Standing before Kane County Judge Linda Abrahamson Wednesday, Stephawn Johnson of Chicago showed little emotion as he received 11 years in prison for sexually assaulting a woman in Aurora in 2015.
Abrahamson gave Johnson nine years for the assault and a consecutive two-year sentence for sexual abuse after pointing out the 22-year-old had been out of jail for only three weeks at the time of the attack. He already carried a history of prior criminal acts despite being a “very young man,” she said.
Abrahamson downplayed mitigating evidence about a serious head injury Johnson suffered in his early teen years, as well as family challenges he experienced in his life.
A jury convicted Johnson in October, about seven months after he and a second man were charged with the May 2015 assault inside an apartment on South Lincoln Avenue. Authorities said the then-19-year-old Aurora woman met Johnson, Andres Fonseca and two others before attending a party at the apartment. While there, Johnson offered the woman what he described to be Xanax, which she took and later said made her feel drowsy and weak, police previously said.
When an acquaintance of the woman and a second man left the apartment to buy alcohol, Johnson and Fonseca allegedly assaulted the woman and took her cellphone, according to police and prosecutors.
Johnson received credit for 295 days spent in Kane County Jail since his arrest. He’s required to serve 85 percent, or about seven years, for the sex assault before beginning the sex abuse sentence. During the same hearing, Johnson admitted to violating his probation connected to his conviction for robbing an Aurora gas station in 2014. He had pleaded guilty in that case a few weeks before the assault, records show.
Fonseca, who is also being held in jail on unrelated shooting charges, is scheduled for trial in February in the sex assault case.
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Dan Campana is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News