43
Jury finds Cincinnati man guilty of rape and kidnapping
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
The jury rendered a mixed verdict in the Kevin T. Johns trial Thursday, finding him guilty of rape and kidnapping but not guilty of two counts of aggravated robbery and one count of kidnapping.
The jury spent about six hours in deliberations before announcing a verdict that could put Johns in prison for more than 20 years.
Conviction on the remaining charges could have added an additional 30 years.
Judge Andrew Logan of Trumbull County Common Pleas Court, who presided over the trial, will sentence Johns, 24, of Cincinnati, on April 1.
Johns was charged after two Warren women reported that a man kidnapped them at gunpoint from a home on Woodbine Avenue Southeast on April 13, 2013, forced them to drive to a house on Kenilworth Avenue Southeast, then raped one of the women in the back of their car while the other was told to stand near the car.
The man took their cellphones, then fled, the women said. They went to a hospital right afterward for a rape examination that produced DNA evidence pointing to Johns as the assailant.
But Johns testified at the trial, saying he did not rape anyone or kidnap or rob the women.
He said he and his friend, Taemarr Walker, knew both women. And he thinks the women made up the allegations because of money Walker owed the rape victim.
Johns said he and Walker went with the two women to a motel, where he had sex with the rape victim, and Walker had sex with the other woman. But Johns said he didn’t know the name of the motel or the day it happened.
Walker, 24, was killed last October in a confrontation with a Warren police officer.
Johns testified he met Walker while they were in prison, and Johns had come to Trumbull County early in 2013 for the first time to stay with Walker.
The jury said Johns was guilty of kidnapping one of the women and raping the other.
Johns’ attorney, Dan Keating, in closing arguments Wednesday, questioned why the Warren police didn’t try to use technology to locate the two cellphones the women said Johns stolen from them.
He suggested it was because police made a “rush to judgment” about what happened, whereas a Warren police detective said it was because cellphone companies are not very cooperative with police.