Phylicia Barnes 16, Monroe, NC missing Baltimore, Md 12/28/10(Found Deceased)

[texasmom]

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2013-01-28/news/bs-md-ci-barnes-trial-day-five-20130128_1_michael-maurice-johnson-phylicia-barnes-johnson-and-phylicia

Tearful Deena Barnes describes day Phylicia went missing
Prosecution questions older sister of murder victim in trial of Michael Maurice Johnson


Phylicia Simone Barnes (Baltimore Sun )

January 28, 2013|By Justin Fenton, The Baltimore Sun

The older sister of Phylicia Barnes tearfully said Monday she had allowed her teenage sister to drift too close to the man now accused of murdering her, testifying in the trial of Michael Maurice Johnson that the then-26-year-old's unnerving conduct one summer night was the final blow to their relationship.

Prosecutors played for the jurors a 16-minute video they said depicted Deena Barnes and Johnson, along with Phylicia and Johnson's younger brother Glenton Michael Johnson kissing and "nakedly" touching after leaving a June 2010 party on a dare that they go streaking together.

Barnes dabbed her eyes with a tissue, acknowledging that her teenage sister, on that night and others, became intoxicated, smoked marijuana and spent the night in the same room with boys.

"What were you thinking at the time?" asked Assistant State's Attorney Lisa Goldberg.

"I wasn't," said Barnes, her voice lowered and a swoop of hair covering her right eye.

Barnes said Johnson once made a pass at her 16-year-old sister. She described trouble reaching him on the day Phylicia went missing, but was not asked for any insight into how Phylicia died. The prosecution has described an inappropriate relationship between Johnson and Phylicia but has not offered a motive.

Johnson is facing one count of first-degree murder in the death of Phylicia, who, while visiting from North Carolina, vanished from her sister's Northwest Baltimore apartment on Dec. 28, 2010. Johnson was the last person known to have seen her alive. Her nude body was found four months later in the Susquehanna River.

 ::snipping2::

Barnes testified that she later saw Phylicia and Michael Johnson together in her apartment's bathroom, with Johnson tending to the girl's knee. From the bedroom, Barnes said, she saw Johnson reach for the girl's genitals. She laughed and pushed his hand away, said Barnes, who testified that she was disturbed by the interaction and confronted Johnson about it.

"I asked him, did he just try to touch my sister. He said no," Barnes testified. She asked him again, then asked Phylicia about it.

Barnes said she considered calling their father, but worried that he might forbid his daughters to spend time together.

"I was scared," she testified. "Scared of not being able to see Phylicia anymore. … I thought she wouldn't be able to come around anymore."

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"She was a beautiful person — bubbly, funny, smart, loving and caring," Barnes testified. Despite their 11-year age difference, she described Phylicia as "my best friend."

That friendship developed amid Barnes' troubled relationship with Johnson, her live-in boyfriend, whom she had been dating for 10 years. Their relationship was "rocky," and Barnes said she lost several friends because they didn't approve.

[texasmom]

Justice for Phylicia! 

 ::justice2NJ::

[texasmom]

 

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/crime/blog/bs-md-johnson-charges-dropped-20150120-story.html#page=1

Judge drops all charges against Michael Johnson

By Justin Fenton
The Baltimore Sun


A Baltimore judge has dismissed charges against the man accused in the late 2010 disappearance and death of 16-year-old Phylicia Barnes, setting free the only suspect in a case that drew national attention but has been criticized as flimsy.

Michael Maurice Johnson, 30, has been jailed since 2012 and was convicted of second-degree murder a year later in the teen's death. Piecing together what they described as "circumstantial evidence," prosecutors alleged that Johnson developed a questionable relationship with the teen — the younger half-sister of his longtime girlfriend — then killed her and dumped her body in the Susquehanna River.

Previously, Judge Alfred J. Nance, who overturned Johnson's 2013 conviction, had expressed "great concern" over the evidence in the case. On Tuesday, Judge John Addison Howard, who declared a mistrial at a second trial last month, ruled that prosecutors had presented insufficient evidence.

Howard's decision, delivered in a brief statement, led to Johnson's release Tuesday evening from the Baltimore City Detention Center.

"Michael Johnson has maintained his innocence from day one," said Katy O'Donnell, one of two attorneys from the public defender's office who represented Johnson. "We absolutely, firmly believe the court did the right thing and justice was done."

Baltimore State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby said in a statement that Howard had "no jurisdiction to grant the acquittal" and vowed to appeal.

The decision was the latest twist in a case that saw a conviction overturned, a key witness discredited and, just last month, a mistrial because of prosecutorial error.

Phylicia's father, Russell Barnes, said the judicial system let his daughter down. He said the process seemed to be in Johnson's favor and that important evidence was never admitted.

"In my mind, the city of Baltimore has let a child predator go," Barnes said. "We still want justice for Phylicia."

Johnson's mother, Rhonda Mullins, was present in the courtroom Tuesday and called the case a "nightmare" for her family. Mullins, a retired city police officer, said her son's acquittal was "wonderful news."

At Tuesday's hearing, Assistant State's Attorney Lisa Goldberg told the judge that all available evidence pointed to Johnson.

"We don't have a motive," Goldberg told Howard. "We don't need a motive. ... There is no boogeyman out there who took Phylicia Barnes. The circumstances point back to the defendant."

 

During both trials, prosecutors told jurors they believed Johnson had developed an inappropriate relationship with the teen, whom he called "lil' sis." They pointed to hundreds of text messages exchanged in the six months before her disappearance, though the content of the messages was never disclosed.

At a party in June 2010, prosecutors said, he and the girl went streaking and then, along with Johnson's younger brother and Phylicia's half-sister Deena Barnes, went to a field where a fifth person filmed the four engaged in "naked touching." That video was played for jurors at both trials, with prosecutors theorizing that it represented a turn in the brother-sister-like relationship.


Meanwhile, Johnson's 10-year relationship with Deena Barnes had been crumbling, according to prosecutors. Johnson had said that on the morning of the girl's disappearance, he had gone to Deena's apartment to gather some belongings to move out, and later called out of work.

"We have a defendant who just per chance takes the day off from work," Goldberg said Tuesday. "We have all these things that make you go 'hmm.'"

A neighbor said he saw Johnson struggling to move a plastic storage container out of the apartment, and prosecutors alleged that Phylicia's body was inside. Goldberg said Johnson showed little interest upon hearing the news that the girl was missing.

Defense attorneys said Johnson was cooperative with police and offered to help in the search until he was asked to stay away. Cellphone records that trace his movements did not show him anywhere near the Susquehanna in Harford County, where the teen's body was found in April 2011.

Investigators tapped Johnson's phone for two months, during which he discussed the case and speculated about police tactics, as well as fleeing the country. But he did not admit to the crime.

Johnson was indicted by a grand jury on charges of first-degree murder in April 2012.

 

During the second trial, prosecutors played a wiretapped phone call between Johnson and one of his brothers. Howard ordered part of the tape redacted, and after a recess prosecutors said they had properly edited it. But when it was played, jurors again heard the portion Howard had ordered removed.

Howard, who said he did not believe the mistake was intentional, declared a mistrial Dec. 22.

Five jurors interviewed after the mistrial told The Baltimore Sun they would have voted to acquit Johnson based on the state's case. "The evidence wasn't there at all, to me," said juror Audra Agnelly.

In court Tuesday, O'Donnell and fellow defense attorney Kaye Beehler said they believed the failure to redact the tapes was intentional. Beehler alleged that the state made the error in hopes of prompting a new trial because prosecutors sensed the current one was "going down the tubes."

Goldberg called the allegation "ludicrous."

Beehler said prosecutors could not even prove that a crime had been committed or, if one had been, what state it occurred in. The Susquehanna River flows through New York, Pennsylvania and Maryland.

"There was insufficient evidence of where she died, how she died, and what manner she died," Beehler said.

Howard called the prosecution's case against Johnson "unarguably circumstantial" and said while it was intriguing, it contained "no direct evidence" linking him to Phylicia Barnes' death.

"There was 'no smoking gun' in this case," Howard wrote.

[MuffyBee]

  

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