​“real­ly calls into ques­tion whether the state of Oklahoma exe­cut­ed an inno­cent per­son.”[7]

While all this infor­ma­tion does not nec­es­sar­i­ly exon­er­ate Johnson, it seri­ous­ly calls into ques­tion the integri­ty of his con­vic­tion and death sen­tence. Without Gilchrist’s fab­ri­cat­ed evi­dence, the jury may have had lin­ger­ing doubts — the most per­sua­sive type of mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence[8]—which could have led it to rec­om­mend a lighter sen­tence to Johnson. 

[1] Johnson v. Gibson, 169 F.3^d 1239 (10^th Cir. 1999).

[2] Deborah Hastings, Executed Man’s Voice Echoes in New Probe, L.A. Times, (Nov. 4, 2001).

[3] Johnson, 169 F.3^d at 1244.

[4] Id. at 1246.

[5] Id. at 1247.

[6] Deborah Hastings, Executed Man’s Voice Echoes in New Probe, L.A. Times, (Nov. 4, 2001).

[7] Associated Press, Disputed DNA Evidence Casts Doubt on Execution, Recordnet (Aug. 30, 2001).

[8] See Scott E. Sundby, The Capital Jury and Absolution: The Intersection of Trial Strategy, Remorse, and the Death Penalty, 83 Cornell L. Rev. 1557, 1583 (1998).