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A criminal case has been dismissed against a former narcotics police officer who was once accused of making illegal drug buys.
Don Henry Johnson, 31, was charged in 2015 with two counts of second-degree felony drug distribution, and prosecutors tacked on two more distribution charges a year later. The ex-Ogden City police officer had been accused of soliciting confidential informants to make drug buys that were not authorized by the Weber-Morgan Narcotics Strike Force.
But on Tuesday, Deputy Davis County Attorney Jason Nelson filed a motion asking that the case be dismissed, citing "multiple evidentiary concerns."
A dismissal, he wrote, was "in the interest of justice."
Second District Judge Brent West granted the request and dismissed the four counts without prejudice, meaning the charges can possibly be refiled in the future.
Defense attorney Cara Tangaro said Wednesday that her client was "thrilled" with the resolution.
"I don't know if people can quite understand the stress of having criminal charges over your head," she said. "... It puts a lot of stress on a family and a person to go through that process."
Tangaro said she had provided information to prosecutors that supported Johnson's innocence. For example, when Johnson's phone "pinged" in an area close to an alleged drug buy, she said, the defense provided proof that he had checked into his gym at that time. Regarding alleged evidence of a cash withdrawal, Tangaro said, the defense showed Johnson had gone to Wendover on that day with his wife.
Tangaro said prosecutors previously had only one side of the story from the two confidential informants and once they saw the defense's evidence, they opted to dismiss the case.
"I commend them for doing the right thing," she said. "Some people would just decide to take it to trial and see what a jury would do. And that's not the only correct or just response. ... This is how it's supposed to work. And that's a credit to how [Davis County Attorney] Troy Rawlings runs his office and to Jason Nelson. You don't make difficult decisions based on what the media thinks or what the public would think."
Nelson did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
Though the alleged crimes happened in Weber County, investigators and prosecutors from neighboring Davis County handled the case to avoid a conflict of interest.
A woman reported to police in 2014 that Johnson had twice instructed her to buy the pain killer Oxycodone from a drug dealer in Weber County earlier that year. This wasn't an unusual request, but she told police that on those two occasions, Johnson was not with a second officer, as he usually was, and she did not fill out any paperwork, as she had in the past.
After charges were filed in 2015 in that case, another informant came forward and told police that he had a similar experience with Johnson, also in 2014. The man testified at a preliminary hearing that Johnson instructed him to buy Oxycontin and Xanax — though he usually purchased methamphetamine — and that the officer was alone. There was no paper trail, the man recalled.
Johnson had been an Ogden police officer since August 2008 and had been with the strike force for about a year before he resigned in January 2015, weeks before criminal charges were filed against him.
Police officials have said that before Johnson's resignation, he had been on an "extended leave" for an unrelated reason.