Jordan Linn Graham

The headlines to this story is what first grabbed my attention but it was the details behind things that keeps me wondering. Newspapers have a goal, sell stories and this one came with drama and excitement without them having to add too much. Jordan Linn Graham was accused of murdering her husband a mere eight days after their wedding by pushing him off a cliff in a National Park. I know that many who read about true crime stories are less interested in books and such that put a lot of details in about the court drama or trails, but for me that is the most interesting. I do not just want to know how someone was acquitted or convicted, I want to know just what evidence the prosecutors had and what they presented.

This case was very unusual in the fact that there was a trial, closing arguments were made, but before the jury was given the case by the judge a plea deal was reached between the parties. The trial, up to that point anyway, had lasted four days and there seems to be little details as to what was presented. There are articles leading up to the trial and information after the plea deal was struck but little as to what the judge allowed or what the witnesses revealed, all of which puzzles me even more. The main point of plea deals is to avoid a trial, at least from a prosecution standpoint. The county saves money and the prosecutor gets a “win.” Once the trial begin the first part of that, saving money, goes out the window. Sure, there are cases in which a defendant starts a trial and then changes their plea to guilty, or they reach an agreement with prosecutors very early on, most generally before a jury is sat for the trial, but it is less common to conduct the trial to the end and then see an agreement. This leads me to believe that at the end of closing arguments that the prosecutor in this case was unsure they would get a conviction against Jordan Graham, especially on the first degree murder charge she was facing. It is unclear if the jury would have been given the option of a lower charge such as the second degree that Jordan eventually pleaded guilty to or if their options would have simply been either first degree murder or acquittal. Even still, on the day of sentencing Jordan attempted to withdraw her guilty plea saying that the prosecutors had negotiated a deal “in bad faith” by pushing the judge toward a harsher sentence. The judge denied this motion and would eventually sentence Jordan to thirty years without parole. Lets see what you think.....

Jordan Graham and Cody Johnson were married on June 29, 2013. The jury in her trial were shown fragments of videos from the wedding, including well wishes by friends and family, to show the behavior of Jordan, as well as what others thought of her. By all accounts it appears that no one saw her as the vicious murderer that the prosecution would later portray her as being. There was testimony that Jordan may have had misgivings about the marriage even before it began but definitely had them after the “I Do's” were said. Just what those misgivings were seem to be a little odd. Jordan was twenty-two and there was nothing I found to indicate that she and Cody, who was twenty-five, had not been sexually active prior to their marriage. People, only described as “sources,” except for one, her maid of honor at the wedding, stated she was “scared to have sex with Cody” and what he expected from her and expected her “to do.”

The couple lived in Kalispell Montana and on July 7, 2012 they went to Glacier National Park, about an hour away. According to Jordan they were going there to “talk” about the issues she felt they were having. By all accounts the couple had gone up on a trail, both willingly, and had climbed a barrier to the edge of a cliff. It was here that Cody would take his last breath although that would not be known for a few days.

Now, before I get into what Jordan did next I suppose that I should be clear that I do not agree with her actions or how she behaved, but with that being said, I am still unsure that I believe Cody's death to be premeditated and purposeful as the prosecution would later state. The easy answer to what happened is that Cody went over the edge of the cliff, falling some two hundred feet to his death. For her part Jordan, who had the car keys in her pocket, went back to their car and drove home. Along the way she talked to or text messaged people but neither called for assistance for Cody or told anyone else what had occurred. It is not clear as to whether she reported him missing herself or if someone else did or even when that happened to occur. Cody's body would be found on July 11^th after Jordan would lead a park ranger to his body. Some reports say she did this after making some sort of confession, mainly because her story was falling apart, but other reports indicate that Jordan went to the area and pretended to “accidentally” find his body. Initially Jordan told investigators that she had last seen Cody when he left with some “out of town friends” and she did not know where he was. A few days later she would claim to receive an email from a man named “Tony” that stated Cody had fallen off this cliff during a hiking trip. Authorities would later determine there was no such person named “Tony” and that the email account had been created on Jordan's computer.

Jordan was arrested on July 16, 2013, nine days after Cody had died and five days after his body had been discovered. Eventually she would tell investigators that the two of them had gone to the park to discuss issues they were having and that an argument ensued. According to Jordan, Cody had grabbed her and she, without “thinking about where we were” simply pushed him with both hands, sending him over the edge of the cliff. She would say that she had left the way she did and lied later to investigators because she was scared and did not think anyone would believe her story. She was right about that. Jordan was charged with first degree murder and one count of lying to investigators.

Her trial would begin in December of 2013. As I stated earlier there was few articles about what actually occurred or was presented at the trial. Before the trial the prosecutor had granted a few interviews with the media and brought up two interesting things. First the prosecutor alleged that about five weeks before the wedding Jordan had talked about killing her mother and stepfather. That was all that I found though. I did not find any specifics as to what was said, who it was said to or just how serious of a statement it was. It was offhandedly suggested that this information would show that Jordan was not the sweet, innocent person people believed her to be. The other thing that was alleged in an article before the trial was that a cloth had been found next to Cody's body “with human hair embedded in it.” Prosecutors would allege that Jordan's story about an argument was false and that she had blindfolded Cody before pushing him off the edge of the cliff. I personally have a few problems with this information without more details being available. Simply saying there was human hair in the blindfold does not mean it was even related to Cody at all. The “cloth” was not described and I am left with the thought that it could have been a bandana that could have flown off one of the thousand upon thousand people who had frequented the park. I want more than “a cloth with human hair was found next to a body at the bottom of a cliff” to convict someone, especially of first degree murder. But, again I am not sure that either of these two allegations were actually presented to the jury.

As I stated, the trial was fully conducted, including the fact that closing arguments had taken place when a plea agreement was made. The agreement had Jordan pleading guilty to second degree murder. The information did not mention about the charge of lying to investigators so I am unsure if it was dropped or just not mentioned since that was a minor charge considering she was accused of murdering her husband. To be honest, I do not think that if I were Jordan, or her defense attorney that I would have taken such a plea. It appears that there was no “deal” made on what kind of sentence she would receive, only that she pleaded to second degree which was a lower charge. There was never any mention that the death penalty was an option here and in many cases both first and second degree murder charges have very similar minimums and maximums. Until now I have failed to mention that this was not a case in which the State of Montana tried, but was a federal case considering that the murder had occurred in a National Park on federal property. I find it deeply interesting that the prosecutor would have agreed or offered a plea deal of any kind considering how far the trial had come. This indicates to me that the prosecutor was not confident about their case, so again, if I were a defense attorney I do not think I would have advised accepting such a deal. Another thing that I found extremely interesting was that I found nothing in my research that indicated that any of the jurors were ever approached or asked what they believed they would have decided in deliberations.

According to the Federal Department of Corrections website Jordan is being held in a prison in Alabama with her release not projected until the year 2040. Most state systems require that a person only serve 50% of their time before being released, as long as they have acquired “good behavior” points. In the federal system one must serve 85% of their time. Doing those calculations it looks as if there was time added on for the lying to investigators, or she had obtained a disciplinary record in prison, which I cannot access. If her release date is not projected until 2040 that means she will serve twenty-seven years as opposed to the twenty-five and a half that would have seemingly been the 85%. I saw an indication that an appeal was discussed but I found no evidence that one has been ruled upon at this time.

As I said in the beginning, I do not agree with how Jordan Graham behaved after her husband went over the cliff but I am also not sure that prosecutors could prove that she had intentionally pushed him over the edge. Just as in is the case in most murder cases, theories are developed based on the evidence and sometimes the story in which the defendant tells because almost always they are the only people available. Yes, most defendants will minimize their own culpability in a crime and it is possible that Jordan did push him on purpose. However, I do not believe the prosecutors couple prove that it was premeditated or that Jordan had planned it in any way. There seemed to be no evidence that she forced or lured Cody to climb over the barrier to the cliff and there is no way of really proving that the couple did not have an argument as Jordan stated. Yes, her actions obviously caused his death and that becomes the bottom line, but it also matters if it was intentional.