KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — The lawyer for a Knoxville man accused of murdering a Barley's food server wants the state prosecutor to be disqualified, arguing she's previously been reprimanded for improper conduct while handling the case.
Gregory P. Isaacs' motion is one of several filed this week as Micah Johnson faces a retrial in Knox County in the 2008 killing of Carrie Daugherty, 24.
Johnson, 35, is to be tried in Knox County Criminal Court Judge Scott Green's court Jan. 9, but Isaacs argues he needs more time to prepare.
Green is set Jan. 5 to consider new motions filed ahead of Johnson's trial. The prosecution will have a chance to respond to Isaacs' requests in the coming weeks.
Johnson killed Daugherty in March 2008 as she was coming home in North Knoxville after work, evidence at his previous trial has shown. He attacked her with a brick, among other items. Daugherty roomed with Johnson's girlfriend.
A Knox County jury convicted Johnson in 2011, and he spent about a decade in the Tennessee prison system.
But Isaacs raised questions about how the original defense team handled Johnson's case, and he won a shot at a retrial for Johnson in January 2022. While he awaits trial, Johnson is out on bond, wearing an ankle bracelet as part of a monitoring plan approved by the court, records show.
Green has signaled he's ready for the trial next month, but Isaacs this week formally asked for more time, citing the case's complexity. He plans at trial to show that Johnson suffers from a mental illness, a strategy that involves lengthy preparation and work with expert witnesses.
The veteran defense attorney this week also asked Green to have Knox County prosecutor TaKisha Fitzgerald removed from the case.
Fitzgerald, who has handled high-profile violent crime cases for years, was admonished in a 2013 censure by the state Board of Professional Responsibility for her conduct in 2011 as Johnson was first being prosecuted.
The board found, and she acknowledged, that she'd withheld from the defense letters and phone recordings from Johnson while he was being held in the Knox County jail. Knox County authorities routinely monitor written and telephonic communications by inmates.
At a minimum her continued participation raises the appearance of a conflict, Isaacs argues.
"ADA Fitzgerald's conduct during Mr. Johnson's previous proceeding was significant and implicated his basic constitutional rights..." the attorney wrote.
Isaacs also argues there's been so much publicity about Johnson's case that the jury that reviews his fate should come from outside Knox County. One option in such cases is to move the physical trial to another county.
While the case garnered a fair amount of newspaper and TV stories when Daugherty was killed, press attention hasn't been as keen since then.
The bar to move trials is very high, and very few defendants overcome it.
One of the biggest recent cases for which outside juries were brought in involved several people accused of killing a young Knox County couple in January 2007. That case drew constant national press and social media attention for years.
