How could a person’s mind snap in a matter of minutes to cause a wife to turn on her husband and push him over a cliff in the Glacier National Park? On Thursday December 12, 2013 a federal judge accepted a guilty plea from the Montana newlywed wife for her act of pushing her husband to his death.
The surprise plea agreement came before a jury was scheduled to begin to consider the case against the wife, 22-year-old Jordan Graham.
Prosecutors agreed to drop a first-degree murder charge and also a count of making a false statement to authorities in an exchange for the plea to second-degree murder.
If a person is charged with a first-degree murder it means a crime has been premeditated.
The sentencing is set for March 27, 2014 where Graham is facing a possibility of a maximum sentence of life in prison.
Upon accepting the plea agreement, District Judge Donald Molloy asked Graham to recount exactly what had happened the night of July 7, 2013 when her husband, Cody Johnson, 25-year-old, had fallen to his death in the park.
Graham made statements to her husband that she wasn’t happy and wasn’t feeling like she should be feeling after the marriage. She said they began to argue and at one point he grabbed her by the arm; she brushed his hand away and pushed him, with one hand on his arm and the other on his back.
Graham said, “I wasn’t thinking about where we were…I just pushed;” and telling the judge, “I then drove back to Kalispell without calling for help because she was so afraid she did not know what to do.”
The defense attorneys wrapped up the case without Graham giving a testimony.
Pictures and videos were shown of Graham smiling while having her hair done and while trying on a borrowed wedding dress…the videos were of the June 29, 2013 wedding and also of the couple’s first dance.
The purpose of the videos was to chip away at the prosecution’s image of Graham as being a cold, dispassionate woman who didn’t want to marry Johnson, and their contention that she later led him to a dangerous precipice in the Montana Park and deliberately shoved him off the cliff to his death.
Elizabeth Shea, a musician Graham had commissioned to write a song for the couple’s first wedding dance, described Graham as being a quiet and a standoffish type person until she was asked about her wedding; and Shea testified, “Graham then lit up and smiled.”
Graham’s longtime employer Sarah Bigelow told the jurors Graham had been a nanny for five years for her two children. Bigelow indicated that it was her wedding gown that Graham had borrowed, and saying, “It was difficult for Graham to interact with people that she didn’t know, but she had loved the Bigelow children.”
Bigelow said, “The children loved her and she took care of them very well; and she was always on time for her work.”
The prosecution and defense rested their case on Thursday December 12, 2013 after three and a-half days of testimony. The plea agreement was reached prior to the closing arguments taking place.
Johnson was reported as a missing person on July 8, 2013. Graham initially told authorities he had left with friends the night before.
Writer of this article is Barbara Kasey Smith based on a Fox News Report on December 12, 2013.
Source:
Report on Fox News.Com