Murder of Ronald Johnson

Ronald "R.J." Johnson
Ronald Johnson, who was murdered in 2011
Born	Ronald Johnson (1948-04-12)April 12, 1948 Flandreau, Moody County, South Dakota, U.S.
Died	April 12, 2011(2011-04-12) (aged 63) South Dakota State Penitentiary, South Dakota, U.S.
Cause of death	Fatal head wounds
Resting place	Lone Rock Cemetery
Nationality	American
Other names	Ron Johnson R.J.
Occupation	Corrections officer
Employer	South Dakota Department of Corrections (1988 – 2011)
Known for	Murder victim
Spouse	Lynette Johnson
Children	Toni Schafer (daughter)

On April 12, 2011, in South Dakota State Penitentiary, 63-year-old corrections officer Ronald Johnson was attacked and murdered by two inmates who were in midst of a prison escape attempt, and they were later caught by other prison officers while trying to disguise themselves. The two prisoners, Eric Robert and Rodney Berget, were charged with murdering Johnson and sentenced to death by the courts of South Dakota. Robert, who waived his right to appeal, was executed on October 15, 2012, while Berget, whose brother was sentenced to death in Oklahoma in 1987, was executed six years later on October 29, 2018, after failing his appeals to overturn the death sentence. A third prisoner, Michael Nordman, who provided the murder weapons to the pair, was sentenced to life imprisonment after pleading guilty to his role behind the murder.

Murder

On April 12, 2011, during a prison escape attempt, two convicts under long prison sentences attacked and murdered a corrections officer in South Dakota State Penitentiary.

On the morning of April 12, 2011, the date of his 63rd birthday, corrections officer Ronald Johnson, who had been on the job for 23 years and close to retiring, was working in the Pheasantland Industries, a print shop building located within the prison compound, where inmates work on upholstery, signs, furniture and other projects. Johnson, who was alone in the shop, was attacked by two prisoners, Eric Robert and Rodney Berget, who bludgeoned Johnson severely with a pipe, and wrapped his head in plastic wrap. The brutal attack on Johnson resulted in his death; an autopsy result revealed that Johnson suffered at least three fatal head wounds and multiple fractures to the hands and arms, which were consistent with defensive injuries.

At that time, Berget was serving two life sentences for both kidnapping and attempted murder, while Robert was serving a jail term of 80 years for kidnapping. Both men, who were classified as maximum-security inmates, plotted to escape from prison since August 2010 and a part of their plan was to masquerade as a prison officer with uniforms of the prison staff and leave the prison. The two men, both aged 49, received the help of 47-year-old Michael Nordman, a convicted rapist who was serving a life term. Nordman provided the two men the weapons they need to facilitate their escape, specifically the pipe used to batter Johnson to death and plastic wrap used to cover his head. Robert and Berget waited until the shop was empty and Johnson was left alone in the shop, which made them took the opportunity to attack and kill Johnson.

After murdering Johnson and hiding his body, Robert put on the uniform of Johnson and Berget climbed into a box placed on a cart. Pretending to be Johnson, Robert pushed the cart out of the shop and was heading for the west gate of the prison compound. Jodi Hall, a female corrections officer, spotted that Robert did not swipe his identification card and asked for him to identify himself. Although Robert tried to get away with it and introduced himself with a false identity, the plot was eventually seen through and despite resisting arrest, both Robert and Berget eventually surrendered and were subdued by the prison officers.

The body of Johnson was eventually discovered inside the shop where he was attacked and murdered. Berget, Robert and Nordman were soon charged with the first-degree murder of Ronald Johnson. Under South Dakota law, first-degree murder carries either the death penalty or life imprisonment.

Perpetrators

Eric Donald Robert

Robert's early life

Eric Donald Robert
Born	(1962-05-31)May 31, 1962 Massachusetts, U.S.
Died	October 15, 2012(2012-10-15) (aged 50) South Dakota State Penitentiary, South Dakota, U.S.
Cause of death	Execution by lethal injection
Motive	Prison escape
Conviction(s)	Murder Kidnapping
Criminal penalty	Kidnapping 80 years' imprisonment Murder Death
Details
Victims	Ronald Johnson, 63 (deceased) Unnamed female kidnapping victim
Date	July 24, 2005 (kidnapping) April 12, 2011 (murder)
Location(s)	Black Hawk (2005) South Dakota State Penitentiary (2011)
Imprisoned at	South Dakota State Penitentiary

Born on May 31, 1962, in Massachusetts, Eric Donald Robert grew up in Wisconsin with his mother and sister, after his father was gone when Robert was six months old. While his mother worked three jobs and studied for a college degree, Robert took on a father-like role in the family and took care of the family, and he excelled in school, graduating 18th in his class at Hayward High School in 1980. He also completed a degree at the University of Wisconsin-Superior after he majored in biology, in addition to a minor in chemistry.

During his adulthood, Robert worked as a wastewater treatment supervisor for the city of Superior in 2000. Although he was known to be getting along well with his co-workers in his jobs, Robert's ex-girlfriends from previous relationships described him as aggressive and mean, and some of them were previously abused by Robert.

On July 24, 2005, Robert kidnapped a woman near Black Hawk and for this offence, Robert was convicted and sentenced to 80 years' imprisonment, and transferred to South Dakota State Penitentiary to serve his jail term. When he committed the murder of Ronald Johnson, Robert had already served six years out of his sentence.

Robert's trial

On October 27, 2011, Robert was sentenced to death after he pleaded guilty to murder and chose to forgo the option of sentencing by a jury. Robert reportedly told a judge to hand him a death sentence as he would kill more people if he did not get the death penalty, stating that his regret was to not bring along the pipe used to kill Johnson and used it to murder the officer who caught him.

In sentencing Robert to death, Second Circuit Judge Bradley Zell stated that there was no possibility for Robert to be rehabilitated and his brutal attack on Johnson arose from "extreme anger to the point of hatred." Attorney General Marty Jackley told the press that the state sought the death penalty based on five aggravating factors in this case, including the facts that the victim was a corrections officer, the manner of the victim's death and antecedents of the offenders, and the conduct of Robert showed that the death penalty, which was reserved for the most heinous crimes, was justified in Robert's case.

Rodney Scott Berget

Berget's early life

Rodney Scott Berget
Born	(1962-05-15)May 15, 1962 South Dakota, U.S.
Died	October 29, 2018(2018-10-29) (aged 56) South Dakota State Penitentiary, South Dakota, U.S.
Cause of death	Execution by lethal injection
Motive	Prison escape
Conviction(s)	Murder Kidnapping Attempted murder
Criminal penalty	Kidnapping and attempted murder Life imprisonment (x2) Murder Death
Details
Victims	Ronald Johnson, 63 (deceased) Unnamed kidnapping victim
Date	2003 (kidnapping) April 12, 2011 (murder)
Location(s)	South Dakota (2003, 2011)
Imprisoned at	South Dakota State Penitentiary

Born on May 15, 1962, in South Dakota, Rodney Scott Berget was one of six children in his family. Berget's family, who made a living out of farming prior to his birth, were extremely poor and lived in the rural areas of the state. After the farm failed, the family moved to Aberdeen. Berget's parents Benford and Rosemary Berget would divorce sometime in the 1970s, after the loss of the farm, the new city life and the gradual abusive nature of Berget's father (who also turned to alcoholism) took a toll on their marriage. Berget and his siblings were also abused by their father since young.

During his adolescent years, Berget first went to prison after he committed theft. At age 25, in 1987, while serving a jail term for grand theft and prison escape, Berget and five other inmates broke out of the South Dakota State Penitentiary, and Berget remained on the run for a month before his re-capture.

Berget was not the first person in his family to face the death penalty. In a separate case, Berget's brother Roger Berget was charged together with another man for the kidnapping and murder of a schoolteacher Rick Patterson in Oklahoma in 1985. Roger and his co-accused Michael Smith were both sentenced to death in 1987, but Roger was ultimately executed at age 39 on June 8, 2000, while Smith's death sentence was commuted to life without parole after an appeal in 1992. Berget himself was still incarcerated at South Dakota at the time of his brother's execution, and he grieved over the death of his brother. Berget was eventually released and would celebrate his birthday for the first and only time in 40 years in 2002. According to Berget, it was the happiest moment of his life, which had been riddled with tragedy and darkness.

In 2003, Berget was arrested and convicted of kidnapping and attempted murder, and he was sentenced to double terms of life imprisonment. By the time he murdered Johnson, Berget already served eight years at South Dakota State Penitentiary.

Berget's trial

Like Robert, Berget pleaded guilty to the charge of murdering Johnson, and a sentencing trial was conducted for him in early 2012. Several witnesses were called to testify about Berget's tragic childhood and dark past, and the defence implored the court to not impose the death sentence but opt for life imprisonment on humanitarian grounds.

On February 6, 2012, Barget was sentenced to death after the trial judge Bradley Zell rejected the defence's mitigation plea, stating that Barget's troubled childhood and other extenuating circumstances of his case were outweighed by the depravity of the crime.

Michael Joe Nordman

Nordman's early life

Michael Joe Nordman
Born	(1964-09-27) September 27, 1964 Sioux Falls, South Dakota, U.S.
Motive	Prison escape
Conviction(s)	Murder Rape Abuse of a minor
Criminal penalty	Life imprisonment (x2) (murder, rape and child abuse)
Details
Victims	Ronald Johnson, 63 (deceased) Unnamed female minor victims
Date	February 8, 1990 (rape) April 12, 2011 (murder)
Location(s)	South Dakota (1990, 2011)
Imprisoned at	South Dakota State Penitentiary

Michael Nordman was born in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, on September 27, 1964. Little is known about Nordman's life before he turned to a life of crime in 1983, the same year when he was convicted and jailed for burglary. Four years later, in 1987, Nordman was charged with escape from legal custody and sent to prison a second time. However, his first major offence would take place three years later in 1990.

On February 8, 1990, Nordman entered the home of a ten-year-old girl in Sioux Falls, asking for gas because his car ran out of gas. The girl went to look for a gas can out of kindness, but Nordman took the opportunity to attack and rape the girl. Additionally, Nordman even slammed the head of the victim's sister into a car, and subsequently fled the scene. A manhunt was conducted and a day later, Nordman was arrested in Klondike, Iowa.

Nordman, who pleaded guilty but insane to two charges of rape and abuse of a minor in July 1990, was sentenced to life in prison. At the time of Johnson's murder in 2011, Nordman had already served 21 years behind bars at South Dakota State Penitentiary.

Nordman's trial

On February 8, 2012, 47-year-old Michael Nordman, who was not involved in the prison escape but having handed the murder weapons to both Barget and Robert, pleaded guilty to murder. The judge Bradley Zell sentenced Nordman to a second life term, which would run consecutively with the other life sentence he received in 1990 for the Sioux Falls child rape case. Reportedly, Johnson's widow Lynette Johnson was disappointed by the verdict of life in prison, as she wanted all three killers, including Nordman, to be sentenced to death, although both the prosecution and defence agreed that Nordman played a less culpable role compared to Robert and Berget.

Executions of Robert and Berget

Robert (2012)

After he was sentenced to death, Eric Robert waived his right to appeal and asked to be executed immediately. Although there was a mandatory review process exhibited in all death penalty cases in South Dakota, Robert also applied to bypass the process itself, but in August 2012, Robert's death sentence was ultimately upheld by the South Dakota Supreme Court, paving way for a death warrant to be issued for Robert that same month, scheduling him to be put to death in October of that same year. South Dakota Governor Dennis Daugaard also declined to stop the execution.

On October 15, 2012, 50-year-old Eric Donald Robert was executed via lethal injection at South Dakota State Penitentiary. Robert shared his last meal of ice cream with his lawyer and fasted for 40 hours out of religious reasons prior to his execution. In his last words, Robert stated that he forgave the warden Douglas Weber for executing him, before a single dose of pentobarbital was administered to him, and he was pronounced dead at 10:24pm. Johnson's widow attended the execution, and she told reporters in a statement that she wanted people to remember "how kind, how wonderful and caring" her husband was and supported the execution.

Robert was the first death row inmate to be executed in South Dakota since 2007 and he was also the 17th person to be executed in South Dakota since 1877. Robert's execution took place just two weeks before Donald Moeller was scheduled to be executed for the 1990 kidnapping, rape and murder of nine-year-old Becky O'Connell; Moeller's original execution date of October 28, 2012 was pushed back by two days to October 30, 2012, and he was ultimately put to death on that date itself.

Berget (2018)

Unlike Robert, Rodney Berget continued to appeal against the death sentence for the following six years before it was ultimately carried out in 2018.

On January 3, 2013, Berget's death sentence was overturned by the South Dakota Supreme Court after they found that Berget's statements to a psychiatrist were not adequately considered by the trial judge during sentencing, and a re-sentencing trial was ordered for Berget, who was once again sentenced to death in May 2013.

The second death sentence was subsequently upheld by the South Dakota Supreme Court in August 2014, and seven months later, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Berget's final appeal against the death sentence. Berget was originally scheduled to be executed on May 3, 2015, but due to an appeal, the execution date was put on hold while the appeal was pending before the courts.

In 2016, Berget made another appeal against the death sentence, but he later applied to withdraw the appeal in spite of his lawyers' advice to not do so. Berget reportedly explained that he would not face the prospect of spending at least 30 years in jail under a life sentence and hoped to be executed soon.

In February 2018, Minnehaha County judge Doug Hoffman confirmed the death sentence of Berget after finding that he was eligible for a death sentence and did not have an intellectual disability.

Subsequently, Berget's death warrant was finalized in August 2018 and he was ordered to be executed between October 28 and November 3 of that same year. Without the consent of Berget, Juliet Yackel, a defence lawyer, filed appeals to the South Dakota Supreme Court to delay the execution on the grounds that Berget had an intellectual disability and asked that the death sentence should be prohibited in his case. However, the South Dakota Supreme Court rejected the appeal, and Yackel further appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court against this decision. However, hours before Berget was scheduled to be executed, the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed the appeal. In both of these appeals, Berget asked the court to reject Yackel's appeals as he wanted his death sentence to be quickly carried out as scheduled. Still, several opponents of capital punishment protested against the execution of Berget on the grounds that the death penalty was prohibited for intellectually disabled offenders and this exception should apply in the case of Berget.

On October 29, 2018, 56-year-old Rodney Berget was put to death via lethal injection at South Dakota State Penitentiary, six years after the execution of his accomplice Eric Robert. He became the fourth person to be executed in South Dakota since 2007 and the 19th person to have his death sentence carried out in South Dakota since 1877. The execution was originally supposed to be carried out in the afternoon at 1.30pm, but due to the appeals, the procedure did not commence and was instead delayed for five to six hours before it was finally carried out.

For his final meal, Berget ordered pancakes, waffles, maple syrup and butter, breakfast sausages, scrambled eggs, french fries, Pepsi and Cherry Nibs licorice. Before receiving a single dose of pentobarbital, Berget reportedly made a joking remark, "Sorry for the delay, I got caught in traffic." About 12 minutes after the drug was administered to him, Berget was pronounced dead at 7:37pm.

In response to the death of Berget, Johnson's widow, who attended the execution with her daughter and son-in-law and other family members, commented that her late husband died an extremely brutal death caused by bludgeoning, and it was a "cruel and unusual punishment" compared to Berget's "peaceful" and "dignified" death. Toni Schafer, Johnson's daughter, stated that Berget "chose to be evil" and he should pay the price for murdering her father.

Aftermath

In 2014, when South Dakota's House committee debated on a bill to abolish the death penalty in South Dakota, Johnson's widow Lynette Johnson urged the committee to not remove the death penalty, stating that the death penalty should remain and applied for the most dangerous of offenders for the protection of society, and stated that life imprisonment itself could not help protect her late husband from murder, as Michael Nordman, who was under a life term, provided the weapons for both Berget and Robert to kill Johnson, and former prosecutor Marty Jackley corroborated that both Berget and Robert were able to commit the murder despite being classified as maximum security inmates. In the end, the bill to repeal capital punishment was narrowly rejected by a majority vote of 7–6, allowing South Dakota to retain the death penalty, and it indirectly enabled Berget to be executed four years later for murdering Johnson. A second bill to repeal the death penalty in South Dakota was similarly rejected by the Senate State Affairs Committee in 2015.

In 2014, Lynette filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the South Dakota Department of Corrections, citing that the state prison officials' negligence of duty was part of the reason that led to the murder of her husband, and although this was dismissed by a federal judge, the court order also allowed the other claims raised in the lawsuit to be heard before the state courts.

In October 2015, Johnson was one of 53 law enforcement officers who were commemorated during an annual community event to remember these officers who died in the line of duty.

In October 2018, during the final week leading up to the execution of Berget, Lynette Johnson told a newspaper that she continued to struggle with sadness over the murder of her husband. She stated that life without a husband, father and grandfather for her family was hard, and they continued to conduct birthday parties annually for Johnson on his birthday (also his death anniversary) every year. Lynette commented that while the family might not fully find closure with the execution of Berget, she was at peace with the knowledge that he would not harm another corrections officer or anyone else in society.

In December 2018, two months after Berget was put to death, Lynette filed a lawsuit to have her late husband's belongings and corrections officer uniform returned to her, and in the end, the court ruled that the uniform was state property and belonged to the South Dakota Department of Corrections and did not return it to Lynette, who nonetheless managed to receive Johnson's other belongings.

In 2023, 11 years after Eric Robert was put to death, it was reported that during investigations in one of his previous crimes, Robert had been named a suspect behind the unsolved disappearance of a seven-year-old girl named Alexis Patterson in 2002, and it was suspected that Robert had kidnapped Patterson, as a woman allegedly saw Robert saving an African American young girl from running across the road on the date of Patterson's disappearance; Patterson was also of African American descent. Robert had denied any involvement in Patterson's disappearance prior to the execution.

See also

• Capital punishment in South Dakota
• List of people executed in South Dakota
• List of people executed in the United States in 2012
• List of people executed in the United States in 2018