Judge dismisses Johnston County DA and school board from fellow board member’s lawsuit
A federal judge has dismissed most of the defendants in Johnston County school board member Ronald Johnson’s lawsuit over losing his job as a Smithfield Police detective and being indicted on criminal charges.
Johnson filed a federal lawsuit in June charging that he was the victim of a conspiracy by multiple groups to remove him from office and from his position as a police officer. In a court order last week, U.S. District Court Judge James Dever III allowed Johnson to continue his lawsuit against the Town of Smithfield and private investigator David Marshburn.
But Dever dismissed all the other defendants, including Johnston County District Attorney Susan Doyle, Special Prosecutor Benjamin Zellinger, the Johnston County school board and multiple Town of Smithfield officials.
“Johnson, however, fails plausibly to allege a ‘meeting of the minds’ among the named defendants,” Dever wrote is his 65-page order.
Johnson was elected to the school board in 2016 and re-elected in 2020.
The controversy over his indictment didn’t keep Johnson from being the top vote-getter in the March primary. He will run in November against Jeff Sullivan.
Censured and indicted
Johnson was censured by the school board twice in 2022. He was accused of actions such as trying to transfer the children of an adversary out of a school and of inappropriately texting sexual comments about school employees.
In October 2022, Johnson was fired from his job as a detective in the Smithfield Police Department because of what town officials called his “detrimental personal conduct.” He had been an officer for 17 years.
In April 2023, Johnson was indicted on charges of extortion, felony obstruction of justice and three counts of willfully failing to discharge his duties. The trial has not started yet.
According to the indictment, Johnson is accused in 2022 of asking teacher Angie McLeod Barbour to record DeVan Barbour, no relation, or to have sex with him. It’s unclear what he wanted her to record.
The indictment says Johnson threatened to release a recording of DeVan Barbour, who was a U.S. Congressional candidate at the time, unless he pressured Angie McLeod Barbour to recant that she had an affair with Johnson, who is a married school board member.
Johnson says he’s a sex discrimination victim
In his lawsuit, Johnson accused Angie McLeod Barbour of sexually assaulting him and demanding they maintain a sexual relationship.. Johnson is alleging sexual discrimination, saying his allegations weren’t believed because he is a man.
Dever dismissed Angie McLeod Barbour as a defendant.
Dever dismissed several of the claims that Johnson filed against Smithfield. But Dever allowed him to proceed on his claims of violations of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Family and Medical Leave Act.
Dever also allowed Johnson to continue pursuing defamation claims against Marshburn, who lost to Johnson in this year’s school board primary. During Facebook Live broadcasts, Marshburn had called Johnson a “predator” who engaged in “blackmail.”
