Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Judge to weigh Johnson bid for new trial

Hearing scheduled for November on claims of convicted murderer


Sarah Johnson

Fifth District Court Judge G. Richard Bevan has scheduled a hearing for Nov. 30 to determine if convicted murderer Sarah Johnson is entitled to a new trial.

Johnson has failed thus far through various appeal processes to have her 2005 convictions overturned, or be granted a new trial, in the shooting deaths of her parents, Alan and Diane Johnson, at their home in Bellevue in 2003. The Idaho Supreme Court has ruled against her and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to even consider the case.

She remains incarcerated, serving two life sentences without the possibility of parole, at the Idaho Department of Correction Pocatello Women's Correctional Center. Now 23, Johnson was 16 at the time of the murders.

Her appeal process in Blaine County is through a post-conviction relief petition filed in 2006.

After winding its way through the court system for the past few years, many of Johnson's original claims in her petition for post-conviction relief have already been dismissed by Bevan. The five remaining claims have to do with allegations that Johnson had ineffective legal counsel during her trial and one having to do with new fingerprint evidence found on the murder weapon, a .246 Winchester Magnum hunting rifle belonging to a man living in a guest cottage he rented from the Johnsons.

The fingerprint has been identified as belonging to a Bellevue man who lived with the renter prior to the shootings. Police and prosecutors have stated that the man had no involvement in the killings and his fingerprint on the weapon only means that he handled the gun at some point.

Christopher Simms, Johnson's court-appointed attorney for her post-conviction relief petition, has argued that the fingerprint on the weapon may point to the real murderer.

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Bevan previously dismissed a claim of "judicial bias," alleged by Johnson against Judge Barry Wood, who presided over the trial and post-conviction proceedings until his retirement last year.

Bevan also has ruled that a claim of evidence tampering made by Steven D. Pankey, a former apprentice mortician, does not constitute new evidence. Pankey was at the crime scene assisting Blaine County Coroner Russell Mikel when he claims he heard Sheriff Walt Femling say: "Well, I guess I've got to move some evidence to make a case."

Pankey wrote in an affidavit to the court in 2009 that he contacted Johnson's defense attorneys regarding "important information" in the case prior to the trial but that the attorneys never returned his call.

Bevan ruled in May that "there is nothing in Mr. Pankey's affidavit to support the claim that the Blaine County sheriff actually tampered with evidence" and that the "statement about moving evidence leads to nothing more than conjecture that something shameful was afoot."

Bevan further ruled that even had Pankey been called to testify at Johnson's trial, that "such testimony would not have produced an acquittal because it can be viewed as a perfectly innocuous statement."

Terry Smith: tsmith@mtexpress.com




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