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Burley man convicted of lewd conduct with child - again

RUPERT - A jury found David Minidoka County Leon Johnson guilty Wednesday of two counts of misdemeanor lewd conduct with a child, after the Idaho Supreme Court overturned his conviction original 2006 due to the use of "prior bad acts" evidence used in the first trial.

"It was a really difficult cases, as when she went to trial this time, the case was seven years," said Lance Stevenson, Minidoka County prosecutor.

The jury's verdict was $ 19.30, after a jury trial of seven days spanning the Fourth of July holiday, said Stevenson.

Johnson, 44, of Burley, is scheduled to be sentenced at 1:30 p.m. Sept. 19 in Minidoka County 5th District Court.

He was initially charged in August 2005 with three felony counts of lewd conduct with a child under 16, and was convicted on two of the counts in July 2006. He was sentenced in October 2006 to serve two concurrent prison terms of 20 years, with five years before he was eligible for parole in each case. At the time, the Minidoka County prosecutor was Jason Walker.

The Supreme Court vacated the conviction in February 2010 and sent the case back to Minidoka County. Johnson was freed until his re-conviction.

The charges were overturned based on federal rules of evidence that prevent prior crimes or wrongdoings from being used as evidence of character to convict someone of a crime, without proof of motive or a common scheme or plan.

Stevenson said it was up to his office to determine if enough evidence remained to retry the case.

According to Idaho Supreme Court documents, Johnson was originally convicted for molesting his 6-year-old daughter in 2004 when he had sole custody of her over spring break.In his appeal, he opposed the admission of evidence showing that he molested his younger sister as a teenager.

Johnson has also called other witnesses admitted that his daughter thought he had abused her because she accidentally observed him looking at pornography and engage in a sexual act alone.

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