BATON ROUGE — On Dec. 9, Earl Lee Johnson was sentenced to life in prison for first-degree murder after killing a woman while live-streaming it on social media in 2022, according to District Attorney Hillar Moore.
Johnson was found guilty of first-degree murder in September by a jury. It took around an hour of deliberation for the group to return a guilty verdict.
First-degree murder carries a mandatory life sentence in Louisiana.
An East Baton Rouge Parish grand jury indicted Johnson in August 2022 on first-degree murder, second-degree kidnapping and four additional charges. However, an amended indictment from September 2025, shows that Johnson was only being tried on a charge of first-degree murder.
Johnson, who was 35 at the time, killed 34-year-old Janice David on April 18, 2022. Authorities said part of the killing was streamed on social media, and the video lasted around 16 minutes.
Janice David’s body was found around 10 p.m. that night after Johnson told officials where to find her. She was stabbed a dozen times in her head and had several other stab wounds all over her body, officials said.
UWK learned that Johnson had been released from prison on Jan. 27, 2022, not even three months before David was killed. When he was released, he had finished serving all of his sentence for his prior convictions.
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