Iowa woman appeals death penalty case

~ The U.S. government last executed a woman in 1953.

ST. LOUIS -- The first woman to be sentenced to death in the federal system since 1953 should be granted a new trial because the first one was fraught with problems, her defense lawyer told a federal appeals court Wednesday.

But assistant federal prosecutor C.J. Williams said 42-year-old Angela Johnson received a fair trial for the drug-related slayings of five people near Mason City, Iowa, in 1993, and that the verdict should stand.

Johnson is in federal prison in Fort Worth, Texas, appealing her conviction and death penalty.

The last woman the U.S. government executed was Bonnie Brown Heady for the kidnapping and murder of 6-year-old Bobby Greenlease in 1953. She was executed in the gas chamber at the Missouri state penitentiary that December. In June that year, Ethel Rosenberg was electrocuted after being found guilty of espionage.

Separate trials

Johnson and her boyfriend, Dustin Honken, were convicted of planning and carrying out the slayings of three adults and two children, and sentenced to death after separate federal trials. Iowa does not have a death penalty.

The two were convicted of killing two federal drug informants who once peddled methamphetamine produced by Honken. One of the informants, Greg Nicholson of Mason City, disappeared in June 1993 along with his girlfriend, Lori Duncan, also of Mason City, and her two daughters, Kandace Duncan, 10, and Amber Duncan, 6.

The other informant, Terry DeGeus of Britt, disappeared months later.

Their bodies were discovered in two graves outside of Mason City in 2000 after Johnson gave information about the locations of the graves to a jailhouse informant.

Honken, in federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind., also has a pending appeal.

Verdict forms at Johnson's trial mistakenly omitted that any one juror could have objected to imposing death, resulting in a life sentence, defense attorney Dean Stowers of Des Moines told a three-judge panel of the Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The form left only two options -- unanimous votes of life in prison or the death penalty.

The defense team mistakenly did not object, Stowers said, "but our client shouldn't be put to death for it."

However, defense attorneys did object to prosecutors introducing Honken's 1997 drug charge guilty plea at Johnson's trial. Stowers said it was a deceptive attempt to connect Johnson to Honken's criminal activity, but Williams said the plea transcript was used to establish a time line.

'Over the line'

Stowers also objected to the trial prosecutor's inference that Johnson was guilty of aiding and abetting Honken in the slayings because she didn't proclaim her innocence in conversations with two relatives and four jail cellmates.

"I think it went over the line," he said.

Williams responded by saying that Johnson had made "plenty of comments about her guilt, how she entered the house, how she tied them up.

"At no time," he said, "did she say I was tricked into it."

Stowers also objected to the trial court allowing damaging testimony by a prison confidant of Honken's, without allowing Johnson to confront her accuser, in this case, Honken.

Federal prisoner Steven Vest testified during the penalty phase of Johnson's trial that Honken told him of her involvement in the slaying.

It's not clear whether defendants in capital cases have the right to confront their accusers in the penalty phase, as they do at trial.

Eighth Circuit Judge Roger Wollman said there might be some reason to allow it.