A federal jury starts deciding the fate of Angela Johnson today in Sioux City. The 41-year-old Johnson was convicted last week of five counts of conspiracy to commit murder as part of a drug conspiracy and five counts of committing murder while engaged in a continuing criminal enterprise in helping her boyfriend Dustin Honken in the 1993 drug-related murders of five north- central Iowans. Jurors must decide whether or not the murders were premeditated and the victims were killed in a cruel and heinous manner. A jury last year recommended that Honken receive the death penalty in two of the five murders, pinpointing the deaths of the two children, Kandace and Amber Duncan. Honken could be called as a potential witness in the penalty phase of the trial, but his attorneys have made it known that he would invoke his Fifth Amendment right not to testify.
