Wednesday, March 20, 2013
The teen's body was discovered in the Susquehanna River in April 2011.
A Baltimore man who appeared for sentencing Wednesday in the case of Phylicia Barnes' death was instead granted a new trial. Michael Maurice Johnson, 29, was convicted of second-degree murder in February. On the heels of the conviction, his lawyers argued that the state withheld information about its witness and made improper statements in the two-day trial. When Johnson showed up for sentencing Wednesday in Baltimore City's Circuit Court, he faced up to 30 years in jail. Now he has a new trial, according to WJZ, which reported that the judge agreed with Johnson's attorneys that the state's key witness was of questionable credibility. According to The Baltimore Sun, the state failed to provide information to Johnson's lawyers that became …
Thursday, February 21, 2013
After the teen's body was found in Harford County, attorneys chalked up evidence leading to a second-degree murder conviction as a 'collaborative guess.'
Lawyers representing the man who was convicted of killing 16-year-old Phylicia Barnes are asking for a new trial, The Baltimore Sun reports. Attorneys for Michael Maurice Johnson, 29, say that the state made improper statements and withheld information about its main witness in the case which resulted in Johnson's conviction on second-degree murder charges. The witness, who went by the alias of James McCray, reportedly testified that Johnson asked for help disposing of Barnes’ body; McCray, who was a convicted criminal doing time in jail, said he advised Johnson to throw the body in the water to erase any evidence that he and Barnes had sex, The Baltimore Sun reported. The body of Barnes, who had been staying with her half-sister in …
Wednesday, February 6, 2013
Michael Maurice Johnson of Baltimore was found guilty of second-degree murder.
A jury Wednesday found a Baltimore man guilty of second-degree murder in the case of Phylicia Barnes, a teen whose body was found in the Susquehanna River in 2011, according to The Baltimore Sun. Michael Maurice Johnson, 29, of Baltimore, who had dated Barnes' half-sister Deena for several years, was indicted on a first-degree murder charge in April. He was reportedly the last person said to have seen Barnes alive. The 16-year-old Barnes, a student from Monroe, NC, was visiting her half-sister in northwest Baltimore when she went missing Dec. 28, 2010. Several search parties attempted to locate the teen, who was said to be an honor student. Workers at the Conowingo Dam discovered her body on April 20, 2011, and authorities identified the …
Tracey Reitterer
10:31 pm on Friday, February 22, 2013
Ironically, a juror from that case is now speaking out, stating it wasn't McCray's testimony at all that convinced them of Johnson's guilt, but Johnson's own recorded telephone statements about fleeing & degrees of charges that led to the jury's guilty verdict. more ›