New charges added to rape suspect”s list

A former Eastern State Hospital nurse was charged Friday with bribing and coercing a hospital worker to tell an elaborate lie in his rape trial earlier this year.

Guylin Michael Johnston, 43, was tried in February on charges of second-degree rape and taking indecent liberties with a hospital patient whose DNA was mixed with his in a wad of gum she had been chewing.

Johnston was a licensed practical nurse at Eastern State Hospital in Medical Lake at the time of the alleged rape in June 2004. He had been assigned to watch the mentally ill woman, who testified that he forced himself on her in a hospital laundry room.

To explain how Johnston’s genetic material could have gotten into the woman’s gum, Johnston’s attorney, Rob Cossey, presented testimony from Jacqueline K. Hughes, 50.

Hughes, a psychiatric security attendant at the hospital, testified she and another hospital worker conspired to frame Johnston. She said she enticed Johnston to have sex with her so she could collect his semen.

Hughes told jurors she passed the genetic material to mental health technician Mike Evans, who may have wanted to frame Johnston because of a romantic rivalry. Evans wasn’t called to testify, but he told The Spokesman-Review that Hughes was “totally lying.”

Now, according to court documents, Hughes has confessed in a tape-recorded interview with a Washington State Patrol detective that she was indeed lying.

The jury that heard Hughes’ testimony acquitted Johnston of the indecent liberties charge and was unable to reach a verdict on the rape charge.

According to court documents, Hughes now says Johnston invented the entire conspiracy theory and got her to cooperate with a combination of cash and coercion. She said he lent her $1,000 and told her he expected her to return the favor by lying to his attorney and to the jury, according to an affidavit by WSP Detective Tracy Hansen.

Hansen said Hughes stated that, when she hesitated, Johnston told her: “It would sure be a shame if something happened to your animals. It would sure be a shame if something happened to your kids. They walk around Medical Lake, don’t they?”

Hughes said she took the alleged threats seriously, according to Hansen’s report. Hansen said Hughes claimed Johnston gave her a sedative to help her pass a lie-detector test if police asked her to take one.

According to Hansen, Hughes first admitted the lie to a Department of Health investigator in April. Eastern State Hospital is operated by the state Department of Health.

Deputy Prosecutor John Love charged Johnston on Friday with one count of bribing a witness and one count of intimidating a witness. Johnston has been free while awaiting a new trial, tentatively June 6, on the rape charge.

On May 2, Johnston’s former longtime girlfriend sought a new restraining order against him, alleging that he had been stalking her since mid-April.

Bobbie J. McKee, 37, said in her Spokane County District Court petition that she may have to be a witness in Johnston’s rape trial and was “fearful there will be repercussions or violence from him” because of her cooperation with investigators. McKee said Johnston repeatedly called her home, drove by several times a night and tried to talk to her when he found her in public places.

McKee told the court she ended her 13-year relationship with Johnston in May 2003. When she moved out of Johnston’s home, McKee said, Johnston threatened to kill her father “and to dig up my dead brother and drive around with his body in the car.”

Johnston pleaded guilty to fourth-degree assault for attacking McKee on a previous occasion when she left him. In that July 1996 attack, Johnston threw McKee to the ground, got on top of her and tried to cut off her hair with scissors.

Another woman, who was helping McKee move, pulled Johnston off McKee. He then chased McKee to a vehicle and attempted to stab her with the scissors until the other woman again pulled him away, suffering a cut thumb in the process.

Authorities charged Johnston with second- and third-degree assault in the incident, but the charges were reduced to a single count of fourth-degree domestic assault when McKee reconciled with Johnston and recanted her statements to sheriff’s officers.