Nurse loses appeal of rape conviction
A state appeals court has upheld the rape conviction of an ex-Eastern State Hospital nurse for forcing a former psychiatric patient under his care to give him oral sex in a hospital laundry room.
Guylin Michael Johnston had appealed his December 2005 conviction for second-degree rape by a Spokane County Superior Court jury, saying his right to due process had been violated and his lawyer hadn’t effectively represented him. A Washington Court of Appeals panel of judges disagreed and affirmed the verdict in an unpublished opinion.
The woman, who is not named because she is the victim of a sex crime, received $2.5 million last month from the state Department of Social and Health Services to settle a separate lawsuit over the incident. She had filed a $2.75 million tort claim against the state, saying the hospital incorrectly left her in Johnston’s care.
The unusual case included a web of lies in courtroom testimony that led to additional felony charges being filed against Johnston and a co-worker.
Johnston’s first trial in February 2005 ended in an acquittal on an indecent liberties charge and a hung jury on a second-degree rape charge. Spokane County Deputy Prosecutor John Love sought a second trial.
On October 28, 2005, a jury took less than two hours to convict the former nurse of the second-degree rape charge that was verified through genetic testing of a wad of gum.
That testing found, to a certainty of one in 26 million, that Johnston’s semen was mixed with the woman’s saliva in a tissue-wrapped gum wad found in her pocket after the incident. She said she spat out the gum after Johnston assaulted her.
Johnston’s defense rested on a conspiracy theory later proved to be false. One of his co-workers, psychiatric security attendant Jacqueline K. Hughes, testified at his first trial that she agreed to have sex with Johnston to collect his semen so another co-worker, Mike W. Evans, could use it to frame Johnston.
Hughes suggested Evans may have wanted to frame Johnston because of a romantic rivalry: Evans was dating Johnston’s former girlfriend. Evans wasn’t asked to testify but told The Spokesman-Review during the trial that Hughes was “totally lying.”
In the second trial, Hughes testified her story was a lie invented by Johnston to explain the semen in the gum. Johnston’s lawyer, Rob Cossey, argued that Hughes told the truth at the first trial and lied at the second. Love, the prosecutor, said he told Hughes she had “an opportunity to correct her testimony” and didn’t pursue perjury charges against her.
In November 2005, Hughes admitted offering up the elaborate lie at Johnston’s first trial. Johnston pleaded guilty to another felony charge for intimidating Hughes into lying for him, which helped get him a hung jury in the first rape trail.
Johnston was defiant at his December 2005 sentencing, claiming he was set up by investigators and saying he did not rape his patient. “The two things I’m getting for Christmas are a broken lonely heart and a prison sentence,” he told Superior Court Judge Neal Q. Rielly.
“Mr. Johnston, my view of it is that you stand here today because of your own actions,” Rielly replied. He gave Johnston the maximum sentence of 114 months, or 9 1/2 years, in prison.