MS Coast man who killed, decapitated mom uses insanity defense. Did the jury buy it?
Terelle Johnson knew what he was doing when he stabbed, beat and strangled his mother to death, then cut off her head, a Circuit Court jury decided Wednesday, rejecting Johnson’s insanity defense after deliberating for only 18 minutes.
“This defendant got high, got mad at his mom and killed her,” Assistant District Attorney Matthew Burrell told the jury during closing arguments Wednesday afternoon. “It’s that simple.”
Burrell said Johnson’s insanity defense was “just an excuse for his conduct.”
Johnson will serve a mandatory sentence of life without parole for the first-degree murder of his mother, guidance counselor Sherry Johnson, who was 51 years old when she was killed in June 2018.
The jury agreed Johnson failed to meet the test for insanity, which applies to a defendant who doesn’t understand the gravity of their actions or know right from wrong at the time of the crime.
The verdict came at the end of a two-day trial in Circuit Court before Judge Steve Simpson.
Johnson, 35, was an unemployed pothead who lived with his mom, a guidance counselor. They fought often and were embroiled in a big argument the day Johnson killed her, he later confessed.
Jury hears insanity defense
Terelle Johnson’s attorney, Jim Davis of Gulfport, attempted to show Johnson was insane when he killed his mother.
Forensic psychologist Laura Brodie of Gulfport testified for the defense, saying Johnson suffered from schizophrenia, cannabis-use disorder and delusions.
Brodie reviewed Johnson’s history of mental problems, going over hospital records that dated to 2015. She said Johnson believed that his mother was an impostor — the twin of his real mom, who had been killed. He also believed his mother was taking his money.
“I believe his paranoia was so high that he thought he was justified in what he did,” Brodie testified.
On the day Sherry Johnson died, she and her son were arguing about credit cards. He thought they belonged to him and wanted them back. He later told investigators that he had friends to see and places to go.
Johnson chose not to testify, but the jury heard his audio taped confession to Stone County sheriff’s deputies the day after he was taken into custody. Deputies found his mother’s body in the back yard during a welfare check. Her head, which Johnson had cut off, was on the other side of a privacy fence.
Davis tried to further his insanity defense by pointing out how illogical Johnson’s actions were. Johnson told Brodie that he placed the head away from the body on purpose.
“He told me that he had taken her head off and put it in a separate place so that she couldn’t reconnect and come back to life,” Brodie testified.
Killer’s acts, words prove sanity
But Burrell and a second assistant district attorney who helped try the case, Billy Stage, insisted Johnson’s statements were all an act.
Testifying for the prosecution, a forensic psychologist from Mississippi State Hospital outside Jackson diagnosed Johnson as schizophrenic and agreed he has cannabis-use disorder. But the psychologist, Amanda Gugliano, said that Johnson understood what he did was wrong, even though he was mentally ill.
Prosecutors also used Johnson’s own actions and words against him. When deputies came to the Johnson home, the door to his mother’s bedroom was locked. They would soon discover blood covered the walls, ceiling and floor.
The locked door indicated Johnson knew what he had done was wrong and was trying to hide the murder scene, prosecutors said.
Johnson used bleach to clean the floors in the common area, where blood had dripped when he took his mother’s body outside after it began to swell. He didn’t want the house to smell bad, he said.
Johnson told investigators the next morning, and his father a few days later, that he had “messed up.”
He said in his audio taped statement that he kept leaving the house to stop the fighting, but it would start up again when he came back. He instigated the final fight, he said, when he walked into his mother’s bedroom.
After she died, he cut off her head, using a butter knife beside the bed.
“That didn’t do nothing,” he said, “so I used my teeth and hands.”
