Former nurse claims setup, gets sentence

Defiant to the end, a convicted rapist and former Eastern State Hospital nurse claimed Wednesday that he was set up by investigators and prosecutors and did not rape one of his patients.

“I do not deserve this punishment and abuse,” 44-year-old Guylin Michael Johnston told Superior Court Judge Neal Rielly. “The two things I’m getting for Christmas are a broken lonely heart and a prison sentence.”

Rielly wasn’t moved.

“The evidence from trial is extremely clear,” the judge said. “This is not the type of case you forget. Mr. Johnston, my view of it is that you stand here today because of your own actions.”

The judge then handed down the maximum sentence of 114 months, or 9½ years, in prison. Defense attorney Rob Cossey said that sentence actually could be extended to life in prison if his client continues to maintain his innocence and refuses treatment in prison.

Under that scenario, the state parole board could keep Johnston locked up indefinitely, Cossey said.

“It was totally expected,” Cossey said of the sentence. “There were no surprises.”

But the case was full of them.

Deputy prosecutor John Love said he’s never had a case like Johnston’s, which was based on a wad of gum and included another felony conviction after Johnston pleaded guilty last month to intimidating a co-worker to lie for him and help him get a hung jury in the first rape trial.

“I think justice was served, and a predator is off the street,” Love said.

The case started in June 2004 when a suicidal 30-year-old woman, whom Johnston was assigned to protect, reported that he had groped her and compelled her to have oral sex in a laundry room at Eastern State Hospital in Medical Lake.

After the assault, the woman spat out her gum and placed it in a tissue in her pocket. Investigators tested the gum and found traces of her saliva and Johnston’s semen.

Because the woman was mentally ill, any sex between them is considered illegal. As a result, Love filed charges of indecent liberties and second-degree rape against Johnston.

The case first went to trial in February. It ended in a hung jury after 51-year-old Jacqueline K. Hughes, a psychiatric security attendant at Eastern State, changed her previous statement to detectives and claimed that she had sex with Johnston to collect his semen so another co-worker could use it to frame hiim.

Hughes later testified that she owed Johnston money and that he had threatened to harm her children and her animals if she didn’t lie for him.

Based on that testimony, Johnston’s second jury convicted him of second-degree rape in less than two hours on Oct. 28.

Then, on Nov. 18, Johnston pleaded guilty to intimidating Hughes to testify on his behalf in the first trial.

In his lengthy statement Wednesday, Johnston continued to claim he was set up by everybody, including Hughes.

“I would not have jeopardized my job, my life, my career by having sex with a patient,” he said. “For me it has been guilty until proven innocent by The Spokesman-Review, the prosecution and the State Patrol. I pray that you and God will judge me fairly.”

As he read the four-page statement, Johnston’s mother sat crying with her face in her hands.