Man serving 20-year term in drug case gets concurrent time in lawyer's death
Already serving a 20-year federal prison term for cocaine trafficking, Calah Johnson was sentenced Monday to another concurrent 20-year term in Missouri state court for accidentally shooting to death a Kansas lawyer.
Attorney Deanna Lieber, 45, was driving home from a Kansas City show with her mother and teenage daughter on July 17, 2009 when she was struck in the neck by a bullet fired by Johnson, reports the Kansas City Star. He pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the Jackson County Circuit Court case and a firearm charge was dismissed.
A red-light camera captured the crime: Johnson, 35, had been shooting at someone in another vehicle. But a stray bullet shattered the window of Lieber, an attorney for the Kansas Department of Education instead, the newspaper reports. It wasn’t until years later, however, that authorities were able to put together a case against Johnson.
He had been scheduled to go to trial on Monday, but state prosecutors agreed to the plea after discussing it with Lieber’s family, reports WDAF.
Lieber had been a research attorney for the Kansas Court of Appeals and the Kansas Supreme Court, and had a private practice in Lawrence before she became general counsel of the education department. Relatives said Lieber was a caring and thoughtful woman who is sorely missed, according to the Star and an earlier Lawrence Journal-World story.
“There is no justice or validation of what he has taken us,” her husband, Joe Lieber, said Monday. “We are still at a much greater loss. You can’t make it right.”
The Associated Press also has a story.
Related coverage:
Kansas City Star: “Charges filed in 2009 killing of driver hit by gunfire on Bruce R. Watkins Drive”
