061001P.pdf   07/30/2007  USA  v.  Angela Jane Johnson
   U.S. Court of Appeals Case No:  06-1001
   U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Iowa - Sioux City   
   [PUBLISHED] [Wollman, Author, with Bye and Smith, Circuit
   Judges]
   Criminal case - Criminal law. Disparity between defendant's death
   sentences and co-defendant's life sentences does not violate the Eighth
   Amendment as the Eighth Amendment does not require proportionality
   between co-defendants' sentences; Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure
   24(b) giving defense and the prosecution an equal number of peremptory
   challenges does not violate a defendant's equal protection rights; district
   court did not abuse its discretion in denying defendant's for-cause
   objection to a juror; argument that defendant was denied a fair trial
   because she had to use some of her peremptory challenges to remove
   jurors she argues the court should have removed for cause rejected;
   district court did not err in denying request for additional peremptory
   challenges; prosecutor's statement concerning jury's consideration of
   mitigating factors was a correct statement of the law; evidence was
   sufficient to show that the murders were committed in furtherance of a
   conspiracy; government proved the elements of Continuing Criminal
   Enterprise murder; various evidentiary challenges, including a challenge
   to admission of evidence under Rule 804(b)(6), rejected; prosecution did
   not make improper comments on defendant's exercise of her right to
   silence; merits-phrase instructions were not erroneous; evidence was
   sufficient to establish defendant's eligibility for the death penalty for the
   murders of three of the victims as there was evidence the murders
   involved torture or serious physical abuse of the victims; out-of-court
   statements were admissible under Crawford; the reading of a poem by
   one victim's childhood friend expressing her sense of loss over the
   victim's death was permissible victim-impact evidence and any potential
   for undue prejudice the reading might have had was lessened by the fact
   that the government did not present an undue amount of such evidence
   and by the fact that defendant was permitted to introduce a significant
   amount of mitigating evidence; no error in penalty-phase verdict forms;
   while certain of the prosecutor's remarks during the penalty phase closing
   argument strayed over the line demarcating permissible and
   impermissible argument, the comments were brief and were not
   significant enough to constitute error or render the proceeding unfair;
   certain of the charges - convictions for murder while engaging in a
   conspiracy and convictions for murder while working in furtherance of a
   Continuing Criminal Enterprise - were multiplicitous, and the case is
   remanded to the district court to vacate the conspiracy murder convictions
   and death sentences; district court did not abuse its discretion in denying
   defendant's motion for an evidentiary hearing to explore potential juror
   misconduct as there was no reasonable possibility that the challenged
   conduct - receipt of information about conditions for death row and life-
   in-prison inmates - would have affected the deliberations or prejudiced
   defendant.