Apr 29, 2005  |  By: LOU CHIBBARO JR.  | COMMENTS     

A man who testified that he slit the throat of modeling agency owner Michael J. Myers in 2002 in self-defense after the owner allegedly made sexual advances toward him is guilty of premeditated, first-degree murder while armed, according to a verdict handed down last week by a D.C. Superior Court jury.

Gay activists familiar with anti-gay violence issues consider the verdict a strong rebuke to the so-called “gay panic” defense, which activists say has been used in the past to appeal to anti-gay prejudice among jurors.

The April 21 verdict followed a two-week trial in which defendant Markus D. Johnson, 22, testified that Myers attempted to persuade him to pose nude for photographs and rubbed his body against him in a sexually suggestive way during a photo session on March 17, 2002.

Johnson said he used force to defend himself after Myers kept “coming at” him.

In closing arguments, Assistant U.S. Attorneys Roy L. Austin and Gregg Marshall told the jury that Johnson murdered Myers in a “ritualistic” and “systematic” way that included strangling him, stabbing him multiple times with a kitchen knife, striking him with a heavy computer monitor and floor buffing machine, poking him in the face with a screw driver, and slitting his throat with a hack saw.

The two prosecutors argued that the evidence in the case contradicted Johnson’s self-defense claim. They presented witnesses who testified that Myers was heterosexual and had a girlfriend, and that Johnson stole Myers’ car and other valuables, including his wallet, a DVD player, and digital cameras at the murder scene. A prosecution witness also testified that Johnson told others he was unemployed and in need of money at the time of the murder.

‘Imminent danger’
Johnson’s attorney, Marlon Griffith, urged the jury to acquit Johnson, who was 19 at the time of the murder, on grounds that Johnson believed Myers was gay or bisexual and was making sexual advances in a way that threatened his client’s safety.

“He did what he had to do” to protect himself from an “imminent danger,” he told the jury in his closing arguments.

Griffith pointed to testimony by a defense witness that Myers appeared to have had plans to operate an escort service out of his modeling agency office, a development that suggested a link between his modeling agency and sexual activity.

The murder took place in an apartment on the 1100 block of 13th Street, NW, which Myers used as a modeling studio. Witnesses said Johnson obtained the weapons he used to kill Myers, including the hacksaw and the knife, from the apartment.

The two prosecutors said Johnson’s use of “overkill” methods to assault and kill Myers went far beyond the force needed to defend him, even if Myers made a sexual advance.

“We maintain that there is no evidence whatsoever to show that this alleged sexual advance ever happened,” Austin told the jury.

Johnson testified that he accompanied Myers on a model recruiting visit to the Nexus Gold Club, a nightclub in Southeast D.C., sometime prior to the murder, and that Myers told him he had visited sections of the club where men dance with men and women dance with women. Johnson said Myers’ decision to confide this information in him led him to believe that Myers was gay or bisexual.

Two prosecution witnesses associated with Myers’ modeling agency, Washington Models, Inc., testified that Johnson never accompanied Myers to a recruiting visit to that club. An employee with Nexus Gold Club, who declined to identify herself, said Tuesday that the club has a straight clientele and has never had a designated area where same-sex couples dance.

Jeffrey Montgomery, executive director of a Michigan-based group that monitors anti-gay violence, said the gay panic defense is hard to counter because its aim is to put the victim on trial.

“It’s hard to refute this when the victim is dead,” he said. “However, juries are less enamored over this defense than they used to be.”

Lou Chibbaro Jr. can be reached at lchibbaro@washblade.com.