Guadalajara -
Dylan Ryan Johnson, a 29 year old American citizen from Greene County, Pennsylvania, has been sentenced to 13 years in prison after a Mexican judge convicted him in the 2003 murder of a 16 year old Guanajuato boy.
Greene was extradited to Mexico by U.S. authorities in December 2012, and was recently tried by a state district criminal court. He was also ordered to pay restitution of 32,000 pesos to his victim's parents - less than $2,700 dollars.
Prosecutors allege that early on the morning of Sept. 7, 2003, when Johnson was 20, he drove his pickup truck into the small community of Empalme Escobedo in Guanajuato state and checked into a hotel with Hilario Garcia Rosales, who had worked for the American man. Johnson was intoxicated, according to witnesses.
Johnson departed about an hour later, but told the hotel staff that his friend would be staying longer. The boy's body was discovered the next day by a maid. Garcia was strangled shortly after someone had anal sex with him, according to forensic reports. Authorities originally accused Johnson of rape and premeditated murder, but he was convicted only of the latter.
In a Jan. 7, 2013 interview with the Uniontown, Pennsylvania Herald-Standard, Johnson's wife, Erica, insisted that her husband is innocent and was framed by Mexican authorities. She said that since he was arrested by U.S. Marshals on a winter morning last year, her life has been a nightmare.
"It was 6 a.m. and we were asleep in bed. About 10 of them came in the house and swooped through. It’s been hell without my husband. I miss him so badly," said Erica, who married Johnson in October 2007 after the couple met through her job. He was taken into custody almost 15 months ago.
Mexican prosecutors have a different view of the case and argued that the facts showed a calculated, first degree murder. The hotel was known for prostitution and the two plainly checked in to have sex, they contend. The motive for the homicide was not established, but proof of motive is never required under Mexican law, or under American, in any criminal prosecution.
Johnson was on the Guanajuato prosecutor's most wanted list for years until he was picked up on an international arrest warrant in 2012. A U.S. judge reviewed a summary of evidence against him before approving Mexico's extradition request, and agreed that probable cause existed for the prosecution, applying American legal standards. In re Extradition of Dylan Ryan Johnson, No. 12-1832, U.S. Dist. Ct., W.D. Penn. (Opinion and Order Dismissing Petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus, Mar. 11, 2013).
Guanajuato is in north central Mexico, east of Jalisco and north of Michoacán. The state capital is León. Empalme Escobedo, where the murder occurred, is a town of less than 15,000.
Feb. 15 - American expatriate murdered in Mérida had sex with 17 year old boy just before his death
Feb. 7 - Suspect arrested in Mérida murder of American expatriate
© MGRR 2013. All rights reserved. This article may be cited or briefly quoted with proper attribution or a hyperlink, but not reproduced without permission.
You are correct in saying it is Greene County in Pennsylvania. Dylan lived in Nemacolin, PA in Greene County at the time of his arrest.
ReplyDeleteThanks, that's just what I suspected. The only mystery is how and why El Universal concluded that he was from Missouri. There are many Greene Counties in the U.S.
DeleteWell Dylan did commit this crime. How do i know? Because he called me and confessed. I have told American journalist about that phone call he made me all those years ago. I am so tired of reading stories claiming his innocence. He IS GUILTY!!!
ReplyDeleteDoesn't it bother you that there is no physical evidence linking Johnson to this crime? The judicial system in Mexico is opaque and corrupt - likely this was based on "witness testimony" which is essentially telling the prosecutors what they want to hear.
DeleteTwo U.S. federal courts reviewed the evidenced against Johnson before allowing him to be extradited to Mexico, and both agreed that there was ample evidence - including eyewitness testimony from people who knew Johnson well and identified him as the man who checked into the hotel with the teenager whose body was found hours later. Click the link above to Johnson's habeas corpus petition.
DeleteWhen you argue that "witness testimony is essentially people telling prosecutors what they want to hear," you could make exactly the same contention about legal systems anywhere.
Three studies in the U.S. justice system conducted between 1987 and 1998 found that eyewitness identification is wrong 35% to 90% of the time (that stat will come as no surprise to practitioners of criminal law, by the way). There are now dozens of cases in American courts of people who were convicted of capital offenses, sentenced to death and spent years in prison awaiting execution. But somewhere along the line, forensic evidence - DNA - proved that they could not have committed the crime. Blood, semen, hair fibers, etc. left at the scene belonged to someone else.
I don't know the full extent of the evidence against Johnson, but this is not a case where Mexican authorities picked his name out of the phone book and spent the next decade looking for him. He was substantially linked to the crime, and of course, he immediately fled the country. Flight, in American law, is evidence of a guilty state of mind.