Man gets 16-year prison sentence for attacks on two women
By Joe Gorman
YOUNGSTOWN
There was no happy medium Thursday in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court as Judge Lou D’Apolito was sentencing a man for two attacks on women last March, one of whom almost died.
The second victim of Michael Johnson, 38, wanted him to get drug treatment.
The first victim, who almost died, wanted him to serve more time for which he was eligible.
In the end, Johnson was sentenced to 16 years in prison for the attacks, the first March 27, 2016, on Beth Stuckey at her Worthington Avenue home for which a jury found him guilty of attempted murder Feb. 9.
The second was for beating and stabbing Sonya Kerr three days after he attacked Stuckey. Kerr, who has multiple sclerosis, was stabbed in the arm and drove herself to St. Elizabeth Youngstown Hospital to seek treatment. Her eyes were swollen so badly that she had to hold them open so she could see to drive.
In the Kerr attack, Johnson pleaded no contest Tuesday to a charge of felonious assault and was found guilty by Judge D’Apolito.
Stuckey was found March 30, 2016, in her home unconscious. She was beaten, burned, whipped and left on the floor. Large tufts of hair are still missing from her scalp, and she told the judge she thinks Johnson is a danger to society and should stay in prison as long as possible. She thought the maximum 11-year sentence for attempted murder was too small. She said she cannot work and still needs several surgeries.
“I don’t trust nobody,” Stuckey said. “I don’t even go anywhere.”
Kerr said she thinks that Johnson was not in his “right state of mind” when he attacked her. She said he is a “very kind, loving person.”
Judge D’Apolito showed Kerr a picture taken after she was beaten and asked: “Does this picture represent what you looked like when this man beat you?” She said it did.
Johnson did not speak because of an appending appeal.
Judge D’Apolito said the beating Stuckey endured was one of the worst he has ever seen, and Johnson deserved the maximum sentence.
“I personally have not seen anything like it,” Judge D’Apolito said. “How this woman was treated as less than a human being, being beaten literally to within an inch of her life.”
Johnson received five years for the beating and stabbing of Kerr. That sentence is running consecutive to the one he received for beating Stuckey.