An American woman who pushed her newlywed husband off a cliff has been sentenced to 30 years in prison after a judge rejected her request to withdraw her guilty plea to a charge of second-degree murder.
Jordan Linn Graham, 22, took the stand during her sentencing hearing to offer a tearful apology to the family of Cody Johnson, 25, who died eight days after their wedding last summer.
But the district judge Donald Molloy indicated he had continuing doubts about the defendant's honesty. "There's only one person in this room that knows what happened, and I don't think she's been entirely truthful about what happened," Molloy said.
Prosecutors had recommended a prison term of 50 years to life. They said Graham, of Kalispell, Montana, lured Johnson to the top of a 91-metre (300ft) cliff in Glacier national park on 7 July and pushed him over, then lied repeatedly to investigators in an attempt to cover up the crime.
In December, while the case was being heard by a jury, Graham dropped her claims of innocence and pleaded guilty to second-degree murder just before closing arguments in the trial. Prosecutors in return dropped a first-degree murder charge and a count of making a false statement.
Before her sentencing, Graham addressed the judge and assembled friends and family members. She claimed still to love Johnson and apologised for the pain she had caused. "It was a moment of complete shock and panic," Graham said of the events surrounding Johnson's death. "I have no other explanation."
Prosecutors painted a more sinister image of the defendant. They said she drove away from the murder scene without checking whether Johnson had survived the fall. The absence of any drugs or alcohol in the case meant the defendant "was thinking very clearly", said the assistant US attorney Kris Mclean.
In the days leading up to her sentencing, her attorneys sought to withdraw Graham's guilty plea after prosecutors recommended up to life in prison. They described their client's actions as "extremely reckless but unintentional" and argued that a 10-year sentence was appropriate.
They portrayed her lies to investigators as "distorted statements" that Graham later sought to clarify because she could not bear the burden of her guilt. "Embedded within her false narrative were pieces of the truth that the defendant would ultimately reveal [to law enforcement] in pursuit of catharsis," her lawyers wrote in documents submitted to the court this month.
Before he accepted her plea in December, the judge asked Graham to tell him what happened. Graham said she wanted to confront her husband about her marriage doubts but did not know how he would take it. She said the couple climbed down a treacherous slope below a popular spot in the park called the Loop and spoke on a narrow ledge, hundreds of feet above a ravine.
She told Johnson she was unhappy, they argued, and at one point, she said, he grabbed her by the arm, and she thought he was going to pull her. She told the judge she got angry at Johnson, brushed his hand away, then pushed him, with one hand on his arm and one on his back.
"I wasn't thinking about where we were … I just pushed," Graham said.
Graham initially told investigators that Johnson left their house on 7 July with unknown friends. But Johnson's friends testified that they were suspicious of the story and suspected Graham played a role in his disappearance. Graham showed police a fabricated email – purportedly from a friend of Johnson – that said Johnson was dead and to call off the search.
Graham acknowledged she was with Johnson on the cliff after investigators confronted her with a security camera photo of the couple entering the park.
Prosecutors presented dozens of text messages between Graham and a friend from church that documented how Graham's nervous excitement at the prospect of the wedding turned into despair over the week that followed.
Johnson was reported missing on 8 July when he failed to show up for work. His body was found three days later when Graham led a group of searchers to where she had pushed him off the cliff.culled
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