State prevails in Johnson appeal

On Sept. 2, the North Dakota Supreme Court came to a decision on State v. Johnson, unanimously ruling against New Rockford resident Darin A. Johnson after he appealed the decision of an Eddy County jury that found him guilty of terrorizing, a Class C Felony.

Johnson was arrested on Sept. 26, 2019, after threatening Eddy County Sheriff Paul Lies outside the Eddy County Courthouse two days earlier, an incident that forced the courthouse to go into lockdown. The harassment began even earlier, however, with dozens of social media posts directed towards Sheriff Lies, including a post that referenced the song “Cop Killer,” and one that stated “[s]hit is going down if I don’t get my guns back by Friday!!”

Sheriff Lies had legally seized guns owned by Johnson after a separate incident, for which he was still on probation at the time. On Aug. 28, a jury of Eddy County residents needed just 45 minutes to deliver a guilty verdict, and Judge James Hovey sentenced Johnson to five years in prison, with three years and six months suspended and credit for 87 days served.

Johnson later appealed the decision to the North Dakota Supreme Court. According to the official opinion written by Chief Justice Jon J. Jenson, the defendant argued that “insufficient evidence was presented to the jury to support a conviction,” and that “his conduct, because it was directed toward a law enforcement officer, did not violate the statute or should otherwise be within a law enforcement exception.”

To support their belief in a “law enforcement exception” to the charge of terrorizing, Johnson’s legal counsel, Samuel A. Gereszek, cited three prior court cases: City of Houston v. Hill, City of Bismarck v. Schoppert, and City of Bismarck v. Nassif.

In his Appellant’s brief, Gereszek added “Darin was uproarious and boorish, yet he posed no threat to Sheriff Lies. … Sheriff Lies’ only fear of Darin was summed up in his own words, ‘I fear that an altercation or any reaction I have with Darin is not going to end well’ … By the sheriff’s statement, every single traffic stop initiated by law enforcement begins with the suspect guilty of Terrorizing. Pursuant to his deputy, ‘[i]t’s the same type of fear that you have on a traffic stop.’ ”

The N.D Supreme Court justices weren’t convinced. “Johnson’s reliance on Hill, Schoppert and Nassif is misplaced,” wrote Chief Justice Jon J. Jenson. “While those cases involved vulgar and boorish behavior toward law enforcement, Hill and Schoppert did not involve threats toward law enforcement or charges of terrorizing, and in Nassif, this Court determined the language was not constitutionally protected.”

Meanwhile, Eddy County State’s Attorney, Ashley L. Lies, needed only to convince the court of one thing: that any rational factfinder could, beyond a reasonable doubt, find Johnson guilty of terrorizing. And as Jenson noted in the court’s official opinion, the standard for review when a defendant’s challenge is on the sufficiency of evidence, is that the court must view the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict.

“The appeal was based on whether law enforcement should have thicker skin,” said State’s Attorney Lies. “My concern with that is it would set a dangerous precedent for future cases in that our law enforcement would be allowed to be harassed and terrorized and taunted. So had the Supreme Court not affirmed the decision, then they would have been agreeing that law enforcement needed to have thicker skin, which would then I think make every law enforcement officer's job in North Dakota a lot more difficult.”

The Chief Justice closed the official opinion of the Supreme Court by writing, “On this record, viewing the evidence in a light most favorable to the prosecution and giving the prosecution the benefit of all inferences reasonably to be drawn in its favor, we conclude a rational factfinder could find Johnson guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. The judgment is affirmed.”

Johnson was released from the department of corrections in Jan. 2021, and is to remain under supervised probation for two years from the date of release.