Bride kills groom just eight days after marriage
The bride, Jordan Linn Graham confess to pushing her husband of eight days off a Montana cliff which led to his death.
The newlywed couple was arguing when he grabbed her and she told him, "Let go."
She thought he was going
to hold her down. She put one hand on his back and another on his
shoulder and then pushed him face-first to his death, she told the
court.
When Graham declared her guilt, her mother in the gallery crumpled in her seat.
But a relative of
Johnson, who was 25, threw her head back and cried, whispering "she said
guilty." His friends held hands and appeared satisfied.
Graham, 22, now faces a
sentence of up to life in prison, U.S. District Judge Donald W. Molloy
said. Her minimum sentence could be 235 months, or 19 1/2 years, though
sentencing guidelines are flexible, the judge said.
In exchange for her guilty plea, prosecutors dropped a first-degree murder charge and a lying to investigators charge.
The deal was announced
after the prosecution and defense rested their cases and took a
courtroom break. They hadn't yet begun their closing arguments to the
jury.
When the trial resumed, the judge said there were new developments, and the prosecution announced a deal had been made.
The jury was not in the room when the deal was announced.
Lead defense attorney
Michael Donahoe said prosecutors offered the deal in the late morning
before the lunch break. Graham accepted the deal, he said.
When everyone returned
to the courtroom, the judge asked Graham if she was sure she wanted to
plead guilty, because she could end up spending the rest of her life in a
federal prison.
Graham consented to the proceeding, though she appeared overwhelmed. She didn't cry, however.
When the judge first asked what happened the day her husband was killed, Graham responded, "I wasn't thinking of where we were."
Then she spoke of the deadly argument and how she had misgivings about the marriage.
"I wasn't really happy," she said.
She wasn't feeling like they should be married, she said.
When the judge asked her
why she left the murder scene, she said she was scared of what had
happened. She had the car keys in her pocket.
The judge accepted her
guilty plea. Graham, a resident of Kalispell, was then handcuffed in the
courtroom and taken into custody.
Her sentencing is scheduled for March 27, 2014.
Another of her
attorneys, Andrew Nelson, summed up the trial and its surprise outcome:
"For us, it's been emotional from the drop of the gavel."
A close friend of the
victim, Brad Blasdel, was terse about justice in the case as he left the
courthouse: "God'll take care of it."
During the U.S. District
Court trial this week, prosecutors contended that Graham was having
serious second thoughts about her marriage before her husband's death
and willfully lied to police after it.
But her defense lawyers
argued that the death plunge was an accident resulting from an argument.
Graham initially lied to police, they said, because she was afraid she
wouldn't be allowed to explain what happened on the cliff's edge.
The defense presented to
the jury an emotional, heartbreaking review of the couple's wedding
video and showed the couple as a normal pair preparing for marriage.
Graham's husband
disappeared July 7. Four days later, the FBI said, Graham led friends
and relatives to a popular spot in the park, where they found Johnson's
body.
Graham at first
maintained that she had simply speculated Johnson might have gone there.
But an FBI agent said that she changed her story when she was shown a
surveillance photo of the couple entering the park together.
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