[1] On September 2, 1989, Johnson entered a warehouse and convinced the night watchman, 67-year-old Leon Brown, that he needed to use the telephone to get his car, a white Oldsmobile, out of a ditch nearby.
Dudley Swann, the principal stockholder in Little Rock Crate and Basket identified Johnson as the driver of the white Oldsmobile.
Swann had earlier asked Johnson to leave and come back the next day to get his car because he did not want the driver on the premises after dark.
The court's March ruling acknowledged that Johnson's first lawyer might have been mentally ill during his trial, that he did not press hard to admit certain testimony, and that he behaved unprofessionally during jury selection.
"We deal in specific facts, not abstractions, and the petitioner has failed to show any reasonable likelihood that the outcome of this case would have been different even if his lawyer had conducted himself perfectly", the opinion said.