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Prosecutor seeks death penalty in Precious Doe case

A US prosecutor announced on Saturday that he would be seeking the death penalty against a man who was charged with beheading his three-year-old stepdaughter, and whose body was unidentified for nearly four years and was known only as "Precious Doe."

Harrell Johnson, 26, was initially charged with second-degree murder in the death of the child, Erica Michelle Green.

Charge upgraded

But that charge was upgraded in August to first-degree murder, opening the door for the death penalty.

"Very few cases have touched our community more deeply than Erica's death," Jackson County Prosecutor Mike Sanders said.

"It was really because of the community, which wouldn't let Erica's death be forgotten, that we're seeking the death penalty now against Harrell Johnson," he added.

Arrested

Johnson and his wife, Michelle Johnson, 30, of Muskogee, Oklahoma, were arrested on May 5 when Kansas City police followed up on a tip from a relative identifying Erica and linking them to her death.

Erica's body was found in a park in Kansas City in 2001, when she would have been almost four.

Her head was discovered in a trashbag nearby.

The community called her "Precious Doe" and hundreds gathered for a funeral in December 2001.

Exhumed

The body was exhumed in July 2003 so that experts could make a lifelike bust of what she may have looked like.

She was buried a second time in August, under a new marble grave marker bearing her name.

Sanders said on Saturday that additional charges were not immediately expected against Michelle Johnson, who has been charged with second-degree murder in Erica's death.

Under the influence

According to court documents, Harrell Johnson admitted that he had been under the influence of alcohol and the hallucinogenic drug PCP at the time when he became angry with Erica because she refused to go to bed.

He allegedly admitted kicking her and throwing her to the ground.

After she died, he said, he used hedge clippers to sever her head and dispose of her body, with the assistance of his wife.

The couple will be tried in court separately.

Harrell Johnson is being held without bail, Sanders said.

Michelle Johnson remains in jail in lieu of US$500,000 bail.
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