Jury deliberates in prostitute murder trial

A Suffolk County jury on Friday continued deliberations in the second-degree murder trial of Chad Johnson, the 23-year-old Medford man accused of strangling a prostitute and burying her in a shallow grave near his home in 2010.

Jurors had reread to them the testimony of Deputy Suffolk Medical Examiner Dr. Hajar Sims-Child, who conducted the autopsy on 26-year old Jennifer Papain's partially decomposed body.

Sims-Child described the difficulties of determining whether Papain was strangled, given the decomposition of Papain's body. Sims-Child had also testified that she found bruises on his hands and elbows that were consistent with defensive wounds. Based on the circumstances of the death, Sims-Child said she believed Papain had died of asphyxiation.

Johnson's attorney William Ferris said after Friday's hearing that jurors appear to be focused on the cause of death and could be troubled by the lack of physical evidence of strangulation. Ferris, in his closing argument to the jury Wednesday, argued that Johnson's 10-page confession was fabricated by police. Pointing to a lack of physical evidence from Papain's decomposed body, the defense argued that Papain had died of a drug overdose in Johnson's presence.

Assistant District Attorney Todd Pettigrew declined to comment after the hearing.

Prosecutors say Johnson killed Papain, in March of 2010 after, she refused to give him a partial refund for a sex act he paid for but did not complete. Johnson that May led detectives to where he buried the North Patchogue woman off the Long Island Expressway in Medford, prosecutors said.

On Friday, Johnson's wife, Paulette Johnson, 41, of Medford, his mother and a friend waited during the deliberations, saying they believed Johnson buried Papain's body out of panic, after she died of a drug overdose, but didn't kill her. "Chad was in the wrong place at the wrong time," Paulette Johnson said.