In a Palmer Superior Court room, Judge Beverly Cutler sentenced Adams to 99 years, with no chance for parole, for beating Johnston to death at his Chickaloon cabin before leading police on a car chase on the Glenn Highway that ended in Chugiak.

Cutler added three years to his sentence for destroying evidence.

Adams was arrested during a drunk driving stop that lead to a chase from Palmer to Chugiak. When police stopped his vehicle, they discovered Johnston’s bruised and bloodied body in the back of his hatchback.

Speaking on Adams’ behalf, defense attorney Scott Sterling said that locking away Adams for the rest of his life didn’t serve justice.

“The judge’s decision is essentially a sentence based on retribution,” he said. “If that is the case then all we’re doing is eye for an eye. And if all we’re doing is eye for an eye we need to say so.”

Prosecutor Rachel Gernat argued that Adams’ history of violence in domestic relationships — during the trial, an ex-wife and an ex-girlfriend testified that they’d been battered — and the heinous nature of the crime justified the maximum possible sentence under Alaska law.

She also pointed out that Adams even had a previous murder case on his record, one plea bargained down to manslaughter, but one in which he played an active role, beating Air Force Colonel Robert Cassell, in Eagle River, with a tire iron, and then cutting Cassell’s throat in 1978 at the behest of a friend.

Reach the reporter at darrellbreese.@alaskastar.com.

This article published in The Alaska Star on Thursday, July 2, 2009.