Murder case in jury’s hands

Either Carleton Johnson slaughtered his family, prosecutors argued Thursday, or a phantom intruder did.

“The defense would have you believe this phantom intruder committed this crime, left nothing behind, took nothing with him,” Deputy District Attorney Robert Daskas told jurors in the triple-murder case.

Attorneys presented their closing arguments Thursday at Johnson’s trial, and jurors deliberated several hours without reaching a verdict.

The defendant is accused of using a shotgun on June 18, 2005, to kill his brother, 5-year-old son and 6-year-old niece.

Prosecutors could offer no motive for the rampage and said they had no legal requirement to do so.

“Nothing explains conduct like this,” Deputy District Attorney Pam Weckerly said. “Nothing makes sense for a crime like this.”

She said evidence in the case leaves no doubt that Johnson committed the crimes. The only unanswered question, she said, is: Why?

“You don’t escape responsibility by committing a senseless act of violence,” Weckerly said.

Prosecutors urged the jury to convict Johnson of three counts of first-degree murder with a deadly weapon and one count of robbery with a deadly weapon. Johnson admits robbing a woman of her purse shortly after the killings.

“We know he did the robbery, but robbery doesn’t equal murder,” Deputy Public Defender Norman Reed told the jury.

Reed’s closing argument focused on a theme of “no motive, no proof, no sense.”

He described Johnson, who was 35 at the time of the crimes, as a mellow man who had a good moral character. The lawyer also said Johnson was a great father and brother.

“Carleton would never hurt the ones he loved,” Reed argued.

Johnson, a defensive back for the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, football team from 1989 to 1991, was a volunteer football coach at Cheyenne High School and worked as a substitute teacher for the Clark County School District.

He is accused of killing his brother, John; his son, Kamryn; and his niece, Johnna, in an apartment they shared with John Johnson’s girlfriend at 4250 S. Jones Blvd.

Evidence showed that John Johnson and his girlfriend, Kimberly Kuivinem, conversed on a cell phone from 8:55 to 8:57 on the night of the killings. Kuivinem then returned home and found the bodies, calling 911 at 9:05 p.m.

Reed argued that prosecutors have no evidence placing Johnson in the apartment at the time of the shootings. Kuivinem and a neighbor both said they saw Johnson outside the residence a short time later.

“There is no evidence that a stranger did this,” Daskas said.

The prosecutor argued that Johnson retrieved his shotgun from a closet shelf in the children’s bedroom, removed it from its case and shot his brother in the kitchen before returning to the bedroom and shooting the two youngsters. Pictures of the three bodies were shown to the jury.

Weckerly said the defendant’s brother and son both were shot twice. She said Johnson’s palm print was the only print on the gun when it was found in the living room after the killings. Authorities found no signs of forced entry at the apartment, and nothing of value was missing from the residence.

Regarding the robbery Johnson committed shortly after the shootings, Reed asked the jury, “Was he just trying to get away because he couldn’t deal with it?”

Johnson’s 28-year-old nephew, Gary Lavoll, had been shot fatally several days earlier in an unrelated case that remains unsolved. Las Vegas police said the incident, which left another man wounded in the 3000 block of Maryland Parkway, followed a series of fights in the surrounding neighborhood.

During his closing argument Thursday, Reed said John Johnson had marijuana in his system when he died. The lawyer asked jurors to consider whether a drug deal gone bad could have led to the three killings in the apartment.

Daskas told jurors that Johnson showed no emotion when he was interviewed after the crimes were discovered, but Reed asked, “Is that because he’s really blocking out the horror — the horror of what happened to his family?”

The prosecutor said jurors’ common sense will tell them that Johnson committed the three murders. District Judge Lee Gates is presiding over the trial.

If convicted, Johnson faces a maximum possible sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. He had no criminal record and no history of mental illness before his arrest in the murder case.