Jim Edward Johnson, who told police he accidentally shot his friend while filming a rap video at the Palms, appears in Justice Court for a prelim hearing on Tuesday, July 1, 2014. L.E. Baskow
Local news reports
A 26-year-old Las Vegas man has been sentenced to 18 months to eight years in prison for what he maintained was the accidental shooting of his friend, an aspiring rapper and former U.S. Marine.
Jim Edward Johnson was sentenced Tuesday after pleading guilty in August to voluntary manslaughter in the May 15 slaying of Evan Plunkett in a suite at the Palms CASINO
Resort.
Resort.
Defense attorney William Terry maintained that Johnson tried to stop a scuffle when the gun fired accidentally.
The 25-year-old Plunkett lived in Henderson and rapped as "Hollywood Will."
Police say some 50 people fled the shooting at a rap video taping party at a posh 34th-floor penthouse.
I'm going to sort of bounce between two articles that shed a lot more light on this event. Making a rap video using loaded guns and weed for props, what could possibly go wrong,
ReplyDelete"A guest told police that just before the shooting, Johnson had been seated at a dining table with three handguns sitting on top of a large amount of marijuana"."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/19/jim-edward-johnson_n_5352036.html
It sounds like there was a bit more than a "scuffle" going on when this "accident" happened.
"Defense lawyer Bill Terry said Johnson was trying to intervene in a fight on the 34th floor of the Fantasy Tower and slap a bottle out of Plunkett’s hand when the handgun discharged."
But someone else who was there said,
“They keep saying it was an accident,” Plunkett’s older brother, Thomas “TJ” Plunkett, said after the hearing. “It was not an accident.”
Thomas Plunkett told police that he was fighting with Richard Moore on a patio near the suite’s pool when he heard a gunshot and saw his brother lying on the ground, the report stated.
Plunkett later told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that he was pistol-whipped in the back of the head by Johnson, and the gun fired. After Evan Plunkett was shot, Johnson punched the elder brother in the face, fracturing his right cheek bone."
http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/man-gets-18-months-8-years-fatal-shooting-palms
This was a plea deal and one can but imaging what kind of time he was looking at if he didn't take it.
Nice guys. Just the kind you like to have all the guns they want.
DeleteMike, there seems to be no indication that any of these people were prohibited persons. In this country, you get your rights until you lose them by due process.
DeleteThis seems to be a fine example of people trying to live the rap thug life with predictable results.
Indeed. Lawful gun owners (good guys as Kurt would call them) gone bad.
DeleteLawful gun owners (good guys as Kurt would call them) gone bad.
DeleteAs I would call them? You're the one who calls everyone who has not yet been convicted of a felony a "good guy," regardless of how many heinous crimes he has committed, without yet having been convicted.
That's why "good guys" includes the hidden criminal types. It's funny, when convenient for your argument, you throw the innocent until PROVEN guilty thing up in my face.
DeleteYes--a free society must treat everyone as innocent until proven guilty. Jurors are reminded that the accused is presumed innocent until proven guilty, not that he is innocent until then. A person becomes guilty in fact as soon as he or she commits the evil in question, whether he or she is ever convicted, or even suspected.
DeleteThat way, we avoid the ludicrous position you find yourself in when you call someone both a "good guy" and a criminal (whether "hidden," or not).
Oh--one caveat to the above. There are plenty of people (myself included) who I would classify as good guys, but who are, technically, "criminals," if only by virtue of having broken laws that are unjust, and which if anything, impose a moral obligation for their violation. Violation of unjust laws, though, is clearly not what you're talking about when you call someone both a "good guy" and a "hidden criminal."
Oh, on the contrary, Kurt. The violation of unjust laws, because you've decided to call them that, does indeed qualify you to be a hidden criminal.
DeleteThe violation of unjust laws, because you've decided to call them that . . .
DeleteI've "decided to call them that" for the same reason that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. "decided to call" segregation laws unjust--because that's precisely what they are, and I am very much a stickler for the truth, in case you've not noticed.
. . . does indeed qualify you to be a hidden criminal.
So from whom is my criminality "hidden"?
By the way, with your myriad definitions of "hidden criminal," I'm not sure if the following fits--maybe you could clear this up for me. If I defied what I thought was the law regarding putting a vertical foregrip on an AR-15 "pistol," but it turns out that after all these years of me thinking I had been defying that law, it's not the law at all, and my vertical foregrip-equipped AR-15 pistol is quite legal, am I still a "hidden criminal"? I made a good faith effort to break the law--is that good enough?
In defense of my earlier confusion, this was kinda the conventional wisdom on the subject, and the BATFE had itself claimed this was a "crime" on my part.
So waddya' say, Mikeb? Does incorrectly thinking one is breaking the law qualify one for "hidden criminal" status, or do we get disqualified on the grounds of a weird kind of "ignorance of the law is no excuse"?
I guess that would make you a wannabe hidden criminal - even more pathetic.
DeleteI guess that would make you a wannabe hidden criminal . . .
DeleteYou wound me, Mikeb. I don't even get any credit for breaking the "spirit" of the law (or at least what the BATFE claims is the "spirit")? After all, doesn't one of your many definitions of "hidden criminal" (the most amusing one, in my humble opinion) include obeying a law, but in a way that "use[s] inventive ways to circumvent it"?
Besides, not all my "gun criminal" eggs were in the vertical foregrip basket. I promise you I still have some disobedience of gun laws--including at least federal one--going on, so the ghosts of Thoreau, Gandhi, and King need not be disappointed in my spirit of defiance to injustice and evil.
All right, so you're a full-fledged hidden criminal - at least until the day when you're arrested and convicted of a felony. But that's unlikely to ever happen - you're like your mentor Mike V. You like to incite others to act while you sit back and collect your government checks from the safety of your home. More pathetic than that is hard to imagine.
DeleteYou like to incite others to act . . .
DeleteWhom have I "incited," and to what crime, and can you quote any of these "incitements" on my part?
How would I know such a thing, unless, like your blowhard hero you told people to break windows and they did it and it made the news? I can only imagine how many you've influenced badly with your extreme talk. You talk the talk with the best of 'em, and some of those losers who read your shit are surely encouraged to act. Keep up the good work.
DeleteI can only imagine how many you've influenced badly with your extreme talk.
DeleteWell, your vivid imagination certainly gets a lot of work in the gun rights/"gun control" debate.