No mercy for 'Savage'
Jonathan "Savage" Johnston, a 30-year-old Norteno gang member, wept in a San Francisco courtroom Friday at his sentencing hearing for the 2006 murder of a man he ordered killed in a case of mistaken identity.
Johnston's attorney, Brian Petersen, told Judge Jerome Benson that he was "begging for mercy here."
Probation was the appropriate sentence for Johnston's second-degree murder conviction, Petersen told the judge, noting that the defendant was not the person who stabbed 29-year-old Carlos Urzua to death and that he had no history of violence.
Johnston was with other gang members prowling for rivals when he spotted the unarmed Urzua as he was dropped off at his Alabama Street house at 3 a.m. on Nov. 25, 2006.
Johnston mistook Urzua for a rival and ordered his gang comrades to "get him." The other men promptly robbed, beat and stabbed Urzua, who happened to live near a gang rival of Johnston's but wasn't in a gang himself, police say.
"It's the ultimate urban nightmare, to be executed on your front porch,'' prosecutor Scot Clark said during a break in the hearing.
Johnston, in a statement, said only that he was sorry for the ''tragic loss." He did not take direct responsibility.
In the end, despite all the tears, pleading and begging, Benson ordered Johnston to be imprisoned for 15 years to life.
"This victim was as good as robbed, beaten up and stabbed to death as soon as the defendant's car had stopped,'' the judge said.
Benson had already sentenced the man convicted of first-degree murder in the killing, Royale LeBlanc, 22, to 28 years to life.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/crime/detail?entry_id=49282#ixzz0TXrDk1Fj
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