Search warrant key issue in four killings

While it is not likely that 19-year-old Donte Johnson will testify at his June 5 trial in the slayings of four young men in 1998, he briefly took the witness stand Thursday during a hearing over a key piece of evidence.

At issue is whether a pair of Johnson's blood-spattered pants were legally seized by Metro Police officers a few days after the killings.

The blood came from one of the victims, and the pants have been connected to Johnson through DNA testing.

But defense attorneys argued Thursday that police improperly confiscated the pants without first getting a search warrant for a bedroom that they say Johnson was renting from a friend.

Metro Homicide Detective Thomas Thowsen testified that a search warrant was unnecessary because Johnson denied at the time in the early morning hours of Aug. 18, 1998, that he lived in the home. The home's owner gave police permission to search it but could not legally give permission for the search of a room that he had rented to someone else.

On the witness stand in District Judge Jeff Sobel's courtroom, Johnson said he indeed was a resident and had been for several weeks. Johnson's girlfriend said she and Johnson had been staying there for about two weeks but said it was not a permanent residence.

If Sobel rules on Feb. 17 that Johnson qualified as a legal resident and a search warrant should have been obtained, a jury would not be allowed to see or hear about the pants or their connection to the murders.

Throughout Thursday's court session, family members of some victims watched from the rear of the courtroom -- as they have done at every other hearing for Johnson and two other men who already have been convicted for their roles.

Terrell Young, 21, and Sikia Smith, 19, are serving multiple life prison sentences without the possibility of parole.

Both of them confessed their roles in the deadly events on Aug. 14, 1998, but prosecutors don't have the luxury of a confession from Johnson, and the physical evidence is the key to the case.

Johnson's fingerprint on a pack of cigarettes found near the bodies of the four victims led to his arrest and then the arrests of Young and Smith. DNA in saliva on a cigarette butt left at the death scene near Tropicana Avenue and Nellis Boulevard also was linked to Johnson.

But the blood from one victim on a pair of pants linked through DNA to Johnson was the key evidence supporting the stories of Young and Smith that Johnson was the gunman.

Smith and Young told police how Johnson stood over each of the four duct-taped young men and fired single bullets into their heads.

The victims were Jeffrey Biddle, 19, Tracey Gorringe, 20, Matthew Mowen, 19, and Peter Talamantez, 17.

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