johnson’s BASELESS lawsuit is dismissed with prejudice

Chris Johnson’s lawsuit against the detective who arrested him has been dismissed with prejudice.

A final judgement has been entered in favor of the detective, and against Johnson. Johnson can appeal the ruling, but cannot re-file the case.

The complaint wasn’t a lawsuit against the police, prosecutors, or the government. Rather, it sought more than $15 million from the detective in her personal capacity for what it described as malicious prosecution and a civil rights violation. The Court found the complaint to be wholly without merit, concluding that Johnson’s 21-page filing failed to even state a single legal claim.

The complaint’s central allegation was that the detective told the Grand Jury that Bobby Leonard identified Johnson by name as the person who called him and enlisted him in the murder-for-hire of Andrea Cincotta–when in fact he did not. Since the Grand Jury testimony is sealed, nobody knows whether that claim is true.

However, we do know that Leonard identified Johnson uniquely, by stating that the caller was Andrea’s boyfriend. The fact that Johnson was Andrea’s boyfriend is confirmed by Johnson’s own legal filings. In other words, the entire lawsuit seemed to rest on the fact that, allegedly, the detective said “Leonard identifed the caller as Johnson,” when she should have said, “Leonard identified the caller as Andrea’s boyfriend, which is Johnson.“ Beyond that, Leonard testified to the Grand Jury, meaning the Grand Jurors had every opportunity ask him directly about the caller. Records shows that Johnson himself also testified to the Grand Jury–meaning that he had an opportunity to clear up any of the facts at issue. Whatever he said, or didn’t say, the Grand Jury ultimately indicted him–finding probable cause against him on the murder-for-hire charge.

Johnson’s complaint largely ignored the main evidence against him. For example, it didn’t discuss:

• The lab’s conclusion that Johnson’s shoeprint was on Andrea’s body;
• Johnson’s inconsistent statements about his knowledge of and/or contact with Leonard;
• Johnson’s inconsistent statements about crime scene cleanup;
• Leonard’s 1998 statement that Andrea’s husband/boyfriend called him; or
• That Johnson’s entire account of the evening relies on an impossibility: that the bedroom answering machine magically “un-played” Judy Taylor’s message.

The complaint did acknowledge the fingerprint evidence against Johnson, badly mischaracterizing it in the process.

In the end, as the detective’s legal filing points out, Johnson essentially asked the Court to ignore most of the evidence against him, reasoning that a reasonable guilty person wouldn’t have behaved in the way that Johnson behaved. Put another way, “Johnson asks the Court not to consider these facts because they are too incriminating.”