Havre man found guilty of negligent homicide

After only an hour and eighteen minutes of deliberation, a jury Tuesday found Havre resident Shane Johnson guilty of negligent homicide in the 2013 shooting death of his brother, Travis Johnson in a retrial that began one week ago.

Johnson had pleaded not guilty to the charge, his defense arguing that the death of his brother was a tragic accident, not negligent homicide, and the prosecution arguing that the evidence clearly showed the opposite.

Johnson had appealed his 2014 conviction in the case, arguing the court made errors in allowing the jury unrestricted access to all of the state's testimonial audio and video exhibits during deliberations and by allowing the state to add a negligent homicide charge at the end of trial that was not included within the deliberate homicide charge for which the state tried Johnson.

The Montana Supreme Court ruled that select errors had been made and overturned the verdict, sending the case back to District Court in Havre last fall for a new trial.

Johnson has been released into the custody of the Montana Department of Corrections and will be held at the Hill County Detention Center until sentencing next month.

The description of the incident presented during the trial and in charging documents said that Nov. 9, 2013, the two brothers were watching football upstairs in the house of their mother and stepfather, where they stayed in bedrooms in the basement. They got into an argument and Travis Johnson ended up striking his brother, bloodying his nose.

The defense argued that Shane Johnson went into his own bedroom, and was followed by his brother who then took a case with a gun from under Shane Johnson's bed, took out the gun and took it into his own room. Shane Johnson followed, fearing Travis Johnson would injure himself or someone else, and during the struggle of his trying to get the gun away from his brother, the gun discharged leading to Travis' death.

The prosecution argued that Shane Johnson was the one who took the pistol from under his bed and confronted his brother in Travis' room, and the two struggled and Travis was shot.

During closing arguments, Montana Assistant Attorney General Daniel M. Guzynski, who helped prosecute the case, said the evidence presented by the state has demonstrated that Travis' death was the result of negligent homicide on the part of his brother, the defendant, Shane Johnson.

He said while it was not the point of the trial, the jury has learned a bit about Travis Johnson, and his death cannot be taken lightly.

"If life is sacred, then Travis Johnson's life is sacred," he said. "Travis was as real as us even though you've never met him."

Guzynski said the state is not obligated to give a play by play of everything that happened the night Travis Johnson died, but they have proven beyond a reasonable doubt that it was the result of negligence on the defendant's part, having consciously disregarded the risk to his brother's life when he confronted him with a gun, regardless of his intentionality.

He said the evidence gained from blood spatter and the placement of the gun case that the weapon was taken from point to the accuracy of the state's account of what must have happened that day, an account that, unlike the defendant's, has been consistent and consistent with the evidence presented at the trial.

This is not a self-defense case, he said, and Shane Johnson's story is so inconsistent with the evidence that is becomes questionable in its voracity.

Lawrence LaFountain, one Johnson's defense attorneys, said during his closing argument that Travis Johnson initiated the conflict between the brothers, and Shane bore the brunt of an attack from him.

LaFountain said the prosecution is minimizing the aggression Travis displayed toward his brother that day to push their own narrative of what happened, which he said is undermined by pieces of evidence at the scene.

He again laid out the defense's account of what happened that day, saying it was Travis Johnson who took the gun from Shane Johnson's room while he was laying down.

He said the defendant confronted his brother out of worry that he would use the weapon to hurt himself or someone else and the results were tragic, but did not rise to the level of negligent homicide.

In the prosecution's rebuttal, Hill County Attorney Karen Alley said this narrative is contradicted by the evidence presented in the case.

The defense wants the jury to believe that Travis took the gun, that this was a tragic accident, but the overwhelming evidence shows that is not true, she said.

"The totality of that evidence shows that it was Shane that grabbed the gun," she said.

She went through much of the evidence in the case detailing the prosecutions case for what it says about what happened that day and said it proved the state's case beyond a reasonable doubt.