Dailey tried to assure him that he'd done the right thing by naming his partner. "He's in even more serious trouble than you are," he said.
"I guess," Jordan said.
Johnson as a teen in the early 1990s.
Johnson after receiving his GED certificate in prison in 2009.
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"My God, he took a human life," Dailey said.
"He's the one that shanked him," Jordan agreed. "Wasn't intended to, and that's about it."
Johnson was arrested a few hours later, as he left the foster home on a cigarette run. The police soon had a series of statements supporting Jordan's version of the crime — many of them obtained from sources friendly to Jordan, Johnson says. A visitor to the foster home claimed that, before the pair headed off on the bus, she overheard Johnson asking Jordan, "Do you want to do a jack?" — an offer that contradicts Jordan's own account of deciding to commit robbery only after learning that his paycheck wouldn't cover his rent.
Johnson's roommate said he saw him place a kitchen knife in his jacket before heading out. More damaging still was the testimony of Danny Curtis, another resident of the foster home, who claimed that Johnson asked him if he wanted to "do a jack" with them. Curtis also said that Johnson later admitted to stabbing the victim and asked him to keep the watch and ring for him, which Curtis hid under a bush outside a Black-eyed Pea.
Johnson denies talking about doing a jack, admitting the stabbing or handing Curtis anything. At trial, Curtis admitted that he'd told different versions of the story to different people. The watch, ring and murder weapon were never found — although, oddly enough, the steak knife Jordan claimed to have lifted from the Jaguar was.
His parents hired a private attorney to defend Johnson but soon ran out of resources. His court-appointed lawyer, Jeffrey Pagliuca, seemed confident that Johnson could prevail at trial. After all, Jordan had the admitted motive for the robbery: the puny paycheck and his pending eviction. It was Jordan who pawned the bracelet. And the physical evidence strongly indicated that Jordan had done all the stabbing. It was Jordan who had the victim's blood on his clothing — so much blood that he threw away his jacket, only to be nailed with stains found on other gear. No blood that could be traced to the victim was found on Johnson's clothes, just some stains that were consistent with his own blood type. (Prosecutors theorized that he might have washed his clothes that night, but that doesn't explain how he could have magically washed away all traces of the victim's blood while leaving his own.)
"If he had blood on him, I don't think there'd be any reason to give him any mercy," John Johnson says of his son. "But I know Jeff would not stab anybody. That's just not in his makeup."
Jeff Johnson says that at one point he was offered a plea bargain for a twenty-year sentence, with the possibility of placement in the Youthful Offender System, a "second last chance" program for violent teens that would cut his time drastically if he successfully completed it. "I told Pagliuca I wanted to take the deal," he says. "He said there was no evidence against me and we could beat this at trial."
Yet when the case did go to trial, Johnson had few witnesses on his side — and never testified himself. Pagliuca talked him out of taking the stand, he says: "He told me if I was to testify and I got found guilty, I could be labeled a rat and killed in prison. I wasn't going to do it. I'd already had issues in the county jail."
Pagliuca is currently out of the country and couldn't be reached for comment. Yet it's doubtful that Johnson could have avoided prison even if he'd managed to convince the jury that he wasn't the one who did the stabbing. In closing arguments, Arapahoe County prosecutor Steve Lee explained that, under the state's felony-murder statute, his office didn't have to prove Johnson actually killed anyone. It merely had to be established that he was part of the robbery scheme. He was with Jordan during the commission of the crime and was seen fleeing with him, and that made him just as guilty of felony murder as any other participant.
The jury found Johnson guilty on eight counts, each of which resulted in a stiff sentence. Thirty-two years for aggravated robbery. Thirty-two years for motor vehicle theft. Forty-eight years for conspiracy.
But the only charge that mattered came with no specific number attached to it, no time that could be measured and managed. Guilty, first-degree murder, mandatory sentence of life without parole.
Jordan didn't go to trial. He copped a plea to second-degree murder and armed robbery that netted him a hundred years. With time off for good behavior, he'll be eligible for parole in 2038, at the age of 63.
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The battle over sending juveniles who commit violent crimes to adult prisons, sometimes for life, is a contentious one. The opposing sides don't even agree how many juvenile LWOP cases there are in American prisons. Studies done by reformers estimate the number of juvie lifers at 2,500 or more, but victim-rights groups say the actual count is about half that, around 1,300.
