Hospital rape trial ends in hung jury

A former Eastern State Hospital nurse likely will be tried again on a rape charge that resulted in a hung jury Friday.

The jury of seven women and five men couldn’t agree on the second-degree rape charge, but acquitted Guylin Michael Johnston, 43, of taking indecent liberties with a mental patient last June in a hospital laundry room.

There were several discrepancies between the alleged victim’s testimony Tuesday and what she told authorities last June. One of those inconsistencies concerned how the 30-year-old woman said Johnston groped her after raping her.

The alleged groping was the basis for the indecent liberties charge.

The woman didn’t waver, however, in her assertion that Johnston took her to a laundry room to wash some clothing, shut an always-locked door behind them and forced her to have oral sex. She said she had been chewing gum and spat it into a tissue.

Shortly after the alleged rape, police searched the woman’s pants pocket and found a tissue with gum wadded inside it. A state crime lab technician testified that the tissue and the gum both contained Johnston’s and the alleged victim’s DNA.

The rape charge still stands, and Deputy Prosecutor John Love said he plans to seek another trial, subject to the approval of his supervisors.

Love declined to comment on the verdict or his interview with jurors, but defense attorney Rob Cossey said they were split 8-4 in favor of convicting his client on the rape charge.

Cossey was encouraged, though, that so many jurors found reason to doubt Johnston raped a suicidal woman he was assigned to protect. Cossey attributed that doubt to a conspiracy theory that two of Johnston’s co-workers set him up.

Hospital employee Jackie Hughes testified that mental health technician Mike Evans recruited her to have sex with Johnston. The defense contends that’s where the DNA evidence against Johnston came from.

Hughes suggested Evans may have wanted to frame Johnston because of a romantic rivalry: Evans was dating Johnston’s former girlfriend. No explanation was offered for why the alleged rape victim would participate in such a plot.

Evans wasn’t asked to testify, but said in an interview that Hughes was “totally lying.”

Three members of the hospital custodial staff testified that, a few weeks after the alleged rape, they found a baggie containing a partially dried liquid folded into a paper towel that was stuck to the floor under a dryer in the laundry room. Hughes had told jurors she delivered the evidence that could be used to frame Johnston in a baggie.

Testimony indicated the baggie and paper towel were offered to Washington State Patrol Detective David Fenn, who was in charge of the rape investigation. Hospital security chief David Snipes said Fenn told him to discard the materials.

Cossey said some jurors “were concerned it was thrown away,” and that, coupled with Hughes’ testimony, created the doubt that prevented them from convicting Johnston.