Trial brings additional security to courthouse

By David Hotle, The JOURNAL

With a high-profile case scheduled to start at the Washington County Courthouse sometime next week, security measures are being increased to ensure the safety of the proceedings.

Jaron Purham, 25, of St. Louis, Mo., will stand trial in the killing of Kedarie Johnson, 16. Purham is one of two men charged with killing Johnson, a gender-fluid youth who was tortured and executed in March of 2016 in Burlington.

Washington County Sheriff Jared Schneider said people visiting the courthouse during the trial can expect to see some extra sheriff's department personnel on duty. He also said a metal detector would be set up on the second floor for people going into the courtrooms.

'Last week Des Moines County came up and did a walk-through of the courthouse,” Schneider said. 'We are following up with them this week before the trial starts next week.”

According to the Cedar Rapids Gazette, in February, District Judge Mary Ann Brown granted a change of venue for the first-degree murder trial of Purhamfrom Des Moines County to Washington County. The trial is expected to last two weeks. Purham remains in the Lee County Jail in lieu of a $2 million bond. The change of venue request was made due to extensive pretrial publicity. The 2016 case is the first of its kind since the passage of Iowa's hate crime law.

Schneider called the additional security a standard precaution for a trial of this nature, saying there had not been any threats or problems at a previous trial for the co-defendant in the case.

The reason the detector is on the second floor is so it won't interfere with the daily business at the courthouse, Schneider explained. He commented there will be other court cases occurring on the second floor that will have to pass through the detector.

Schneider said the county's courthouse security committee is always looking at security improvements at the courthouse. He said the possibility of having metal detectors full time hadn't been talked about much

'You need staff to operate the detectors,” he said. 'In the future it could be talked about more, but we haven't had much conversation about it yet.”

Purham was charged along with Jorge Sanders-Galvez, 23, also of St. Louis, with the March 2016 death of Johnson,

Sanders-Galvez was found guilty in March and sentenced to mandatory life in prison. He faces additional charges of attempted murder and assault on a corrections officer in connection with an attack on an officer in the Des Moines County jail. Two other inmates have also been charged in the attack. Each man faces an additional 30 years in prison.

According to evidence provided during the Sanders-Galvez trial, the two men killed Johnson because they thought he was a 'pretty, petite female” as they saw him walking. Prosecutors charge the two men kidnapped Johnson with the intention of taking him to a home where the two men stayed. The two men reportedly became enraged when they discovered Johnson was a man.

Police responded to a report of shots fired at the address and found Johnson in an alley. Johnson bled to death after being shot twice in the chest with a .357-magnum revolver. A plastic bag had reportedly been stuffed down his throat and a second plastic bag had been tied around his head in an attempt to suffocate him.

A grand jury convened in August 2017 in Davenport to determine if federal charges should be filed against the two men. A decision has not been reached if both will face capital murder charges under federal law hate crime statutes. Under the laws the use of a firearm in a death during the commission of a hate crime can be punished by the death penalty.