Montana bride: Lawyer says police 'shaped' her confession

Montana bride, Jordan Graham, didn't deliberately push her new husband off a cliff in Glacier National Park, in Montana. The bride's lawyer says police "shaped" her confession.

Investigators twisted the statements of a newlywed bride to make it appear as though she deliberately pushed her husband to his death in Glacier National Park, an attorney for the woman claimed.

FBI investigator Stacey Smiedala also sent a police detective from the room so he could "shape" Jordan Graham's initial 1 ½-hour interrogation on July 16 without having to record it, as is required in all investigations in the state of Montana, attorney Michael Donahoe said in court filings late Friday.

As a result, Graham's statements that the death of Cody Johnson was an accident, followed by her fear and panic that nobody would believe her, were manipulated and then distorted into an exaggerated version of what happened, Donahoe said.

Federal prosecutors do not respond to media queries about active cases, and they have not filed a response to Donahoe's claims.

Donahoe included a transcript of the recorded portion of the interview in which Graham said she and Johnson argued eight days after their wedding about whether they should have waited longer to get married. She said Johnson suggested driving to Glacier, where they continued to talk at the edge of a cliff.

Graham, 22, said Johnson, 25, was talking to her like she was a child and grabbed her arm. She said she knocked his arm off and pushed him in one motion, causing him to fall.

"I think I didn't realize that one push would mean for sure you were over," Graham said, according to the transcript. "I felt like I shouldn't have gotten married at that time, but not, there were not any issues of being with Cody, no. I feel like he's the person I was going to spend the rest of my life with."

Donahoe's court filings are the first extended look at the defense planned by Graham. She initially said Johnson had disappeared July 7 after driving off with friends, but then she led park rangers to his body three days later so the search would be called off "and the cops will be out of it," according to prosecutors' court filings.

A trial is set for Dec. 9. Federal prosecutors have asked for a delay.

Donahoe is asking a federal judge to dismiss the murder indictment against Graham, to block prosecutors from using her July 16 statement and to prevent prosecutors from introducing a new theory that Graham blindfolded Johnson before pushing him.

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Montana bride: Lawyer says police 'shaped' her confession
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Latest-News-Wires/2013/1113/Montana-bride-Lawyer-says-police-shaped-her-confession
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe