A packed Los Angeles courtroom reacted after a judge sentenced Darryl Lamar Collins to life without parole in Fatima Johnson’s killing.
LOS ANGELES, Calif. — The loudest sound at Darryl Lamar Collins’ sentencing was not the judge’s voice but the applause that followed it, after a Los Angeles courtroom heard that the man convicted of killing Fatima Johnson would spend the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The reaction captured why the hearing mattered. For Johnson’s family, it was the first final courtroom answer since she was found dead in 2021. For prosecutors, it marked the end of a case involving a defendant who had once received a long murder sentence, was later released under California parole rules, and then was accused of killing again. For the judge, it was the point at which the open questions narrowed to one clear outcome: Collins would not walk free again.
Judge Craig Veals said Johnson could not be brought back and told Collins he would be “locked up for the rest of your life,” according to local coverage of the March 20 hearing at the Foltz Criminal Justice Center. Collins did not speak. Defense lawyer Ilya Alekseyeff said his client was remorseful. Johnson’s relatives filled the room, and three of her children gave victim-impact statements. Tanesha Hargrave called Collins “a monster.” Tyesa Harvey said her mother had been killed for “a hit of dope.” Kamia Jones told him Johnson did not deserve what happened to her. In those few minutes, the hearing moved from formal sentencing language into direct personal accusation, with the family fixing the courtroom’s attention on what they said the crime had taken from them.
The verdict that made that moment possible had come a month earlier. Prosecutors said Collins was found guilty Feb. 19 of first-degree special-circumstance murder in Johnson’s death. The special-circumstance finding was critical because it allowed a sentence of life without parole. Prosecutors said Johnson, 53, was killed July 2, 2021, in her apartment in the 7600 block of South Western Avenue. Her daughters and best friend later found her body bound, gagged and wrapped in a blanket. She died of asphyxia due to neck pressure and possible smothering, according to the district attorney’s office. Prosecutors also said Collins took her cellphone, jewelry and Lexus after the killing, then pawned two necklaces and sold the car for drugs within hours. The state used those facts to argue for a murder conviction with the highest available punishment short of death.
Behind the verdict was a longer timeline. Collins had already been convicted in two 1995 murders committed 11 days apart. Prosecutors said he first carjacked and killed Derrick Reese, 28, then later entered an Inglewood diner and fatally shot cashier Thomas Weiss, 44, during a robbery. He was sentenced in January 1998 to 50 years to life. But because Collins had been 24 at the time of those crimes, he later became eligible for review under California’s expanded youth-offender parole system and was released in 2020 after serving 25 years. Johnson was killed 364 days later, prosecutors said. Collins was arrested in September 2021 and remained jailed through trial and sentencing.
The prosecution itself took an unusual turn. Local reporting said then-District Attorney George Gascón’s office had a general policy against filing special-circumstance allegations that could produce life-without-parole sentences. Critics argued that without such an allegation, Collins might someday again be eligible for parole if convicted. In June 2022, Gascón said an internal committee approved a policy deviation because of the facts of the case, allowing prosecutors to seek the harsher outcome. By the time Nathan J. Hochman was district attorney, that charging decision had become central to the office’s public message. Hochman said after sentencing that Collins had taken three innocent lives and that the new sentence was also about protecting the public.
Johnson’s own story might have been easy to lose inside that long procedural arc, but prosecutors brought it back into the record. They said she was a mother of six, grandmother of eight and nursing home worker who had been sober for eight years and was pursuing her nursing license when she was killed. Those facts did not change the sentence, but they did change the shape of the case. They turned the hearing from a simple recap of legal milestones into a public account of a woman’s interrupted future. That is why the applause at the end carried more than approval. It carried relief, anger and the sense that the courtroom had finally caught up to what the family had already been living with for years.
Currently, the case is at its clearest stage. Collins has received life without parole, and any future movement would come through appellate courts rather than new trial-court proceedings. For Johnson’s relatives, the next date on the calendar is not another sentencing hearing but whatever filing may come next.
Author note: Last updated April 14, 2026.