Trial proceedings
Predicted to last six to eight weeks, the trial of Sarah M. Johnson, 18, of Bellevue, opened Feb. 1 in 4th District Court at the Ada County Courthouse in Boise. The trial was moved to Boise early in January when 5th District Judge Barry Wood ruled it was impractical to attempt to panel a non-biased jury in Blaine County where the crime was committed. Johnson is charged with two counts of first-degree murder in the shooting deaths of her parents, Alan Johnson, 46, and Diane Johnson, 52, in their Bellevue home on Sept. 2, 2003. If convicted, she faces life in prison.On the same day Alan and Diane Johnson were murdered, their daughter Sarah Johnson told a childhood friend that her boyfriend had already been cleared of any involvement in the crimes.
She said Bruno Santos Dominguez "couldn't be involved in the murders because he had an alibi and that the DNA tests they had taken had come back negative," said 17-year-old Megan Sowersby who has known the Johnson family for as long as she can remember. DNA test results, however, were not returned to investigators until months later.
Sowersby said she spent two days with Johnson following the Sept. 2, 2003, murders. That first night, the two teenage girls slept in the same bed at a friend's house.
"When we first got in bed to go to sleep, she was really clinging to me and wanted to hold really close," she said. "She said, 'Hold me, I'm really scared.' In the middle of the night, she was scooching up really close."
She was worried about police, Sowersby said.
Sowersby, perhaps more than any witness so far, was able to paint a picture about who Sarah Johnson is. She told reporters she always felt safe with Johnson and added that she was smart and funny.
She said Johnson is known for being sweet and nice, but also for stretching the truth. She also said Johnson was infatuated and obsessed with Santos Dominguez, and said her friend had a "rocky relationship" with her mother. In fact, prosecutors theorize that Johnson's infatuation with Santos Dominguez may have contributed to the murders of her parents.
On the Tuesday the Johnsons were murdered, Sowersby remembered her friend mouthing to her to check to see if Santos Dominguez was okay while she was hugging her grandmother, who had just arrived. Several witnesses have testified that Santos Dominguez was the first person she asked for.
Johnson's uncle, James Vavold, described his niece as "a little bit" selfish.
He and his wife, Linda, had spent the Labor Day weekend at the Johnson house in Bellevue, and Sarah Johnson did not return home on Friday, the first night of the visit. On Saturday morning, Vavold accompanied Alan Johnson to the apartment where Santos Dominguez lived with his family. Sarah Johnson was there with her boyfriend.
The following day, Sarah Johnson went to the guest house to do homework. She returned to the guest house again on Sunday, Vavold said. In separate testimony, witnesses explained that the murder weapon, a .264 Magnum was stored in a closet at the guest house.
As the third week of Sarah Johnson's double murder trial came to a close Thursday, prosecutors prepared to continue calling a number of expert witnesses to attempt to prove the then-16-year-old girl left a trail of DNA and other microscopic evidence behind when she allegedly shot and killed her parents in Bellevue.
The trial, predicted to last six to eight weeks, was running ahead of schedule by about a week, Blaine County Prosecuting Attorney Jim Thomas said. The trial began Feb. 1 with jury selection, and opening arguments from prosecutors began Feb. 7. Because defense attorneys declined to issue opening arguments at the beginning of the trial, the foundation for Johnson's defense is not yet clear. However, defense attorneys have cross-examined a number of state witnesses, and those questions appear to indicate they will attempt to prove that Johnson's then-19-year-old boyfriend, Santos Dominguez, could have committed the crimes.
The expert witnesses constitute another phase of the trial in which the proceedings are steeped in science and mathematics, but it is the science of DNA analysis that was one of the key pieces of evidence that led to Sarah Johnson's arrest in the fall of 2003.
Cindy Hall, an Idaho State Police forensic pathologist, said Diane Johnson's DNA was found in blood splotches that were discovered on wool socks Sarah Johnson was wearing on the morning of her parents' deaths. Moreover, Sarah Johnson's DNA was discovered in a latex glove that was found wrapped in a pink bathrobe, which was deposited in a trash can outside the home. There is a one in 32 sextillion chance that the DNA taken from the latex glove was not Sarah Johnson's DNA, Hall testified.
"It has exceeded our source criteria," she said. "...So I can conclude that Sarah is the source of that DNA, barring the existence of an identical twin."
During the first week of proceedings, prosecutors called some of the first neighbors and police officers who entered the Johnson home after Johnson's parents, Alan and Diane Johnson, were shot and killed during the early morning hours of Sept. 2, 2003.
As the second week unfolded, prosecutors continued to call police officers but also shifted their focus to nearly a dozen residents of the neighborhood where the Johnsons lived. They then called several of the people who were considered suspects in the crime investigation. The so-called "people of interest" were asked to explain where they were and what they were doing on the morning the Johnsons were murdered.
Santos Dominguez and his family said he was at home sleeping on the morning of the Johnson murders.
Another "person of interest," Janet Sylten, testified that she was camping with her boyfriend behind Lyon's Park in Hailey the morning of the murders. Sarah Johnson accused Sylten of getting in an argument with her parents in the early-morning hours on the day of their murders and of then returning to kill her parents.
But Sylten said she never returned to the home after she cleaned it for the Whirlwind Cleaning company. What's more, scientific evidence at the Johnson home did not link her to the crimes.
Sarah Johnson, center, enters 4th District Court in Boise on Wednesday during the third week of her murder trail that was moved from Blaine County to Ada County. The Bellevue teenagers is accused of slaying her parents, Alan and Diane Johnson, in 2003.
Dwight VanHorn, a firearm expert, explains how the .264 Magnum rifle used to kill Alan and Diane Johnson works. Photo by Willy Cook
