As an assistant state attorney for the last 17 years, most of them spent prosecuting murderers and other homicide cases in the Seventh Judicial Circuit that includes Flagler County, Mark Johnson has always projected a commanding, cerebral austerity fit for the role of a bewigged barrister at the Court of St. James’s.
A practitioner and student of all things judicial–he reads the biographies of Supreme Court justices to relax, his long-time colleague Jason Lewis says–Johnson has been naturally gravitating toward the bench and seeking an appointment for many years.
This week, he got it.
Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed Johnson as County Judge in Putnam County, one of three judicial appointments in the Seventh Circuit. DeSantis appointed Katherine Miller and Frank Talbot as circuit judges. DeSantis had appointed Miller county judge in Volusia last year.
Johnson’s investiture is not expected until next year. DeSantis’s office has not yet announced his appointment, which FlaglerLive confirmed independently.
For R.J. Larizza’s State Attorney’s Office, and for Lewis in particular, Johnson’s elevation is a serious blow. “I’m going to be devastated without Mark because we’ve been working together for 16 years,” Lewis said.
“He’ll be very difficult to replace, Mark,” Larizza said. “I hired him within a few months of my election so he’s been with the office for almost 17 years, and he was a prosecutor in the 2nd Circuit in Tallahassee before that.”
Larizza described Johnson as “very dependable, very genuine, honest and hardworking. He’s always handled his cases with a work ethic second to none.” He would handle cases meticulously without corner-cutting. “You could count on Mark to see it through to the end.”
His 11 open cases will be handled by Lewis and others in an office with some 65 prosecutors, with Lewis taking the larger share of the work.
A merciless duo, Johnson and Lewis have tried about a dozen murder cases together, five of them death penalty cases, in the four counties of the Seventh Circuit–Flagler, St. Johns, Putnam and Volusia.
In Flagler last February they paired up for the conviction and sentence of Stephen Monroe to life in prison for the murder of 16-year-old Noah Smith, and last year they got the same result in the trial of Marcus Chamblin for his murder of Deon Jenkins at a Palm Coast Circle K in 2019. In 2019 they also tried the high-profile case of Joseph Bova, who had murdered Zuheili Rosado, the store clerk at the Mobil station on State Road 100. The jury took 39 minutes to find him guilty. He was sentenced to life in prison.
Johnson and Lewis were trying the death-penalty case of Jermaine Williams, the 53-year-old Bunnell man accused of murdering his wife Yolonda Williams in the couple’s driveway last year. That trial is scheduled for next summer.
Throughout that partnership, Johnson has been like Spock to Lewis’s Kirk or Aurelius to Lewis’s Verus–Johnson addressing juries and cross-examining witnesses with the atonal method of a velvet jackhammer, Lewis aiming more directly for juries’ emotions and hostile witnesses’ jugular. Both have an encyclopedic knowledge of the law. Both have judges’ dependable respect. Their court partnership was implicitly choreographed down to a science. “I have to find a new friend,” Lewis said today.
“It’s kind of a bittersweet thing,” Larizza said. “I’m happy for him, and I’m also proud of the fact that we have so many prosecutors that are now judges. We’ve been able to hire quality people and see them grow and flourish.” But his appointment to the bench in Putnam, the state attorney said, “is going to make our community better all the way around.”
By ratio of crime to population, and based on pre-Covid data from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, St. Johns in 2019 had the lowest violent crime rate in the 7th Judicial Circuit and the third lowest in the state. Flagler County was second in the circuit and fifth in the state. Putnam and Volusia had significantly higher rates.
Johnson as county judge will be presiding over misdemeanors, small civil disputes, probate and related family matters (not divorces or adoptions), landlord-tenant issues, animal control or cruelty cases, and so on. County judges are sworn-in to serve as circuit judges if needed.
Johnson is a graduate of Florida State University and Stetson University College of Law. He was admitted to the Florida Bar in 2000.
Asked for words of wisdom for Johnson, Lewis said: “Being a judge is a tremendous responsibility. Always remember where you came from, never forget your integrity, listen and decide wisely, and most importantly, be impartial and fair.”
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