By PHIL DAVIS | BALTIMORE SUN | FEB 11, 2020 | 7:02 PM Norwood Johnson, 29, left, and Nyghee Johnson, 21, were convicted of second-degree murder and drug distribution charges Tuesday.
Two brothers from Baltimore County who were charged with fatally shooting two men during a drug transaction in a Towson apartment complex in 2018 were convicted Tuesday of murder and drug charges. Norwood Johnson, 29, and Nyghee Johnson, 21, were convicted of second-degree murder and drug distribution charges in relation to the shooting deaths of Stanley Brunson Jr., 29, and Shameek Joyner, 28, in April 2018, Baltimore County State’s Attorney Scott Shellenberger said. Prosecutors said the Johnson brothers, both of the unit block of Paula Place in the Rossville area, shot Brunson and Joyner when the four met up the morning of April 9 at the 20 Lambourne Apartments in Towson to conduct a drug transaction. Warren Brown, the Johnsons’ attorney, said the case and verdict were a result of Maryland’s law regarding felony murders. He said that as the four met in the apartment of a middle man who had helped set up a drug transaction to sell 21 pounds of marijuana, either Brunson or Joyner pulled out a gun and put it to the head of the middle man, sparking the deadly confrontation.
He added that it was also prosecutors’ position that one of the two victims was first to pull out a gun.
Brown said that while self-defense could’ve have been a viable defense in other cases, because prosecutors charged the two with murder in connection with another felony, drug distribution, self-defense is not an accepted defense in such cases. “Ordinarily, you have the right to defend yourself or others,” he said, adding that some other states do allow for self-defense in similar cases.
Months after the shooting, Tracey Carrington, a 25-year-old Morgan State basketball star who was scheduled to testify as a witness in the case, was shot to death as she was leaving a sports bar on Belair Road in Overlea.
A spokeswoman for the Baltimore County Police Department said there have been no arrests made in her death and that police are still investigating. A source close to the investigation told The Baltimore Sun in 2018 that investigators did not believe the two fatal shootings were connected.
This story has been updated to reflect the correct last known address of the Johnson brothers.
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