CenLAw
Kellye, the true crime enthusiast, and Kyler, her willing partner, delve into intriguing cases from Central & Northeastern Louisiana.
From small-town cases to nationally known crimes, they bring you stories that hit close to home, always with that Louisiana connection.
Tune in bi-weekly for your true crime fix and support their show for a shout-out in the next episode.
Stay safe out there!
CenLAw
Bonus Episode #3 - Jordan Johnson (Ep.11) Appeal Update! CenLAw Stats!
Can you feel the electric anticipation in the air? Buckle up, as we're sharing some fantastic updates on our growing listener base that's just smashed a record 600 downloads! Plus, we've received our first email recommendation for a case from you all - so keep those coming!
Don't forget to sprinkle some love our way by leaving a rating and review!
Now, let's shift gears and delve into the riveting world of appellate court decisions. We're dissecting a recent judgement from a very recent episode. We'll culminate this whirlwind adventure by examining the court's verdict on the dismissal of a jury member who dared to discuss their role outside the courtroom. So tighten your seat belts and join us on this roller coaster ride as we illuminate the nuances of the justice system on this special bonus episode!
Appeal:
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All🎶created by: Uncle Sawyer
Hey CenLAwsome Fam. I'm Kellye, I'm Kyler and we are bringing you guys another update episode, Lucky you. I told you on the last one that I wasn't sure what day these would fall on. This one just so happens to fall not on a Monday, so sorry about that, but you're also welcome. Today is Monday, yes, but we're recording it on Monday. We're not gonna release it until.
Kyler:Yeah, but it still fell on a Monday.
Kellye:Okay, close enough, all right, so we're recording on a Monday Still counts, okay. So we've got a really awesome update for you guys, and this is really exciting too, because this is the second off week in a row where I've found an appeal for one of our cases that literally just got decided this year within the last month. So we've got another appeal update for you guys, and this one is gonna be for episode 11, the senseless shooting at the sugar shack. And senseless we love an alliteration.
Kyler:So Even during the alliteration.
Kellye:If you haven't listened to that episode, go do that right now and then come back and listen to what the appeal ended up being.
Kyler:So we're gonna, because otherwise you won't know what the hell we talking about.
Kellye:Well, we're gonna short summary it.
Kellye:Otherwise you won't know what the hell we talking about. So, just real quick, though, just like we did last episode, I'm gonna throw some stats at you guys, because I don't know what's gotten into our listener Four Seven, Our listener base here recently. But you guys are amazing, other than the fact that we don't have any new reviews Other than that, Other than that, you guys are amazing. Just for November alone, I told you guys you had to step it up because we had to get over. I think it was 192 episodes that we had, or downloads that we had in October. We had to beat that to, you know, be better than October. And as of today, November 13th, we already have 119 downloads for this month. So in 13 days, not even two weeks, we've got almost 120 downloads. So you're killing it.
Kellye:You guys are absolutely killing it. We actually broke the 500 download mark. I ain't breaking nothing, it wasn't me.
Kellye:On the second of this month, on November, a week from today ago, we broke 500 and we're already over 600. So just in the last week we've had over 100 downloads. So you guys are absolutely killing it. Thank you so, so, so much. Keep listening, keep telling people about us and if you're on our social medias, like, share all of the fun stuff and if you have a minute, leave us a rating and a review, because that helps keep get our podcast up into other people's feeds and other people can listen to us and join the base as well and, you know, give us that recognition, which is really awesome.
Kellye:Plus, I really, really, really want to tell you know about you know interesting or fun ratings, even if they don't have anything to do with a podcast. I would love to be able to read goofy stuff on the next update episode. So, unfortunately, as it, stands right now.
Kyler:What she's saying is if you want something to be read on air, it doesn't matter what it's about exactly just write it in your review. Write it in a review and I will read it.
Kellye:It will be read out loud, yes, I will, and until that gets to be overwhelming or overbearing to the point where we're not talking about you to the point where it's going to be too much to put into an episode.
Kellye:If we have, like you know, 20, 30, 40 reviews in one setting, that's not gonna happen. I'm gonna pick out the best ones, obviously, to make it a good one, is all I'm saying, but for right now, just do one. So there's that. I don't think we have any really crazy updates when it comes to like locations and things like that. As far as I can tell, it's pretty much staying the same. We've got Mexico, united Kingdom, philippines, australia, france, india, ireland, which I think are pretty well all the same, dallas still at the top, and then Louisiana pretty much dominating for the first top six or so, and as far as we might need to clarify that, we don't think that France, india and Ireland are all pretty much the same no, no, I just mean that they're the same as we mentioned in the last update.
Kellye:That's my bad. All of the I don't think there's any new locations to mention that are new as of the last update episode. So, absolutely, other than that, keep listening, keep downloading, keep talking about us. We actually had our very first email listener recommendation for a case which I have already ordered a book on Amazon that should be here. Oh, it's that one you were talking about. Yes, it should be here either Wednesday or Thursday, I think, but I ordered that because I'm very interested. I'd never heard of the case it's an older one, I think from like the 80s, but I'm really interested. It's gonna be a really awesome case. Can't wait to cover it. Thank you for the suggestion and I am looking forward to future suggestions because if they're as good as this one, I cannot wait. Super excited for that. So, and I'm hoping at this point, you've either gone back and listened to, or you have already listened and then come back, and now you're weeding through all of the stats to be able to get to the appeal part of our update, and so we're just gonna jump right back in.
Kellye:So our episode 11 covered the murder of um, dijon Mitchell, who was attending a party at the sugar shack in Jonesville, which is in Catefula, parish in Louisiana, and they were the. The sugar shack was hosting a DJ known as DJ young and gunnen, whose real name was Jordan Johnson. Yeah, it's a lot. So Jordan Johnson was the DJ that was having a party at the sugar shack in Jonesville. They were apparently not in as festive a mood as Dejaun and Michelle was. He was being a little rambunctious, dancing and enjoying, vibing and enjoying himself Turning up, and he bumped into either Jordan or one of his crew that night and things got out of hand. Fists got thrown and then, according to and then metal got thrown Everything that we went over.
Kellye:In episode 11, johnson pulled out a gun and, according to the court documents from the appeal said he was shot six times, five of which which were fatal. And I think when we talked about it on the episode we said I wasn't sure if it was five or six because of the way the autopsy read. They weren't sure if it was a through and through, so it wasn't sure if the one bullet got one bullet.
Kellye:Yes, they weren't sure if the one bullet had caused the two sets of damage or whatever. Either way, he shot five or six times killed him.
Kyler:That was a bit of confusion. I just didn't think that was this one.
Kellye:Yes, that was this one. So he fled and then they used Project NOLA cameras to be able to track down the vehicle by the license plates, tags and from the Instagram posts and everything. They tracked down the car, tracked him down to the apartments and natches and then were able to live stream the feed as the SWAT team moved in to arrest him, which they did without incident. Later they found him guilty. I believe it was in 2021. I don't know. It was actually the beginning of 2022 when they found him guilty and sentenced him to life.
Kyler:It was almost exact.
Kellye:Right, exactly, yeah, it was almost to the day that he was found guilty, on December 15th. He was sentenced on January 25th. So all of that it was exactly. It was exactly three years 19, 20, 20, yeah, three years to the day of the shooting that he was found guilty. He was sentenced in January and they added an extra 20 years because he was a felon in possession of a weapon. So he was sentenced to life without parole, no benefits, second degree murder, also attacked on 20 years hard labor for the firearm.
Kellye:So, according to his appeal that we now have, that was decided on November 2nd of 2023, so just you know, 12 days ago they appealed his conviction and sentences. Now there were two separate appeal things filed which is the way the reason I say things is because his council filed an appellate brief asserting two assignments of error, but he also filed a pro se brief, so he filed one on his own as well as his council a filing one for him. So the two errors that the council filed for was that the trial court aired an excusing a juror under one of the criminal procedural statutes, and then they also say that the trial court aired in failing to grant the defense's motion for a mistrial, or if they didn't mistrial, then they needed to dismiss said juror. Now we'll get into that in a second. I'm gonna go over the pro se brief. Errors and because they were really kind of goofy, okay, honestly, one of them he tries to say that there was a lack of jurisdiction. Now, this isn't the one he filed himself.
Kellye:So Jordan Johnson, outside of his appellate lawyers, filed his own appellate brief saying there were things wrong. So in his he said and they only addressed a couple from my understanding there were many, many, many, but they picked out the ones that actually had any kind of maybe a weight to them. So one of them was that they had a lack of jurisdiction because, according to him he said that the state of Louisiana court has nothing to do with the case. Even the appellate report says quote it is unclear from his brief why defendant thinks that Louisiana lacks jurisdiction or why he believes that this should be a federal matter, unquote. So they were just as confused as I was when I was reading it. No idea why he thought it might be federal. So cross state lines. Maybe I don't know, maybe I really I'm not sure, because it like it's not like he kidnapped somebody Right. So there doesn't make any sense.
Kellye:Another one of the errors he said was if it okay, this is where it got kind of goofy the state court lacked jurisdiction because he's Native American. Now he they. The appellate court said quote we address this assignment here because, like the previous assignment, it asserts the state court lack jurisdiction but the defendant cites nothing in the record to show that he is Native American. In fact he does not cite a record at all in this portion of his argument. So they had no idea what the hell he was talking about. Like where did it come in that he was Native American? Where did that play into any kind of part? And he even, like they're saying that he didn't even make any pretend notion as to why he even brought this up. Like he didn't even put any evidence or anything into his brief to say as to why he thought this was important or why he thought he was Native American. Like it's just it's kind of mind blowing.
Kyler:He was Native to America.
Kellye:Okay, maybe I don't know. So he's. He's a sovereign citizen. You can't touch him.
Kellye:Maybe, maybe. So one of the errors that he did actually argue that is normal that we hear in the appeals is the sufficiency of evidence. Now they go through a whole bunch of other stuff, saying there was a whole lot of reason for all the evidence, not just the eyewitnesses, but all the evidence they found on him in the vehicle at the time of his arrest, all of those things, and you know it. They just basically said you are not doing a good job here, sir. So, moving on from that, they just said you know this shouldn't be a federal case. There's no reason it should be a federal case.
Kellye:They get into more nitty gritty about the things that he was citing which had absolutely nothing to do with his case, something about the protection of children, which also didn't make any sense because he's not a child, just a whole lot of I have no idea. I think he might have got in touch with one of the I don't remember exactly what the term is they use, but they they're incarcerated attorneys. So the guys who go, you know they write a lot of these appeals, they write a lot of motions and things for people who are in there because they've been in there for so long. They have a pretty good idea of the law at this point and they don't have anything better to do with their time really. So they help other inmates write motions and appeals and things, and that's my guess is that he got in contact with one of those guys and this guy just kind of went wild and figured this is my time? I'm not sure. So, having said all of that, they pretty much dismissed his pro se brief and then I was just saying.
Kyler:It's also fully believable that the things that he wrote could have like an arrow of truth to them, to where I don't understand the protection of a child one yeah. I don't know, but maybe he does have a Native American in him and he knew like well, I can get a scholarship for that, I can get a grant for that, maybe I can get out of the, maybe I can get out of jail for that.
Kellye:Well, no, and that is the thing. Like if you were Native American, you actually have a right to be tried in your you know, your Tribunal, whatever. But at the same time, like he provided no actual evidence of that, he made no other argument.
Kyler:But you may not realize these supposed to right man and that may be.
Kellye:That was a pros, a one right for sure, and that that's all very possible.
Kyler:So yeah, he sounds like he was trying real hard to get out of everything Without giving up any good reason as to why he should get out of it right and that yeah.
Kellye:So basically the assignment lacked merit. In all of the assignment of error, all of them that he tried, they just lacked merit and they closed the book on his pro se brief.
Kyler:So moral of that story is that unless you actually have learned some of the law, don't don't write a brief yourself right.
Kellye:Especially, somebody knows what they're doing to do it right and you know these, the Most of these cases, the appellate lawyers are paid for by the state. Those are given to you, especially in these life without parole sentencing. They are basically like a public defender for the appellate court and so if they're already doing all of that work and like the only thing that you can do, and in my opinion and I don't know it if other attorneys or I'm not an attorney, but that's what you know, what I mean if others would say the same, like I feel like by doing a pro se motion or appeal or any of those things, you are more likely to damage your case than to help it. That is just my opinion that you are doing more harm than good because it could, it can get kind of sticky in. There is all I'm saying. Just be careful, go with gloves, okay, you?
Kyler:can get pretty sticky in there.
Kellye:So now we're gonna go to the council filed brief and the the argument that they made was that they incorrectly used previous versions of the statute to excuse a jury member, and I think it had something to do with the jury member either having a previous record or something like that, and at the time in the law at the time I think it was valid and the trial began in 2021. And so, as of the most current version, it was pertinent for that one and it gets kind of very law-speak-y statute reading. But basically what happened was they had a newer version of the statute that came into play as of August Because his trial didn't start until December of 2021, then that was the applicable statute for those jury members. They were trying to say that they didn't apply it appropriately. The appellate court decided that they had and that that was totally fine. Now the second error that the counsel argued in his actual counsel filed brief. I found interesting because the jury member specifically and they name him in the appeal I'm not going to name him here. If you want to find out, I've got the appeal linked in the show notes. Go dig through it yourself.
Kellye:But what happened was the jury member. I think he was originally from Texas and he had either been involved in the law or he had done something over there, so he kind of knew how the courts worked over there. And what happened was when somebody explained to them their role as jury members, he was kind of confused, I guess. And so what he did was when he went home he went into look and to see just the factual, like what you're expected to do as a member of the jury. And when that didn't coincide with what he had been told, he brought that to either the clerk or to the judge's office and said, hey, this is what this says. Can I show this to the other jurors? They were immediately like no, we're not doing that. You need to give us whatever paper you have.
Kellye:And then they actually pulled that specific jury member into the judge's office to kind of question him as to what he looked up Was it information about the case or was it just like a generic overview? And the judge found that it was not specifically to do with the case, that it was just like an overview of what you're expected to do as a juror. And they actually went on the record and talked about you know what your expectations are what you can and can't do and decided, you know, with the defendant's attorney and the defendant's stuff present. They decided that it was not sufficient enough to dismiss him and it was not sufficient enough to declare a mistrial because, when it came down to it, it didn't have anything specifically relevant to do with the case, just as to what his duties were, which, technically, had already been covered in court.
Kellye:So, long and short of it, the juror was confused. He just wanted to make sure he was following the rules appropriately. He's checked that for himself, which he should not have done rightfully. If he had any questions, if you ever serve on a jury, the best thing for you to do if you're confused, ask the judge. That's the best thing to do.
Kyler:I totally would have done the exact same thing.
Kellye:Right, but they just want to make sure that no way of you getting any kind of bias or anything like that from outside of the case, which the only way that they can be sure of that and to be able to prove that in any kind of appeal or in court is if you don't have any access to anything that you could even possibly Right, or?
Kellye:proof that you did so. The best case scenario if you're ever on a jury, if you have any questions, if you're confused about anything, specifically, ask the judge or the DA or somebody in the courtroom to be able to clarify that for you, because otherwise you could get a mistrial for this defendant, which means that you could end up giving this guy another chance or another go-round and guilty or innocent. It's just, it's a lot. So go by what the court says, go by what the judge says and go with that instead of doing anything on your own, because I've seen many episodes of many different crime shows that have been completely blown out of the water because Wunder decided to go ask a question of somebody else or bring up something that they weren't supposed to outside of, you know, the courtroom or outside of deliberations. It's just not allowed and that's Don't go bringing shit up.
Kellye:That's, you know we're. It's to maintain the integrity of our processes, which you know we already have to rely on them and have faith in them and, knowing we have human error in all things that we do, I feel like there's not a whole lot of integrity in some of our processes.
Kyler:in the first place, Exactly.
Kellye:That's why we're trying to keep it as clean as possible, because it's hard enough as it is Okay. So, anyway, they argued all of that, but when it came back and when it came down to it, the appellate judges decided you know, this is just not enough for us to overturn and the ruling, sentencing was all affirmed and that just means that he's going to stay in jail as of now. So he is still currently, as of this recording, at the Louisiana Department of Corrections in Angola. Everything was confirmed, affirmed. He's still in jail for the foreseeable future. This was his appeal to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals and he can appeal to the Supreme Court, but, again, small percentage ever actually get heard.
Kellye:If, on the off chance, that does happen, I'll throw us another update in here, and I think that's everything for this one, guys. Thank you again. So so, so much for listening to everything, to our episodes, for sharing them with your friends, for coming back every other week or so and listening to us jabber on about these things, and us, yeah. But I'm really excited that we've got to do two back-to-back now with actual appeal updates, which I find really awesome. I've gotten four back-to-back. What do you mean back-to-back? What are you talking about?
Kyler:We've had one a week for four weeks.
Kellye:Yes, and I just meant like two updates back-to-back with appeals. That actually came through, which I think is really awesome. So again, case suggestions throw them in an email, throw them on any of the TikTok Actually. Oh, that is interesting too. The YouTube has officially changed over now, so all of our podcasts are going directly to YouTube. So if you have YouTube premium or anything like that, you can go and listen to them directly on there with. I guess none of the other ones really have ads either. No, no, but anyway, all of them are directly uploaded to YouTube now, so I don't have to do any of the which like version changing or whatever. So RSS straight to the YouTube. You created this, I know, and this will be our third update episode, so we'll have another full episode a week from today, which is Monday, but you know when this comes out it'll be Tuesday. Whatever, y'all have a great week, stay warm, stay cool, stay awesome, stay simple.
Kyler:Stay comfortable.
Kellye:And we'll see you guys next week. See ya, take care out there, we better. Bye.
