Jury selection to begin in new trial for 1991 slaying

By: TERI FIGUEROA - Staff Writer | Tuesday, March 7, 2006 11:42 PM PST ∞

VISTA ---- Jury selection will begin this morning in the long-awaited murder retrial of a Solana Beach woman who has spent the last 15 years behind bars for fatally shooting her husband in 1991.

Patricia Joellen Johnson, now 62, won the right to a new trial more than a year ago, after San Diego Superior Court Judge Joan Weber found the outcome of Johnson's 1991 trial may have been different had Johnson been allowed to present a defense known as "battered woman's syndrome."

The battered woman's syndrome defense involves evidence of repeated abuse showing that the defendant acted in self-defense, even if there was no imminent danger.

At Johnson's new trial, the defense will be allowed to argue that Johnson's husband psychologically abused her.

On Feb. 25, 1991, police responding to a 911 call arrived at the Johnson home and found the defendant outside, dazed, wearing a nightgown and holding a gun. Her 57-year-old husband had been shot twice.

A jury convicted Johnson of first-degree murder in November 1991. She was subsequently sentenced to 29 years to life in prison.

Not long after Johnson's conviction, the law was changed to allow emotional and psychological abuse to be included in expert testimony about battered women.

On Tuesday, Board of Parole Hearings spokesman Tip Kindel said Johnson's case was one of just 154 cases that prison board investigators have reviewed since 1991 to consider the impact of battered woman's syndrome.

The universe in which those cases are chosen for investigation by the board of parole hearings is a small one. The reviewed cases are generally for anyone sentenced to life in prison before 1992, and they must include claims of abuse.

Investigators have thus far found that battering or abuse may have played a role in 38 of the cases the board has examined, Kindel said.

Johnson, who goes by her middle name of Joellen, has served 15 years behind bars, including the last 15 months in county jail while awaiting her new trial.

In court for pretrial hearings Tuesday, Johnson wore a light-colored jacket with soft pastel flowers. Her once-long, blond hair now short and graying, she appeared to listen closely to the legal back-and-forth between the attorneys and the judge.

Judge John Einhorn made a number of rulings about what can and can't come in at the upcoming trial, including a decision to allow prosecutors to show the jury a replica of the gun Johnson allegedly used in the slaying. The original gun has been destroyed in the 15 years since the first trial.

Einhorn also ruled that Johnson's public defenders can let jurors know that an expert they've hired to testify came to his conclusions about Johnson's alleged emotional abuse before they hired him.

That expert, previously hired and used by local prosecutors, was contacted by prosecutors to review the Johnson case. Prosecutors ultimately opted to not hire him for the case ---- but Johnson's defense attorneys did.

In addition to the experts the defense plans to call to testify, Johnson herself will take the stand, her attorney Kathy Cannon told the court.

Opening statements in what is expected to be a monthlong trial are set for March 14.

Court records ---- including an interview Johnson gave to police on the night of the slaying ---- indicate the defendant had a very stormy, on-again, off-again relationship with Peter Johnson.

According to court documents, the couple met in 1987 and began living together in 1988 but later split. They reunited in 1990, and were married in April of that year.

Johnson told police that she left her husband about five weeks before the shooting, but that she changed her mind two weeks later and ultimately rejoined him in their Solana Beach residence.

On the day of the shooting, the couple had been arguing about money, she told police. When they went to bed, she said to investigators, she asked for a good-night kiss and instead he bumped her lip with his head, and then told her to call 911.

She did, but he hung up the phone, she said. When the 911 operator called back, the husband and wife each got on the line to say that everything was fine. But, the operator apparently told them, police were already on the way. That phone call, according to court records, ended at 11:52 p.m.

When police arrived at 11:53 p.m., they found Joellen Johnson exiting the residence wearing a pink nightgown and holding a .38-caliber revolver. She told them she shot her husband after he told her the marriage was over and got dressed to leave, according to assertions in court documents recently filed by prosecutor Clay Biddle.

Contact staff writer Teri Figueroa at (760) 631-6624 or tfigueroa@nctimes.com.

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