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I have a problem with case because while on paper all the facts seem to say that Elizabeth Johnson is guilty, there is no physical evidence pointing to her guilt.

Other then the suspicion everybody has that she probably is guilty and did it to get even with her boyfriend.

And of course when you start sending people to prison because they "probably are guilty" you are going to send a lot of innocent people to prison.

And of course this case shows that our right to a speedy trial is a joke. Elizabeth Johnson spent almost 3 years in jail waiting to go to trial. Source

Baby Gabriel case: Mom guilty on several counts, not kidnapping

By Laurie Merrill The Republic | azcentral.com

Thu Oct 18, 2012 10:44 PM

Elizabeth Johnson smiled briefly Thursday when she heard that she had escaped a long prison sentence in the 2009 disappearance of her son, Gabriel.

Johnson — dressed in dark colors, her long brown hair pulled back — seemed pleased when the jury deadlocked on a kidnapping charge that could have brought her decades behind bars and instead found her guilty of three lesser charges.

Instead of facing the maximum sentence of 27 1/2 years, Johnson now faces up to 9 1/2 years, said Marc Victor, Johnson’s attorney.

Johnson faces as little as probation, which Victor said he would seek when Johnson is sentenced later this year.

“Obviously, she is thrilled,” Victor said. “It’s the best we could hope for.”

Ultimately, Johnson was convicted of unlawful imprisonment, custodial interference and conspiracy to commit custodial interference.

Frank McQueary, Baby Gabriel’s paternal grandfather, remained stoic after hearing Johnson’s conviction on only the lesser charges.

“We are all disappointed,” said McQueary, a former Phoenix police officer. “Realistically, the kidnapping is the hardest charge to prove.”

McQueary said the bottom line is that his grandson, who was 7months old when Johnson drove him to San Antonio shortly before Christmas 2009, is still missing.

“We are still right back at the basic starting point,” McQueary said. “We still don’t know where the baby is. And until such time as (Johnson) talks to us, we may never know what happened.”

A 12-member Maricopa County Superior Court jury deliberated nearly two days in a trial that was streamed live on television and the Internet.

Victor presented no witnesses and little cross-examination, hanging his hopes on what he called the weakness of the kidnapping charge by focusing the jury’s attention on the elements of the crime.

Johnson was accused of using her son as a weapon against her then boyfriend, Logan McQueary. On Dec.18 2009, Johnson drove to San Antonio with Gabriel, taking him out his father's life while conspiring with Tammi Smith of Scottsdale.

Smith, who was convicted in a separate trial in May of forgery and conspiracy to commit custodial interference, had her own reason for wanting Gabriel away from Logan McQueary: She wanted to adopt him.

Logan McQueary hasn't seen his son since Dec.9, 2009, the day after he moved from the Tempe mobile home he shared with Johnson and Gabriel.

It was also that day that Johnson gave the baby to the Smiths and signed a guardianship document. But the Smiths’ adoption plans were foiled by McQueary, who steadfastly said he wanted to raise Gabriel and won emergency custody of him after Johnson fled to Texas.

Two days after Christmas 2009, Logan McQueary got a chilling phone call from Johnson. “I killed him,” she said in a recording played to the jury.

She told Logan McQueary she smothered the baby until he turned blue and put him in a diaper bag, which she threw in a dumpster.

Logan McQueary has since moved to Ohio and was not in court on Thursday.

After Johnson was arrested, she recanted, saying she gave the baby to an unknown couple in a San Antonio park under Smith’s direction.

Neither statement has ever been proven. Despite an active San Antonio police investigation that included a landfill search, no evidence has surfaced that the baby is dead or with another family.

The investigation in San Antonio remains open.

Source

'Baby Gabriel' mom guilty on some counts, not kidnapping

Posted: Thursday, October 18, 2012 4:31 pm

Associated Press

Elizabeth Johnson, the Valley woman whose infant son vanished nearly three years ago avoided what could have been a lengthy prison term of nearly 30 years after a jury failed to reach a verdict on the most serious charge against her, instead convicting her of a lesser count of unlawful imprisonment Thursday.

The verdict means Elizabeth Johnson now faces a sentencing range of two to nine years, despite being suspected in the Christmastime 2009 disappearance of her then-8-month-old son, Gabriel. The child has never been found.

Johnson's attorney Marc Victor even said he would try to seek probation for his 26-year-old client, noting she already has spent nearly three years in jail. No sentencing date has been set.

"That took the wind substantially out of the case," Victor said of the lesser conviction.

The Maricopa County jury deliberated for about a day and a half, and also found Johnson guilty of custodial interference and conspiracy to commit custodial inference.

Jurors couldn't reach a decision on the more serious charge — kidnapping — and they declined to speak with reporters after announcing the verdicts.

Gabriel was last seen with his mother on Dec. 26, 2009, at a hotel in San Antonio, Texas.

Authorities said Johnson told Gabriel's father that she killed the boy and dumped him in a trash bin there. But authorities said she later recanted and told police she gave the baby to a couple at a San Antonio park. She never provided the couple's names.

Gabriel would have turned 3 this past April. But authorities don't know if he's still alive, and few clues have emerged.

In 2010, San Antonio police scoured a landfill that contained trash from the hotel where Gabriel was last seen. The search turned up no body or other evidence.

Johnson initially was found mentally unfit to stand trial but later was cleared to proceed. She had faced up to 27 years in prison if convicted on the kidnapping and other charges.

In closing arguments, prosecutor Angela Andrews said Johnson used Gabriel as a pawn in her disputes with the boy's father, Logan McQueary. The prosecutor alleged Johnson ran off to Texas with the child as a way to retaliate against McQueary for ending their tumultuous relationship.

McQueary isn't suspected in the child's disappearance and wasn't in court Thursday.

Victor presented no defense witnesses at trial. He predicted the jury would convict Johnson on the custodial interference charge because she violated a judge's custody order. But he argued prosecutors otherwise failed to prove his client's guilt.

Victor described Johnson as an unsophisticated single mother who was under a lot of stress, was in a volatile relationship with the boy's father, and was being manipulated by a woman who wanted to adopt Gabriel.

Investigators said Johnson brought the child from Tempe to Texas, stayed for a week and then took a bus to Florida without him. She was arrested in Florida on Dec. 30, 2009.

Johnson had been fighting with McQueary about whether to give up Gabriel for adoption. She signed over temporary guardianship of the boy to a Scottsdale couple for about 10 days before she picked him up and left Arizona.

The would-be adoptive mother from Scottsdale, Tammi Peters Smith, was accused of lying on a court document about the child's possible paternity in an effort to keep Gabriel from his father. Smith was convicted of forgery and conspiracy to commit custodial interference.

As the verdicts were delivered Thursday, Johnson shifted in her chair but showed no emotion. She wore a dark blazer over a peach-colored shirt with white stripes, and her long, brown hair was in a ponytail.

Gabriel's paternal grandfather, Frank McQueary, said afterward he was pleased that Johnson got three convictions. But he said the lighter punishment she'll face rankles him.

"Elizabeth is one of those not-so-nice people who, quite frankly, shouldn't be walking around with everyone else," he said.

Elizabeth Johnson screwed again

Source

Baby Gabriel case: Mother loses bid to be released from jail

By Michael Kiefer The Republic | azcentral.com

Thu Nov 1, 2012 3:30 PM

A Maricopa County Superior Court judge on Thursday ruled that Elizabeth Johnson, the mother of missing Baby Gabriel, will not be released from custody while awaiting sentencing next month.

But Johnson won a minor victory in the hearing: Judge Joseph Kreamer ruled that Johnson’s three convictions — for unlawful imprisonment, custodial interference, and conspiracy to commit custodial interference — were all part of the same act and therefore not subject to mandatory consecutive sentences.

Kreamer sternly told Johnson’s attorney, Marc Victor, that he could still make some of the sentences run consecutively, leaving the impression that Johnson, 26, will serve less than the maximum 9 1/2 years that could be meted out when she is sentenced on Dec. 7.

But Kreamer would not release her on bond pending that date, saying that Johnson will indeed face time in prison. Johnson already has served nearly three years in jail. As Victor pointed out in court, the sentence she would serve if all three sentences run concurrently would be 3. 75 years.

On Oct. 18, a jury failed to convict Johnson of kidnapping and instead found her guilty of the lesser crime of unlawful imprisonment.

If convicted of kidnapping, she could have faced 27 1/2 years in prison.

“She’s all smiles at this point in terms of the verdict,” Victor said of Johnson. “The rest of her life is not ruined, even if she gets more time.”

But the baby is still missing, and presumed dead. Johnson told as much to Gabriel’s father, Logan McQueary, in phone calls in which she said, "I suffocated him. I covered him up with a towel, and I suffocated him, and he turned blue, and I put him in his diaper bag, and I put him in the trash can."

Johnson later said she gave the eight-month-old to a couple in San Antonio, Texas. Whether she is charged with murder depends on whether law enforcement in San Antonio, where the child was last seen in December 2009, can make a case.

When asked Thursday if Johnson might now reveal the baby’s whereabouts, Victor answered, “She doesn’t know where Gabriel is.”

He reiterated her story about giving the baby to the San Antonio couple, “probably arranged by Tammi Smith,” Johnson’s co-defendant, who Victor said “manipulated” Johnson.

In June, a jury found Smith guilty of forgery and conspiracy to commit custodial interference, and Kreamer sentenced her to three years probation and 30 days in jail. That sentence, Victor said, may serve as a sentencing guide for Johnson’s conspiracy charge.

Baby Gabriel's mom, Elizabeth Johnson got railroaded???

Source

Baby Gabriel's mom to serve more than 2 years in prison

By Michael Kiefer The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Dec 7, 2012 10:34 PM

Even at the last minute, there was a deal on the table for Elizabeth Johnson from the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office: Tell us where Baby Gabriel is, and we’ll recommend a sentence of time served.

Johnson did not respond to the offer. Instead, she was sentenced to 5.25 years in prison, with credit for the nearly three years she has already been in jail.

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Joseph Kreamer also sentenced Johnson to four years of probation. With good behavior, she could be released in two years and three months.

But the baby is still missing.

Gabriel disappeared in December 2009 when he was 8months old. Johnson first told the baby’s father, Logan McQueary, that she had killed him and dumped his body in the trash. Then she told police that she had given him to a couple in a park in San Antonio.

She stuck to that story on Friday in Maricopa County Superior Court.

“Though I would never want to harm Gabriel, I realize I did harm him by taking him away from Logan and giving him away in San Antonio,” she said.

Her maternal grandmother and paternal grandfather spoke on her behalf, as did her twin brother, Robert. They described a “train-wreck upbringing” by an alcoholic mother who left the twins on the grandmother’s doorstep. Johnson and her brother were orphaned at an early age and passed through as many as seven foster homes, they said.

Johnson’s family and her attorney, Marc Victor, theorized that Johnson gave the baby away rather than submit him to the kind of childhood she had experienced.

“She’s never seen a mom,” Victor said. “She doesn’t know what a mom is.”

Victor asked that Johnson be sentenced to probation on all counts.

Before Kreamer sentenced her, he said, “In those circumstances, it’s a wonder you got through it at all.”

Johnson, 26, wore jailhouse stripes and handcuffs linked to chains as she listened. Occasionally she sobbed, as when her grandmother described her mother’s drowning.

And when she faced Kreamer, she tried to explain her actions and finally said, “Regardless of my side, it doesn’t matter, because at the end of the day, Gabriel is still missing.

“I do deserve the maximum, I do,” she blurted out.

When he addressed the court, McQueary said, “She should stay in jail until Gabriel is found or serve the maximum sentence.”

Kreamer explained that he could not jail Johnson until she revealed Gabriel’s whereabouts. Nor did he give her the maximum 9.5 years that she faced. He cited the great harm done to McQueary and his family and sentenced her to consecutive sentences of 3.5 years for custodial interference and 1.75 years for unlawful imprisonment. Then he imposed a four-year “probation tail.”

In December 2009, Johnson was involved in a custody dispute with McQueary. She had tried to give the child up for adoption to a local woman, Tammi Smith, but McQueary fought it.

Then, according to police and trial testimony, on Dec. 18, 2009, Johnson took Gabriel and drove to San Antonio to avoid shared custody with McQueary. Two days later, a Maricopa County judge awarded custody to McQueary, but Johnson and the baby were gone.

That day, Johnson checked into a hotel, and witnesses in depositions claimed she had the baby with her. Prosecutors also used photos Johnson had taken of Gabriel to prove that he was still alive and with her over the next several days.

But on Dec. 27, 2009, Johnson was seen without the baby while boarding a bus for Florida. That same day, she sent text messages to McQueary saying she had killed the child.

“I suffocated him. I covered him up with a towel, and I suffocated him, and he turned blue, and I put him in his diaper bag, and I put him in the trash can,” she said when McQueary reached her on her phone.

When Johnson was arrested in Miami, she claimed not to know where the baby was. She told police she had given him to a couple she had met at a park in San Antonio, but she was never able to provide names or descriptions of the couple.

She was charged in Maricopa County with kidnapping, custodial interference and conspiracy to commit custodial interference. She was not charged with murder, because if she had killed Gabriel, it would have occurred in another jurisdiction, namely Texas. The child has never been found, and though presumed dead, the murder investigation was muddied by a San Antonio detective who improperly found his way into Johnson’s jail cell and extracted statements from Johnson outside the presence of her attorneys.

That incident compromised Johnson’s relationship with her attorneys, and she fired several before settling with Victor. Johnson also underwent a court-ordered psychological evaluation to determine if she was competent to stand trial.

The trial began Sept. 20. Victor presented little in the way of defense, rarely cross examining the prosecution’s witnesses. Yet, when the jurors came back from deliberation they found Johnson guilty of unlawful imprisonment, custodial interference and conspiracy to commit custodial interference. Had she been convicted of kidnapping, she could have faced 27.5 years in prison.

In July, Tammi Smith was sentenced to 30 days in jail and three years’ probation on counts of forgery and conspiracy to commit custodial interference. She was in court on Friday morning for a probation review hearing.

Republic reporter Haley Madden contributed to this article.

Here are some previous articles on Baby Gabriel and Elizabeth Johnson.

And even more articles on Baby Gabriel and Elizabeth Johnson.

And more articles on Baby Gabriel and Elizabeth Johnson.

And more articles on Baby Gabriel and Elizabeth Johnson.