Nikolaus Johnson

Cop Killer Nickolus Johnson Deserves to Die

Compiled by Lewis Loflin

Update June 17, 2019: Cop killer now claims epilepsy and brain damage made him do it.

During much of his original trial Johnson acted like a smart-ass and to me showed no remorse. His lawyers have been trying to push some kind of mental illness to save him from death row. The antics continue as he refused to show up at his hearing. Some news extracts:

Judge William K. Rogers ordered him to appear, but he refused. Judge Rogers said,

"Its in my opinion that he is jeopardizing....obviously jeopardizing his case if he's not here to interact with council and respond to testimony that may be adverse to his position."

His lawyers claimed he had epileptic fits during the ambush, why wasn't that brought up then? They bought in a professional witness a Dr. Siddhartha Shayam Nadkarni from NYU.

His lawyers and their professional "witness" claim Johnson has 'brain injuries' - "I think that Mr. Johnson suffers from temporal lobe epilepsy, a frontal lobe syndrome."

Dr. Nadkarni said the epilepsy could be hereditary - "Multiple members of his family suffer from different kinds of medical problems...including mental illness."

Does that go for the collection of illegitimate children he fathered?

They claim "Johnson was experiencing epileptic symptoms the day he shot and killed officer Vance." They can't possibly know that.

And "He hadn't slept the night before, he hadn't slept for days actually before the day of the shooting."

Guess he hadn't slept when he impregnated a 17-year-old but knew he faced prison for his latest criminal act. He knew he was facing prison and acted on it. He knew enough to try the get the 17-year-old to get an abortion.

And what the hell was a convicted felon doing with a gun? Guess he was too mentally ill to know it was a gun? Really?

If he had been in prison and kept there this would never have happened.

In my non-professional opinion Johnson is a typical sociopathic violent black male. The very ones Black Lives Matter march for. The typical result of a fatherless home.

His earlier convictions he "was found guilty as a juvenile in 1996 of concealing merchandise and that he was convicted as an adult in 1997 of possession of cocaine with the intent to distribute, burglary and the offense of malicious wounding."

Career criminal 101. He popped more children from other multiple women. Would one like to guess how those children will turn out?

What the hell is wrong with these people?

As of 2020 no news of a new trial. Time to end this circus and carry out justice.


(Earlier)

Update: April 14, 2015 the Bristol Herald Courier is reporting convicted cop killer Nicholaus Johnson is asking for a new trial in a Blountville court. He was convicted of the 2004 execution style shooting death of a Bristol Tennessee police officer. His execution date for first-degree murder in April 2014 was granted a stay.

Johnson is petitioning the court for a new trial claiming he has diagnosed with medical disorders such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and Crohn's disease. They even threw in Tourette's syndrome.

They are also claiming judicial misconduct when prosecutors are alleged to have obtained pledges from jurors to sentence him to death. And the list goes on and on.

There is no doubt Johnson executed the police officer over fears of being charged with statutory rape for impregnating a 17-year-old whore that already popped two illegitimate children and later another three by Johnson. Johnson too is the product of a single mother and has a long criminal history.

Court records show he engaged in earlier violent behavior.

All along those on Johnson's side had been trying to play the race card - Johnson is black. So we will have to see if the race card will work this time.

Also note when I saw him on television entering the court he still has the same smug expression he has shown all along and no sign of remorse. Perhaps there is some mental issue with this man.

Facts of the case from court records

On the evening of November 27, 2004, Officer Mark Vance was shot and killed by the Defendant at the Sullivan County home of the seventeen-year-old girl the Defendant had gotten pregnant only a few months prior.

Officer Vance responded to the residence that evening, along with other officers, after the girl’s father, W.M., placed a call to 911 about 1 a disturbance at his home. W.M., a long-haul truck driver, placed the emergency call after receiving a call on his cell phone from his daughter, B.M., who told him that a man was at their home threatening her with a gun.

Unbeknownst to W.M. prior to having received this call, B.M. engaged in consensual sex with the Defendant in the late summer of 2004 and became pregnant as a result of the encounter. After learning of the pregnancy from B.M., the Defendant pressed B.M. to get an abortion. B.M. refused. On the night of the murder, B.M. and the Defendant argued on the telephone about the pregnancy because the Defendant still wanted B.M. to get an abortion.

After their argument on the telephone ended, the Defendant arrived at B.M.’s residence with two guns. The Defendant’s concern that evening was that W.M. would have the Defendant arrested for statutory rape upon learning of B.M.'s pregnancy. Almost immediately upon entering the residence that night in response to the 911 call placed by W.M., Officer Vance was shot in the face by the Defendant at close range...

Laughing Johnson said the following:

Listen, I'm all right. Am I alive or dead, cop? It ain't nothing but a - it ain't nothing but clean sheets or maybe the electric chair. I'll be all right. . . .

That don't scare me. You can - you can do it right now. It don't scare me, cop. You're a bitch if you don't do it. . . . Yeah, I'm all right alive or dead, free or alive. . . . It's all a game to me, man.

This ain't nothing to me, man. . . . Lay down sweet, lay down easy, go do my time and I'll go to the chair if I got to. She don't mean nothing to me, man. . . . Take me for life. Take me to the chair if you want to. Life ain't sweet.

They don't teach you that in training, do they? . . . Yeah, you weren't ready for that. You weren't ready for that in training. . . . Don't take me for no joke, man. . . . It don't feel good, do it? That's how it feels when you took him away for life, don't it? I said that's how it feels when you take my fucking jail - take their life away from somebody. That's how it feels.

Update: Court upholds conviction and death penalty for Nickolus Johnson March 05, 2012. The Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals rejected a request by convicted killer Nickolus Johnson to overturn his first degree murder conviction and death penalty. Read the entire transcript.

Convicted cop-killer, Nickolus Johnson, age 28, appeared before Sullivan County Judge Jerry Beck in December 8, 2005. Over two and a half years later, his murder trial is set to begin with jury selection in April 2007. The fun started almost from the first minute as Johnson accused the Sullivan county sheriff's deputies of brutality.

Sheriff Wayne Anderson strongly denied this. Johnson also tried to fire his attorney for among other things asking for a mental evaluation of him, claiming they won't listen to his side of the story, won't visit him in jail, or take his phone calls. Judge Jerry Beck wasn't having any part of it. Johnson has been so disruptive they've threatened to gag him.

Johnson is accused of ambushing Bristol, Tennessee police officer Mark Vance in November 2004 shooting him in the face with a .357 magnum. Vance was responding to a domestic disturbance call over Johnson getting his 17 (at the time) year-old girlfriend pregnant. (It's reported she had triplets.) Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.

To quote a local news editorial: "Johnson's case has been set for trial two previous times - in November 2005 and July 2006. His lawyers asked to delay the trial both times so that Johnson could receive mental evaluations. The defense is expected to contend that Johnson was schizophrenic at the time of the shooting...Vance, 30, was shot at point-blank range in the head as he climbed the stairs...Johnson, a former gang member and convicted felon, was caught on a police cruiser audiotape admitting that he killed Vance..."

So far racism hasn't entered into this. In nearby Knoxville, four black men murdered, raped, and tortured a young white couple after a car jacking, while the press was in a frenzy over the Duke Lacrosse Case. This has brought accusations of press bias of not reporting black on white crime, while over reporting even the most minor white on black crime.

In this case like Knoxville, the press has never mentioned the race of Johnson, this is known only from his pictures. (He is black, Vance was white.) I don't believe race has anything to do with this and local officials have bent over backwards to see it doesn't. But what is really damaging to Johnson are his pictures in the Bristol Herald Courier. They show what to many seem an unrepentant "smartass" to quote some residents. Security will be tight.

Conclusion: Johnson to face death

This case hit home with me in an indirect way. I knew his mother Kathy Johnson Bunch. She worked for a social agency helping my disabled wife. My impression was she seemed intelligent and caring. So when I got a call from her telling me she was Johnson's mother and she thought my writing on this website was unfair, I decided to tone it down and await the outcome. Regardless of my feelings for her, it seems I was vindicated. But this trial still bothers me for a lot of reasons.

My first question is why Vance seemed to stumble blindly into an apparent ambush. He got a call about a man with gun and should have been more cautious. According to news reports, Tiffany Mitchell and Termaine McMorris went to meet Vance outside, told him everything was OK. Vance said he had to go inside and check anyway. As the three walked up the stairs inside the house Tiffany claimed to have told Vance, "He's got a gun." Did this pair really warn Vance or put him at ease?

This case was full of losers from the beginning. Johnson's girlfriend Brittany Mitchell had already had one illegitimate child by another man, and at 19 has triplets by Johnson. (All four are not in her custody according to press reports.) Johnson had already fathered two other illegitimate children by two other women for a total of five.

In 1997 he was convicted of malicious wounding and was a convicted felon. All during the trial he showed no remorse, and regardless of some forensics questions, his own words on tape (in the police car) buried him. He tried to fire his attorneys, refused to present mitigating testimony, then changed his mind. Both he and his family played the race card, the jury didn't buy it. They sentenced him to death.

Press coverage

The Bristol Herald Courier did a superb job covering this case, but there was a virtual blackout in the national press. I did find one very minor piece from the AP, but it seemed to almost blame the jury. Johnson's race was never brought up while the unwarranted hysteria and attacks against the Duke Lacrosse team raged day and night. Another high profile gang of black murdered a white couple was raging in nearby Knoxville, suffered a similar news blackout as did the attack in Long Beach, California where three white women were attacked and badly injured by a gang of ten blacks.

I did find this case was removed from Indymedia for some reason, but then they went on to glorify Mumia Abu-Jamal, a black Panther and Nation of Islam convert that murdered a white Philadelphia police officer. He is supported by the NAACP and Keith Ellison, our "first Muslim congressman." Equally disturbing is the glorification of trash like Ice-T, who produced such great music as "Cop Killer."

Some extracts 04/28/2007 Kingsport Times-News

While the jury took little more than an hour and a half, including lunch, to find Johnson guilty of first-degree murder on Tuesday, deliberations during the sentencing phase of the trial took much longer. The jury had three options: life in prison, life in prison without parole, or death. The jury returned its verdict at 4:50 p.m. Friday, but after examining the paperwork Circuit Judge Jerry Beck directed them to write the verdict in accordance with statutory requirements and sent them back to the jury room. By 6 p.m., jurors were back in the courtroom.

They again said Johnson's previous conviction on malicious wounding and the fact he had killed a law enforcement officer who was performing his duties outweighed all of the favorable testimony his family and friends had given on Thursday. Vance was responding to a domestic call involving a man threatening a woman with a gun on Belmont Avenue when he was killed.

According to testimony, Johnson said that if he were going back to prison it would be for murder, not statutory rape. He also said he would kill the first person to enter the home, whether it be Walter Mitchell, father of Britney Mitchell who gave birth to Johnson's triplet daughters, or a police officer...

Bristol Police Chief Blaine Wade said, "We're satisfied with the verdict. But it's sad it won't bring Mark back." Vance age 30, left a six-year-old daughter.

White victims of black violence, no hate crime charges.

Female victims of black violence.

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