[1] Born in Akranes, Iceland, Justice Johnson immigrated to the United States in 1900 with his parents, Gudbjartur Jonsson and Gudrun Olafsdottir, and brother, Jon.
[5] After entering the private practice of law for approximately six years, Johnson was appointed to the North Dakota Supreme Court on April 1, 1954, to fill the position left vacant by the death of Justice Christianson.
He was reelected to a ten-year term in 1958 but died at age 62 on December 2, 1958, after serving approximately four years and eight months.
Of note during his legal career, Johnson argued before the United States Supreme Court in Ashbury Hospital v. Cass County, 326 U.S. 207 (1945).
In that case, Attorney General Johnson successfully defended a depression-era statute that required foreign corporations to sell off farm land in the state “except such as is reasonably necessary in the conduct of their business[.]”.
The Court agreed that the Fourteenth Amendment did not bar states from excluding or regulating foreign corporations altogether.
Whiteman and his co-defendant Donald Malnourie both confessed to murdering Starr after being held for days without counsel and subject to threats, violence, and intimidation.
The court overturned the conviction because the confession was coerced and because Whiteman’s waiver of counsel was not knowing and intelligent.
Justice Johnson wrote:The defendant is an Indian Citizen, 25 years of age, with only a grade school education.
He had been subjected to intimidations, threats and even violence, and the evidence bears out that he felt that there was nothing he could do except to plead guilty to the information charging him with murder in the first degree.
This case is of significance in North Dakota law because, building on State v. Magrum, 38 N.W.2d 358 (N.D. 1949), it acknowledged that the 14th Amendment Due Process Clause required appointed counsel for indigent defendants accused of serious crimes unless the circumstances indicated a clear waiver of that right.
Citing Betts v. Brady, 316 U.S. 455 (1942), Justice Johnson noted that “[t]he emphasis in the law in later years has been to make the right of counsel effective and to eliminate denial theron to any accused unless the facts and circumstances clearly disclose that counsel was competently and intelligently waived.” Id.