Attorneys for prison bus strangler file appeal for treatment

Johns, 25, was found guilty, but not criminally responsible, for the February 2005 strangling of Phillip Parker Jr. aboard a prison bus, and Judge Emery Plitt left it up to the state to decide how to deal with Johns’ long history of mental illness.

Doctors from the state Department of Health and Mental Hygiene will treat Johns at the prison for his mental illness, which includes bipolar disorder and hallucinations stemming from a schizo-affective disorder.

Johns currently is serving a life sentence plus 30 years for the murders of his uncle and a cellmate.

This week, court-appointed defense attorneys Harry Trainor and Carroll McCabe filed an appeal of Plitt’s decision to the Maryland Court of Special Appeals, insisting their client needs the therapeutic setting of Clifton T. Perkins Hospital Center in Jessup.

Other filings may be occur in the near future, Trainor said.

“The state of Maryland cannot fulfill its constitutional obligation to Kevin Johns while he continues to be housed in a Division of Correction facility, despite being adjudicated not criminally responsible by reason of insanity,” he said.

Deborah Richardson, an assistant public defender assigned to the appeal, said she worried the case could set a precedent for keeping dangerous but mentally ill defendants from getting the treatment they need.

“The next logical step is that DHMH can send people without a previous prison sentence to Supermax,” she said.

Prosecutors argued that Johns killed two people behind bars under ostensibly high security, and the relative freedom he’d enjoy at Clifton T. Perkins Hospital Center could prove deadly.

Officials in the prison and hospital agreed, signing affidavits that the security at Perkins could not be compared to that at Supermax.

msantoni@baltimoreexaminer.com