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Ray Lamar Johnston, 45, who has been charged with another strangulation, likely will go to trial again later this year.
By GRAHAM BRINK
© St. Petersburg Times, published March 14, 2000
TAMPA -- Ray Lamar Johnston, convicted of one murder and facing trial in another, showed little emotion Monday as a judge sentenced him to die for strangling a Northdale dental assistant.
As he left the courtroom, Johnston, 45, glanced at victim LeAnne Coryell's family, many of whom glared back through tear-filled eyes.
"I'm just glad's it's over," said Sandi Morris, Coryell's mother.
The jury that convicted Johnston last summer had unanimously recommended the death penalty. Hillsborough Circuit Judge Diana Allen said Johnston's extensive criminal record and the heinous nature of the killing outweighed evidence of his possible brain damage.
She also sentenced him to two life terms for kidnapping and sexual battery and 15 years for robbery.
Coryell, a 30-year-old single mother, disappeared Aug. 17, 1997, from the parking lot of the Landings at Cypress Meadows, her apartment complex near Northdale where Johnston was staying at the time.
Two days later, Coryell's unclothed body was found in a shallow pond at a church behind Gaither High School, not far from her apartment. She had been strangled and raped.
An ATM security camera caught Johnston using Coryell's bank card the night she disappeared.
Johnston, a former salesman, initially denied killing Coryell and mounted a vigorous defense. Once convicted, he told jurors during the sentencing phase that he had strangled Coryell quickly at her apartment complex in a fit of anger because she had ignored him at Publix minutes earlier. He said he dumped her lifeless body near the church, beat it and scattered her clothes to make it look like an assault. Prosecutors argued Coryell was alive when she was beaten and raped.
A few weeks after his trial, Johnston was charged with murdering Janice Marie Nugent, 47-year-old massage therapist found beaten and strangled in her Seminole Heights home six months before Coryell was killed. Johnston admitted meeting Nugent at Malio's Steak House but denied killing her. That trial likely will take place later this year.
After the hearing Monday, Coryell's father, Tom Morris, said that there were no winners in this case but that Johnston's sentencing brought some relief.
-- Graham Brink can be reached at (813) 226-3365 or via e-mail at brink@sptime.com.