A Houston County judge sentenced a former Dothan emergency room doctor to serve 14 years in prison for molesting two women at Southeast Alabama Medical Center.
Circuit Court Judge Brad Mendheim gave Gregory Johns, 57, seven-year sentences for each first-degree sex abuse conviction. A jury found Johns guilty of both charges on Dec. 10, 2009. He faced one to 10 years in prison for each of the class C felony crimes.
Johns was accused by two different women of inappropriate sexual conduct during separate visits to the Southeast Alabama Medical Center emergency room in 2006 and 2007.
Houston County District Attorney Doug Valeska asked the court for the maximum punishment, which he said was also what the state probation and parole office recommended.
“A doctor is a position of trust and he violated that trust,” Valeska said.
Valeska read a letter to the court from one of the victims, who was 19 at the time of the sexual assault, and her mother, who said any less than the maximum punishment of 20 years would be an injustice.
“Doctor Johns took a oath to heal, not destroy lives,” the victim said through her letter.
Attorney Eric Davis, who represented Johns, asked for a sentence at the lower end of the guidelines and for a concurrent sentence, not consecutive. Davis told the court his client had already lost his license to practice medicine, has already registered as a sex offender and has agreed not to appeal the conviction.
“This case is unusual,” Davis said. “I’m not belittling the nature of the offenses, but we’ve all heard worse cases.”
Dothan Dr. Jack Jackson testified for the defense that he’d worked with Johns for more than 20 years, and also knew him through serving on mission trips with a Dothan church group to Panama.
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