It is the most unusual of criminal cases, provoking visible displays of how personal it all has become — even to jurors.
More than five years after a criminal case was first filed, online entrepreneur Jeremy Johnson is facing a federal judge on Friday who will pronounce sentence on his conviction on eight charges of providing false information to a bank. The prosecution is asking for up to 22 years in prison. Johnson's attorneys will ask for, at most, two years behind bars.
It will be up to U.S. District Judge David Nuffer, who presided over the seven-week trial that ended with the jury also acquitting Johnson on 78 charges related to allegations of bank fraud. Fellow defendant Ryan Riddle, once a manager at Johnson's I Works company, was found guilty on the same charges as Johnson and also faces sentencing.
Perhaps the most passionate person post-trial has been the Juror No. 9, Kathie Cox. A former Navy meteorologist, Cox has been highly critical of Nuffer and prosecutors, saying that Johnson and Riddle did not get a fair trial.
On Thursday, Cox sent news outlets a five-page response to the government's sentencing memo, saying that she believed prosecutors were making arguments that were contrary to the evidence at trial.
"The prosecution continues to present a false narrative and is attempting to nullify the jury's acquittal of the fraud charges by proposing a ridiculously exorbitant sentence for the mainly minor false statement charges," Cox wrote. "These men were railroaded and prevented from fairly defending themselves in our justice system."
Another juror, Jason Harper, issued a statement Thursday, supporting Cox and saying the evidence at trial "fully supports the narrative that all parties knew and approved of" how I Works was processing credit cards through Wells Fargo Bank accounts.
And no entity except for I Works lost any money, Harper said.
Nuffer denied late Thursday a motion from Johnson's attorneys for a new trial.
Johnson was accused of creating a bunch of companies under the names of employees, family and friends and using them to apply for merchant accounts at Wells Fargo in order to continue charging consumers' credit cards after I Works was placed on industry black lists for an excessive number of chargebacks.
Several jurors, including Cox, have said that the only false information they found on account applications submitted to an agent of Wells Fargo was the number of employees listed for each of the new companies. Otherwise, they have said, there was not enough convincing evidence to convict Johnson and Riddle of bank fraud and related charges.
What was perhaps most remarkable about the acquittals — and most embarrassing to prosecutors — was that Johnson and Riddle acted as their own attorneys at trial. Almost all criminal trials in federal court end in convictions, but the long odds are even longer when defendants represent themselves.
A third defendant, Scott Leavitt, who was represented by attorney Marcus Mumford, was acquitted on all charges.
And the acquittals pointed to huge weaknesses in the government's case, as well as the skepticism of some jurors about Nuffer's rulings during trial, which excluded defense witnesses and evidence, and his harsh treatment of the defendants and Mumford.
After the jury verdict, U.S. Attorney John Huber told reporters that Johnson was a "fraudster" and "con man," though Johnson's new attorneys who came on board after the trial pointed out he had been acquitted of all fraud-related charges.
Even before trial, Johnson had angered prosecutors with an Internet campaign, interviews with the news media and court filings. He argued that significant swaths of evidence were missing, including about a year and a half worth of emails from his and other I Works accounts, that prosecutors had improperly gathered private emails between defendants and their attorneys, and withheld other evidence.
"Prior to the court's issuance of [a gag order], Johnson was publishing numerous websites, blogs, and videos defaming the prosecutors and investigators in this case," Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason Burt wrote in the government sentencing memorandum.
Burt and another prosecutor high-fived during trial after a significant ruling in their favor by Nuffer, and Burt also had some sort of confrontation with Johnson during a break in the trial, though the prosecutor denied Johnson's version of what had occurred.
Nuffer himself gave an impassioned explanation of why he was jailing Johnson until sentencing, calling him "borderline delusional" with "an almost complete lack of integrity."
In a ruling on Thursday, Nuffer largely sided with prosecutors on questions that could raise the number of years in prison that Johnson could receive. Some of Johnson's actions, the judge wrote, "were outside the bounds of proper conduct."
But still pending for resolution is one of the biggest factors in sentencing, the amount of loss, if any, suffered by the bank or its agents.
Prosecutors have argued for a loss of up to $23 million, while Johnson's attorneys, Karra Porter and Mary Corporon, say losses were minimal, if any.
Cox said she intends to file a complaint before the 10th Circuit of Appeals complaining about Nuffer's conduct during the trial.
"The judge was clearly biased the entire trial literally from almost Day 1," she said.
tharvey@sltrib.com
Scott Sommerdorf | The Salt Lake Tribune Jeremy Johnson leaves the Federal Building after a hearing in which he chose to be represented by attorneys Greg Skordas and Rebecca Hyde-Skordas, Wednesday, July 22, 2015.
Chris Detrick | The Salt Lake Tribune Jeremy Johnson leaves the Federal Courthouse in Salt Lake City Wednesday November 25, 2015.
Al Hartmann | The Salt Lake Tribune Jeremy Johnson comments to media as he leaves Federal Court in Salt Lake City March 25 Friday after being found guilty of making false statements to a bank.
