Carla Johnson
Detectives found Carla Johnson through Daniel’s warrant checks and came to her door in August 2014 with a tip.
She told them an officer had fondled her breasts over her shirt and touched her vagina inside her panties. At the preliminary hearing the touching of her breasts moved under her clothes, skin to skin, and when the prosecutor asked whether the officer had penetrated her, she said no. At trial her breasts were touched over her shirt again. In her 2018 deposition he put his finger inside her. Counts 13 and 14, sexual battery: sixteen years.
A tale of two stops.
Daniel stopped Carla Johnson twice that spring, both times at night in the blocks around NE 14th and Kelham, and both times he called in the stop and ran her name. That is how detectives found her. Scott Adams 00267–68; Tr. 3540:15–22.
The first stop, on March 25 at NE 15th and Kelham, began at about 9 p.m. and lasted about twenty-five minutes. Johnson put it after midnight. She has always said nothing inappropriate happened during it, and on cross-examination Davis agreed it was a normal stop. Scott Adams 00263; Tr. 3499:21–22, 3546:10–20, 3548:14–3549:7, 3590:8–19, 3518:7–12.
The second stop began at 12:10 a.m. on May 26, on Jordan between NE 16th Street and NE 16th Terrace. Daniel ran her name at about 12:15, and she came back clear. The car’s GPS shows it stopped there at 12:15 and 12:20, and the dispatcher closed the call at 12:24. Tr. 3559:5–20, 3560:12–20, 3561:16–21, 3564:22–24; Scott Adams 00272.
Johnson’s roommate, Victor Wilson, received four calls from her phone between 12:31 and 12:33 a.m. He didn’t pick up. The records prove the calls. What she said in them is taken up below. Tr. 3574:7–17, 3536:2–9.
Johnson said that as she walked away he pulled alongside and told her she had a warrant. Davis told the jury it was a threat, since Johnson had come back clear, something he was using to hold over these women’s head.
As the radio traffic was played for the jury, Davis described what followed the clear return as The AWs are coming back slow because it’d been down.
AWs, she explained, were City tickets. City warrants.
Tr. 3565:21–3566:14, 3581:12–16.
Her first account, taken in her home with no recorder, described touching. The State charged it that way.
Johnson was on the list Lieutenant Tim Muzny gave Davis of women Daniel had run. On August 14 Davis and Detective Valari Homan went to her last known address. Davis told her the police had received a tip that she may have been sexually assaulted by an Oklahoma City Police Officer.
Johnson shook her head and said, Yes mam, that did happen.
Davis testified she had no other information about Johnson. The detectives hadn’t brought a recorder. The only record in the case file of what Johnson said in about an hour in her home is Davis’s report, typed the next morning. Scott Adams 00263; Tr. 3541:4–3542:10; Johnson Dep. 91:14–92:18 (Nov. 1, 2018).
In that report the officer stopped her the second time about a month to six weeks after the first, around 2 a.m., at NE 16th and Jordan. After she came back clear he let her out of the car and said, Let me check.
She turned around expecting a pat search. He reached around her and grabbed both of her breasts and fondled them on top of her shirt. She was not wearing a bra.
Then he put his hand down the front of her pants and panties and touched her vagina with his fingers. He touched her clitoris with his finger.
Scott Adams 00264–65.
The State charged what she described. The arrest-warrant affidavit sworn August 21 says he fondled her breasts on the outside of her clothing
and put his fingers on her vagina. The Information filed August 29 charged two counts of sexual battery, Count 13 for touching her breasts WITH HIS HAND AND OVER HER CLOTHING
and Count 14 for touching her vagina and pubic area WITH HIS HAND UNDER THE CLOTHES.
Scott Adams 00596, 02901–02.
Her breasts went under her clothes and back again. Then the touching became penetration.
Johnson told her account to Davis in August 2014, at Daniel’s preliminary hearing on November 18, 2014, to the jury on November 30, 2015, and in a deposition in her lawsuit against the city on November 1, 2018. The two stops, the questions about drugs and the walk home stayed much the same. What the officer did with his hands didn’t.
| Detail | To Davis, Aug. 2014 | Preliminary hearing, Nov. 2014 | Trial, Nov. 2015 | Deposition, Nov. 2018 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Her breasts | Fondled on top of her shirt.No bra. | On direct, his hands went up under my blouse,under her bra. On cross she agreed she had told Davis it was over her shirt. On redirect, It was under my clothes,and skin to skin, Yes, sir, I am. | He touched me on the outside of my shirt and I did not have a bra on. | On top of.Asked if it was on the outside of her clothes, Yes. |
| Her vagina | touched her vagina with his fingers. He touched her clitoris with his finger. | He touched my vagina, my clit.Asked whether he penetrated her, No. He, just on the outside, just touched it and immediately, you know, took his hand off. | he put his hands inside my pants and panties and touched my vagina. | Asked whether he inserted anything, His finger. |
| When | About a month to six weeks after the first stop, which she put about four and a half months back. | maybe a month, month and a halfafter the first. Then, asked if the 26th of Maysounded right, Pretty much, yes, sir. | maybe the first of June or somewhere along in there maybe.On cross, Probably the month of May or June. | Mid April. |
| What time | Around 2 a.m. | a little after 2:00 in the morning. | maybe 2:00, 3:00 in the morning. Maybe 2:00. | after midnight,and she agreed, between 12 and 1. |
Scott Adams 00264–65; Prelim. Tr. Vol. II 102, 104, 109, 111–12, 121–22, 134 (Nov. 18, 2014), Scott Adams 01816, 01818, 01823, 01825–26, 01835–36, 01848; Tr. 3505:21–3506:15, 3509:19–21, 3518:13–17, 3524:5–6, 3558:14–17; Johnson Dep. 33:7–11, 40:12–41:16, 99:14–20 (Nov. 1, 2018).
The records put the stop between 12:10 and 12:24 a.m. on May 26. In 2018 she put it in mid-April, which is when, at the preliminary hearing, she had placed the first stop, the one in which she says nothing inappropriate happened. Told that the charges said May 26, she said, I’m not sure of the date.
Prelim. Tr. Vol. II 93 (Nov. 18, 2014), Scott Adams 01807; Johnson Dep. 68:7–69:19.
Davis told the jury she never gave the women their dates, so as not to taint their accounts. At the preliminary hearing Johnson put the second stop a month or six weeks after the first, and the prosecutor supplied the exact date. Well, if I told you that your name was run again by this officer on the 26th of May of 2014,
Gayland Gieger asked her, Does that sound about right with the time frame?
Tr. 3494:18–3495:9; Prelim. Tr. Vol. II 102 (Nov. 18, 2014), Scott Adams 01816.
Confronted at trial with her preliminary-hearing testimony that he had touched her bare breasts, Johnson said she didn’t recall it, then, If that’s what it says then that’s what it says. But to my memory it’s, no, it did not.
Asked whether she had testified differently at the preliminary hearing, she said, I guess so.
Davis testified that what Johnson said about the touching of her vagina had been consistent from the first interview through trial. Tr. 3524:17–22, 3528:6–3530:22, 3543:12–16.
The charge followed her testimony, under her clothes and then back over them.
As soon as Johnson stepped down at the preliminary hearing, Gieger asked the judge to change Count 13. The Information said Daniel touched her breasts with his hand and over her clothing.
Gieger asked that, based upon her last inquiry and her testimony,
it read under her clothing.
The judge allowed it as responsive to the testimony.
A year later, after she told the jury it had been over her shirt, Gieger asked to change it back, because her recollection was that the touching of her breast was done over the clothing.
Daniel’s lawyer didn’t object either time. Prelim. Tr. Vol. II 135 (Nov. 18, 2014), Scott Adams 01849; Tr. 4097:13–20, 4100:11–23.
| Charging document | Count 13 said he touched her breasts |
|---|---|
| Information, Aug. 29, 2014 | WITH HIS HAND AND OVER HER CLOTHING |
| Amended at the preliminary hearing, Nov. 18, 2014 | WITH HIS HAND AND UNDER HER CLOTHING |
| Amended at trial, Dec. 2, 2015 | over the clothing |
Scott Adams 02901, 02886; Tr. 4097:13–20, 4100:11–23.
In closing, Gieger told the jurors that the women had testified with a few discrepancies, all right,
and went on, Yeah, Carla Johnson said it was on top of the clothes one time and then she said it was under the clothes. That’s the lie she came up with. If you’re gonna concoct a lie, that’s a good one. If you want to accuse a police officer of something inappropriate, of all the things you could possibly do, say he touched my breast one time under the clothes and one time it was on top. That’ll get him. I would suggest to you that if they said everything exactly the same every time that might be evidence that they were coached.
Tr. 4292:23–4293:10.
Asked in 2014 whether he penetrated her, she said no. In 2018 she said he did.
At the preliminary hearing it was the prosecutor who asked.
GIEGER: “Whenever he touched your vagina did it stay on the outside of your vagina or did it actually penetrate and go inside your vagina at all?”
JOHNSON: “No. He, just on the outside, just touched it and immediately, you know, took his hand off.”
Prelim. Tr. Vol. II 112 (Nov. 18, 2014), Scott Adams 01826.
Four years later, in her lawsuit, a lawyer for one of the police defendants asked again.
Q: “Did he insert anything in you?”
JOHNSON: “His finger.”
Q: “And did he insert his finger into your body part?”
JOHNSON: “Yes.”
Johnson Dep. 41:12–16 (Nov. 1, 2018).
Penetration is the line between the crime Daniel was convicted of and a more serious one. Sexual battery is touching. When any part of the body penetrates the vagina without consent, Oklahoma law calls it rape by instrumentation. The State charged that crime twice in this case, for other women, as Counts 25 and 31. For Johnson it never did. Until 2018 she hadn’t described it. 21 O.S. §§ 1111.1(A), 1123(B); Scott Adams 02901–02; Tr. 4324:13–18, 4325:16–18, 4326:8–10.
At trial the prosecutor Lori McConnell, naming Johnson among the women with more than one stop, told the jurors they weren’t making it the worst that they could make it.
If they were making it up it would be easier to make it the worst possible scenario.
Tr. 4186:1–17.
The four calls are on the record. What was said in them depends on who was telling it, and when.
In August 2014 Johnson told Davis her phone was broken, so that the person she called could hear her but she couldn’t hear them. She said she was saying into it, I’m walking. I’m scared. This officer is real strange. He put his hands down my pants.
In the same interview she said she found out her roommate didn’t answer the phone so he didn’t hear what she was saying,
and that she told him when she got home. Scott Adams 00265.
A month later Wilson told Davis by phone that he found the voicemail the next day, that she said the officer felt all over her,
and that when he talked to her she told him the officer ran his hand down her pants.
He had erased it. Scott Adams 00277 (also at Scott Adams 05857).
At the preliminary hearing Johnson said the two of them had listened to it together that night. We listened to his phone and on his phone you could catch some of it, but not all of it. Then he deleted it, but then I had just told him out my mouth what had just happened to me.
A few minutes later she said it was already deleted because when I went in to talk to him that night after he heard, whatever, he deleted it.
At trial she first said she had never listened to it, and that she was positive. Read her preliminary-hearing answer, she said, I couldn’t remember all that.
On redirect, I don’t remember listening to it.
Prelim. Tr. Vol. II 125, 130 (Nov. 18, 2014), Scott Adams 01839, 01844; Tr. 3519:17–21, 3526:4–3527:15, 3533:8–11.
Wilson told the jury he listened to it That same night after she came in,
that she sounded very upset. Panicky-like,
and that the message was about a police officer. He didn’t report it, he said, because I couldn’t actually understand what she was saying on the phone,
and he deleted it as time went on.
Tr. 3536:10–17, 3537:2–25.
Davis, testifying after Wilson, recalled Johnson’s August words differently from her own report, as I’m walking and this officer felt all over my body,
the phrase Wilson had used with her in September, before an objection stopped her. Tr. 3570:16–3571:8; Scott Adams 00265, 00277.
In closing, the prosecutor offered the calls as proof that Johnson remembered things accurately. And lo and behold, there’s phone records to support what she says.
The phone records show that she called. The message itself is gone. The only people who say they heard it are Johnson and Wilson, and neither account of it stayed the same. Tr. 4185:15–18.
He ran her name, she came back clear, and he let her go.
The only records from that night are the police department’s and the phone company’s. They show a stop Daniel called in at 12:10 a.m., a warrant check that came back clear, a call closed fourteen minutes after it began, and four calls from Johnson’s phone to her roommate starting seven minutes later. The stop and the warrant check came during his regular shift, which ran from 4 p.m. to 2 a.m., and they were the kind of work his division asked for. In 2013 its commander had told the officers on its overtime detail, Daniel among them, to be VERY proactive. Scott Adams 00272, 00278; Tr. 3582:19–3584:6; Jennings, “V.I.P.E.R. Overtime Program,” Feb. 1, 2013, OKC 6290, 6658.
Everything else comes from Johnson, and it moved. Her account reached the police only because detectives came to her door nearly three months later with a tip.
Her breasts were touched over her shirt when she told Davis, under it, skin to skin, at the preliminary hearing, and over it again at trial, and the charge was rewritten to follow her each time. In 2014 she swore the touching of her vagina had stayed on the outside. In 2018, after the verdict and in a deposition in her own lawsuit against the city, she said he put his finger inside her.
The calls don’t change that. By her own account, an officer had just stopped her after midnight, put her in the back of his car, asked her over and over whether she had drugs down her pants, and then, as she walked away, told her she had a warrant. Wilson said the message was about a police officer and that she sounded upset. He also said he couldn’t make out what she was saying, and in August 2014 she told Davis he hadn’t heard it at all. Scott Adams 00264–65; Tr. 3507:21–3508:10, 3536:15–3537:23.
The jury convicted Daniel on both counts of sexual battery, and he is serving sixteen years for them. It never heard her 2018 testimony. UNCUFF believes Daniel stopped Carla Johnson, ran her for warrants and let her go, as the records show, and that the touching she described never happened.