Martha Ann Johnson was convicted in 1990 of murdering her 11-year-old daughter, Jenny Ann Wright, who died in Clayton County, Georgia, south of Atlanta, on February 21, 1982. Jenny was the fourth of Johnson's children to die between 1977 and 1982. The deaths of the other three, all very young, had been certified as natural: twice as sudden infant death syndrome and once as a seizure disorder. After Jenny's death Johnson was told that she was a suspect in all four deaths, but nothing more was done until the case was reopened in 1988. In July 1989, in a recorded interview with a Clayton County police officer, she admitted killing Jenny and one of her sons. She was tried only for Jenny's death, and she was sentenced to life in prison.
The case drew attention again in January 2020, when the State Board of Pardons and Paroles told prosecutors that it had decided to proceed with her parole after five earlier refusals. The district attorney and Jenny's surviving relatives opposed her release.
Four of Johnson's children are named in the court record: Jenny Ann Wright, J.W. Taylor, Wayne Bowen and Tabitha Bowen. Jenny was the oldest. Johnson's three younger children died between 1977 and 1981. The Supreme Court of Georgia, summarizing the trial record in 1991, gave their ages at death as about a year and a half, two years and three months, and recorded the causes listed on their death certificates as sudden infant death syndrome, seizure disorder and sudden infant death syndrome. Which age and which cause belonged to which child has never been set out. In 2020, Atlanta station 11Alive described the three as aged from three months to two years.
Little is known about the children's lives. Jenny had a half-brother and a half-sister, and both spoke publicly in 2020. Her half-brother's father had been married to Johnson; he had died shortly before the parole decision, and his family said he had not wanted her released. An aunt of the children told WSB-TV in January 2020 that Jenny had been afraid to go home to her mother, and that she had told the trial judge this.
On February 21, 1982, Clayton County police answered a call about the death of a child. The child was Jenny. An autopsy by the state crime laboratory found that she had died of asphyxiation.
Police told Johnson that she was a suspect in Jenny's death and in the deaths of her three other children. According to the Supreme Court of Georgia, no action was taken against her after that until the case was reopened in 1988. Why the inquiry went no further at the time has never been explained.
The case was reopened in 1988 after an investigation by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution brought new attention to Johnson, according to 11Alive. What the newspaper found, and how police followed it up, has not been made public.
On July 3, 1989, Johnson gave an interview to an officer at the Clayton County Police Department. The interview was recorded on both audiotape and videotape. In it she admitted that she had killed Jenny, and she admitted that she had killed her son J.W. Taylor. She denied causing the deaths of Wayne and Tabitha Bowen.
Police came to suspect that she had suffocated all four children, WSB-TV reported in 2020, and believed she had done it to get the attention of the men in her life. A 1994 11Alive report said she was believed to have killed one of her children each time her husband left her. These are the accounts of investigators and reporters; she was not tried in the three earlier deaths, and she denied two of them.
Johnson was tried in Clayton County for the murder of Jenny alone. The jury saw the recorded interview. The defense objected, but the trial court admitted it.
Johnson testified in her own defense and denied that she had killed her daughter. Her husband at the time, identified in the appeal as Mr. Johnson, testified for her, giving his own opinion of her. The defense asked the judge to instruct the jury on good character, and the judge refused.
The prosecution also called a biostatistician. He was not a medical doctor. Asked about the deaths of the other children, he told the jury that "about 5% of these cases, and this is a very conservative estimate, might be due to causes similar to SIDS." His figure rested on what he described as long conversations with several subject experts at the federal Centers for Disease Control, who were pediatricians.
The jury found Johnson guilty of murder. On May 5, 1990, it returned its sentencing verdict, and she was sentenced to life in prison. Her motion for a new trial was denied on December 17, 1990, and she filed her notice of appeal on December 20, 1990.
Her appeal was handled by Martin L. Cowen III. The state was represented by the Clayton County district attorney, Robert E. Keller, and his assistant Albert B. Collier, with Michael J. Bowers and Thomas A. Cox Jr. The case was docketed on February 7, 1991, and argued on April 15, 1991. The Supreme Court of Georgia affirmed the conviction on July 9, 1991, in Johnson v. State, 261 Ga. 419.
The court ruled on four questions.
First, it held that the evidence was enough for a rational jury to find her guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
Second, it upheld the use of the recorded interview. Georgia law required that a confession be made voluntarily, without being induced by even the slightest hope of benefit or remotest fear of injury, and the court found no error in the trial court's decision to admit it.
Third, it held that the biostatistician should not have been allowed to give his estimate. The court found no factual basis for the calculation and no foundation for his knowledge of the symptoms or causes of sudden infant death syndrome. He had been qualified only to explain how the probability of independent events is calculated, and the pediatricians he relied on had not been shown to be statisticians who could judge his analysis. The court said it disapproved of such testimony. It held the error harmless, however, because of Johnson's confession.
Fourth, it agreed that the trial judge had been right to refuse the good-character instruction. Under Georgia law at the time, a character witness could testify to a defendant's general reputation in the community, not to a personal opinion, and her husband had given only his opinion. Her own testimony denying the crime did not put her character in issue; character, the court said, had to be placed in evidence as an affirmative defense.
Two justices, Hunt and Fletcher, concurred in the judgment only.
Johnson served her life sentence in the Georgia prison system. By January 2020 she had been refused parole five times, according to the parole board.
The Clayton County district attorney's office was notified in October 2019 that her parole was under consideration. That month Governor Brian Kemp named Tasha Mosley, Clayton County's longtime solicitor general, as district attorney of the Clayton Judicial Circuit, replacing the retiring Tracy G. Lawson. Mosley objected to Johnson's parole in a letter to the board.
In January 2020 the board wrote to the district attorney's office that it "has decided to proceed with this inmate's parole." A board spokesperson confirmed a tentative grant of release to 11Alive. The board said its decisions were tentative and subject to change, and that it would give 72 hours' notice of a release date if the parole went ahead. Johnson was 64.
The district attorney's office said it strongly opposed her release and would continue to fight it. Mosley told WSB-TV that Johnson was a danger to the community and asked the board to reconsider.
Jenny's half-brother and half-sister told WSB-TV that they were outraged, and that the Clayton County district attorney had promised them in 1990 that Johnson would not be released. The half-brother said he wanted her kept in prison until she died, and told 11Alive that she had not once said in court that she was sorry. The half-sister said Johnson had killed not only their sister but four of her children. The children's aunt told WSB-TV that the board could not let Johnson out, and that she showed no remorse.
No release date was made public in January 2020.
Johnson has not been tried for the deaths of J.W. Taylor, Wayne Bowen or Tabitha Bowen. On the recorded interview she admitted killing J.W. and denied harming Wayne and Tabitha. Police suspected her in all three deaths, and the certificates gave natural causes.
In 2020 the Clayton County district attorney's office said those children had died in Fulton County, so any charging decision belonged to the Fulton County district attorney, then Paul L. Howard. Jenny's relatives said they hoped she would one day be tried for the other deaths. No charges in those deaths were reported.
How many of her children Johnson killed has not been decided by a court. She was convicted of one killing, admitted a second, and denied two. Statements by relatives in 2020 that she killed all four children are their view, not a finding.
The reports differ on some details. One WSB-TV report in January 2020 described her as a Cobb County mother, while the court record and the other reports place Jenny's death and the trial in Clayton County and the earlier deaths, according to the district attorney, in Fulton County. A second WSB-TV report said police also suspected poisoning; no other account mentions it, and the court record lists only the certified causes and Jenny's asphyxiation.
The 1994 claim that she killed a child each time her husband left her comes from a television report, as described by 11Alive in 2020; it was not part of the court's findings.
1977 to 1981: three of Martha Ann Johnson's young children die; their death certificates give sudden infant death syndrome (twice) and seizure disorder.
February 21, 1982: her daughter Jenny Ann Wright, 11, dies in Clayton County; the state crime lab finds asphyxiation. Police tell Johnson she is a suspect in all four deaths.
1988: the case is reopened after an Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigation.
July 3, 1989: in a recorded interview at the Clayton County Police Department, she admits killing Jenny and her son J.W. Taylor, and denies the deaths of Wayne and Tabitha Bowen.
1990: tried in Clayton County for Jenny's murder; testifies that she did not kill her; found guilty.
May 5, 1990: the jury returns a sentencing verdict; she is sentenced to life in prison.
December 17, 1990: motion for new trial denied.
December 20, 1990: notice of appeal filed.
April 15, 1991: appeal argued before the Supreme Court of Georgia.
July 9, 1991: conviction affirmed (Johnson v. State, 261 Ga. 419); the court disapproves of the statistician's testimony but finds the error harmless.
1994: an 11Alive report says she was believed to have killed a child each time her husband left her.
October 2019: the Clayton County district attorney's office is notified of possible parole; Tasha Mosley is named district attorney.
January 2020: after five earlier denials, the parole board confirms a tentative grant of parole; the district attorney and Jenny's relatives oppose it.
January 14, 2020: relatives and the district attorney ask the board to reconsider, WSB-TV reports.