'As long as you’re alive, there’s hope.'
Samata Joshi and Liz StilesAt sentencing, Sophia hears victim impact statements, including one delivered by the woman raising her son.
In 2005, Sophia Johnson's guilty conviction is reversed, because the judge in her first trial had improperly removed a juror and because a bailiff had impermissibly talked with another juror about the deliberations. Sophia maintains her innocence. .Last time on Beyond All Repair…Sophia Johnson: I went on a rampage. I felt wronged, I felt cheated, and it felt slimy.Sophia Johnson: And of course, I went ahead and in turn did the exact same thing. I was wrong. I cheated him and I became slimy.
Sophia remembers being escorted down a dimly lit hallway, down three flights of stairs, down another hallway, to an elevator.It was. People shifting nervously, looking around, whispering to each other. I've watched this footage many times, thanks to those VHS tapes of the trial Sophia sent me. What do THEY think, I wonder, as I try to make out the grainy faces in the gallery.
Judge: We the jury find the defendant Sophia S. Johnson guilty of the crime of felony murder in the first degree…The camera stays on the judge. But Sophia says she bowed her head. She thinks Therese may have squeezed her shoulders. And then, they listened to those 12 jurors reiterate their decision, one by one.Sophia was taken back to the elevator, back down the hallway, UP the three lights of stairs, down the other hallway... back to jail.
The reading of these statements wasn't included in the trial footage Sophia sent to me, but I do have written copies from the court records. So you're hearing a colleague read the words of a woman named Danielle Ruestig -- described at the top of her statement as a friend of the Johnson family. But in recent months, she’d become MORE than a friend… to Brad Johnson… Sophia’s husband.Brad filed for divorce from Sophia just weeks after his mother was killed.
And it's possible Sophia will keep having these one-sided conversations -- monologues, really -- for years to come. But there's something she has for Eathen that no one else does.The story of his ACTUAL birth-day.know this story. Not the version she hopes to tellSophia Johnson: Being pregnant with him while incarcerated truly saved my life when this happened. It was too big. It was too overwhelming. I just, truly, I wanted to disappear.
Sophia Johnson: I couldn't believe how, how large my stomach was, and it looked so beautiful. I'd never seen it and how scared I was that this would be the first time I would see this. And it would also be the last time.Sophia Johnson: I heard his tears turn into a whimper and then silence followed. I checked his fingers and his toes to make sure they were all there. I never stopped talking the whole time. He was quiet and his eyes were open.
Eathen will be 22 years old this April. The same age Sophia was when she got pregnant with him. Of those 22 years, Sophia says she's spent 40 minutes with him. Total. The FIRST 40 minutes. It wasn't just Brad there, Sophia told me. It was Brad and his new girlfriend, Danielle, whom he had started dating sometime in the 3 months since Sophia's arrest.
One year later, Danielle… the woman who would go on to marry Sophia’s soon-to-be-EX-husband and raise her son was delivering a statement in court. Trying to ensure, on behalf of the Johnsons, that Sophia wouldn't be seeing that son... for a good long time.Sophia Johnson: She said, the sentencing recommendation, Sophia, is really high and this judge is gonna give you every single day of it. I said, well, what is it she said? 517 months. 517 months. What is that? She said, 43 years.
Sophia Johnson: What he said is, I hope for your sake you didn't do this. ‘Cause you're not gonna like prison. Sophia Johnson: And he is like, okay, what's your name? Johnson. Okay Johnson. I like to win. Do you like to win? Because if not, you're gonna need to switch with your neighbor. WHAAAAT. Yes. It goes back to the day Sophia’s verdict was delivered… in April of 2003. Remember I said that a lot had already gone down in court that day? What had gone down... was THIS..
Therese Lavallee: She indicated under no certain, uncertain terms that that was an absolute lie, that that never occurred, that anything that occurred within the jury room was simply the product of their deliberation.Judge: I refuse to stop the jury deliberations. I don't see this as being extraordinary and striking circumstances that would indicate a substantial injustice at this point.
But Therese had a couple other tricks up her sleeve this time. Witnesses she didn't have in 2003. Including a forensic expert named Kay Sweeney. Kay Sweeney didn't have much time -- or EVIDENCE -- to work with in Sophia's Johnson's case. But he did have a piece of the wall next to where Marlyne's body was found and the fireplace tongs used in the attack. And after analyzing those two pieces… Kay had an interesting discovery to share with the jury. Something that hadn't come up at all in Sophia's first trial.
Amory Sivertson: Huh. And do we know if her brother Sean was left handed? Were you able to find that out? Kay Sweeney: I can calculate how far that skip mark is above the floor, and there's one right there. That's way too high for her to have created.Kay Sweeney: Yes.Kay Sweeney: I could determine that someone my height around five 11 could do that. A person in the range of five feet, four inches tall, uh, probably not likely, they could do that.
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