Prosecutors will again seek death penalty for Iowa woman

The U.S. Attorney's Office will again seek the death penalty against an Iowa woman convicted of helping her boyfriend kill five people near Mason City.

Assistant U.S. Attorney C.J. Williams on Monday filed the notice seeking a new sentencing hearing for Angela Johnson in U.S. District Court in Sioux City.

"The government will be seeking the death penalty," Williams said Tuesday.

U.S. District Judge Mark W. Bennett scheduled the resentencing hearing to begin June 3, 2013. Jury selection and the sentencing trial could take up to three months.

Johnson's attorney, Michael Burt of San Francisco, did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

In March, Bennett vacated the 2005 death sentence of Johnson, ruling that her lawyers failed to introduce mental health evidence during the penalty phase of Johnson's trial that could have resulted in a different jury finding.

Bennett's ruling did not affect Johnson's guilty verdict. She remains incarcerated in Fort Worth, Texas. She had been one of two women on federal death row.

Johnson, 48, of Forest City, Iowa, was convicted of helping Dustin Honken kill Terry DeGeus, 32, and Greg Nicholson, 34, both of Mason City, in 1993. DeGeus and Nicholson were cooperating with authorities in a drug case against Honken. Honken and Johnson also killed Nicholson's girlfriend, Lori Duncan, 31, and her daughters, Kandace, 10, and Amber, 6.

Johnson had posed as a lost cosmetics saleswoman when she knocked on Duncan's door, allowing Honken to gain entry. Nicholson, Duncan and the girls were driven to a wooded area, where they were shot and buried. Johnson later set up a meeting with DeGeus at a remote location, where Honken shot and buried him.

The bodies were found in 2000, when Johnson, in custody on suspicion of the murders, drew maps to the graves and gave them to a jailhouse informant, who turned them over to investigators.

Honken, 44, of Britt, Iowa was convicted in a separate trial and sentenced to death.