CANON CITY, Colo.—A convicted killer who fled from a Colorado prison, took on a new identity and lived on the lam for 32 years won’t be prosecuted for escape, and is due to be released in 2013.
A district judge on Tuesday dismissed an escape charge filed against 58-year-old Robert Charles Johnson. He had served two years of a 10- to 15-year sentence for murder when he walked away from a prison work crew in Canon City in 1975.
U.S. marshals arrested him in Gardnerville, Nev., in September 2007.
Judge Julie Marshall ruled that prosecutors violated Johnson’s constitutional right to a speedy trial by making no attempt to extradite him after a 1990 arrest in California.
Johnson pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the 1972 shooting death of a man near Colorado Springs.
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Information from: The Pueblo Chieftain,
