Convicted of murder in ‘85, this Idaho man will go back to prison — forever
When 4th District Judge D. “Duff” McKee sentenced 23-year-old Robert Johns in 1985 to life in prison with the possibility of parole after roughly two decades behind bars for killing another man, he did so with the intent to “incarcerate the defendant for most of his life,” the Idaho Statesman reported at the time.
Johns, of Kuna, spent more than 20 years in the state’s prison system for the first-degree murder of 37-year-old Don Price before he was released in the 2000s. He quickly ended up in prison again after being arrested — on several occasions — for driving under the influence, court records showed.
His most recent stint behind bars came after a 2020 arrest for his third DUI. In July 2025, roughly a year after he was released on parole in that case, he was charged with three felonies after being accused of the repeated sexual abuse of two children, according to the Ada County Prosecutor’s Office and court records.
Johns, now 65, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole after a 12-person jury convicted him of the sexual abuse allegations, which occurred between 2017 and 2019. This means he won’t be out of prison again.
“These crimes, taken together with your history, are odious and abominable,” 4th District Judge James Cawthon told Johns at his sentencing last week, according to a news release from Ada County Prosecutor Jan Bennetts’ office.
Prosecutors argued that given Johns’ long criminal history, he’s shown “as clearly as he can that he does not belong in the community.”
“The sentence imposed today reflects the gravity of what was done to these young children, and it ensures the defendant will never have the opportunity to harm another child,” Bennetts said in the release.
