Jury Urges Life Without Parole in Nurse’s Murder

A jury deliberated 30 minutes Wednesday before recommending life in prison without parole for a Pasadena man convicted of murdering an Altadena nurse on her doorstep.

The penalty phase of the trial, in Los Angeles Superior Court, ended about 11 a.m. Wednesday, after only a day of testimony.

On Monday, the jury convicted LaMin Johnson, 26, in the Jan. 3, 1997, murder of Marsha Lee Birch.

Johnson was also convicted on about 15 other felony counts stemming from a five-month crime rampage that he and co-defendant Jason Mency of Monrovia carried out in the west San Gabriel Valley in 1997.

The killer’s parents and some of his seven older siblings made appeals for his life. The victim’s family had asked the panel to sentence the aspiring musician to death.

Mency, 26, was convicted of about five dozen crimes and was sentenced to 219 years behind bars plus three life prison terms and ordered to pay $600,000 in restitution. Two juries had deadlocked over whether he deserved to die for his crimes.

This was Johnson’s second trial for Birch’s murder and other crimes. The first jury deadlocked over the murder charge but convicted him on other charges. The second jury also found Johnson guilty of second-degree burglary of a vehicle, grand theft of a firearm and armed criminal action.

Johnson’s attorney, James Bisnow, said the defendant and his family are very happy that his life has been spared but said they plan to appeal the murder conviction.

Prosecutors contended the defendants used police scanners and cut alarm and phone wires to burglarize homes and cars several times a week, and shot anyone who got in the way.