No Stand Your Ground defense would have been valid, no ineffective representation was provided, no appeal for a new trial was granted. That’s the summary of a 24-page order Circuit Judge Dawn Nichols filed last Thursday in Keith Johansen’s claim that he was poorly represented at his murder trial four years ago and should get a new one.
Johansen is the 43-year-old former Palm Coast resident serving a life sentence for killing his wife Brandi Celenza at their F-Section home in 2018, after nights of demeaning her, humiliating her and threatening her, at times with a gun–scenes captured on an internal video system he had installed. (See: “After 3 1/2 Years of Lies, Keith Johansen Is Found Guilty of Murdering His Wife and Is Sentenced to Life Without Parole.”)
A jury swiftly found him guilty of murder–he shot his wife twice–as Brandi’s young son was in another room. The prosecution had marshaled overwhelming evidence showing Johansen to be a liar. Johansen had originally claimed to authorities that it was an accident, then that Brandi had shot herself while he was in the shower (the shower was dry when authorities arrived). At one point he claimed Brandi’s son, who was 6 at the time, may have been the shooter, or that someone walked in the house and shot her. (Ring video showed the only people to come to the door that morning were Jehovah’s Witnesses).
He then switched his story just before trial to claim that he shot her in self-defense, as she was delusionally aiming at him and he tried to disarm her.
His argument appealing the sentence–he was looking either for the sentence to be vacated or for a new trial–was that his defense attorney, Gary Wood, should have made a Stand Your Ground motion, which would have allowed him to end the proceedings and be exonerated, had the judge found sufficient cause to grant the motion.
Florida’s Stand Your Ground law is based on the principle of self-defense, with the added predicate that the person in a self-defense posture does not have the duty to retreat in the face of danger–anywhere–and may shoot the alleged assailant to kill. At a hearing, the burden is on the prosecution, not the person claiming self-defense, to prove that a self-defense situation was not in play. If the prosecution fails, the defendant is exonerated, and the trial is scrapped.
Johansen and Wood “discussed a Stand Your Ground motion/hearing, but trial counsel advised
against it due to the conflicting information [Johansen] provided numerous people and because [Wood] did not believe it would be successful,” Nichols wrote in her order. Wood also argued to Johansen that the transcript of his cross-examination at a Stand Your Ground hearing could be used against him at trial.
“The court finds defendant’s testimony inconsistent and not credible,” the judge ruled. Even if a Stand Your Ground hearing had been held, Johansen would have lost it, Nichols wrote, “because the jury did not acquit [him] based upon that same defense at trial.”
Stand Your Ground was a central plank of Johansen’s appeal. There were many other grounds, all of which Nichols denied, point by point. Johansen had objected to the words “premeditated” and “murder” supposedly being used in a video shown the jury. But the words were not in that video. They were part of the prosecution’s powerpoint presentation in its closing arguments, when prosecutors are free to reach certain conclusions based on he evidence.
Johansen raised objections about fingerprints on the murder weapons not being tested, about the reason for one of the weapons jamming, about the incompletenss of interior video footage shown the jury (either Johansen or the company providing the footage had deleted much of it), about Brandi’s alleged withdrawal symptoms not being probed at trial (she and Johansen had previously used meth), and so on.
Johansen had also raised an issue with his attorney not calling Brandi’s son to the stand. The court revealed why: “trial counsel did not believe it was a good idea to call RB to testify because
he would likely testify that he heard his mother scream before she was shot by defendant and due to” the child’s age.
It was an unintentionally wrenching part of the judge’s order, when paired with a memory of the trial: the jury got to see video of the moments before Brandi was shot, when she was in the kitchen with her son, calmly drinking coffee and sweetly talking to him about going to the fair later that day, if he wished. He did. There were moments of silence, and then there was her son, off camera, being heard telling his mother he loved her. Those may have been his last words to his mother.
By the time he reached his 17th objection, Johansen was claiming that images used at trial, such as those of the bullets in the murder, were fabricated. The phrase “not credible,” associated with Johansen, appears nine times in the order.
To prevail, Nichols concluded, Johansen would have had to show that Wood had been both deficient in his defense and prejudiced against Johansen. He was neither, the judge found.
The case was investigated by the Flagler County Sheriff’s office and prosecuted by Assistant State Attorneys Jennifer Dunton and Jason Lewis. Johansen, who is held at Walton prison in the Panhandle, may yet appeal to the Fifth District Court of Appeal.
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