Norfolk Baby Killer Gets No More Than 19 Years
Little Iijayah Johnson spent only nine days on earth.
Her short sojourn was hell. Death, when it came, may have been a relief to her tiny battered body.
According to news reports, when Iijayah’s parents brought her lifeless body to Children’s Hospital of The King’s Daughters in Norfolk on the 4th of May the infant had several broken ribs, deep “partial thickness burns on her feet,” a blunt force trauma to her head, “healing cuts on her face and head” and bruises on her back.
When asked the date of the baby’s birth, her parents reportedly laughed, as they “struggled to remember.“
Are you sick yet?
It gets worse.
On Wednesday Norfolk Circuit Court Judge Jamilah LeCruise accepted a guilty plea from the newborn’s father, Hilary Darnell Johnson II. In it, the 24-year-old pleaded guilty to 2nd degree murder. In exchange Norfolk prosecutors dropped charges of child abuse and neglect and agreed to a prison sentence that “shall not exceed 19 years.”
Nineteen years.
He will be sentenced in October. The judge could give him fewer than 19 years.
Unthinkable.
In Virginia, 2nd degree murder carries the possibility of 5 to 40 years. If the killing of a helpless newborn doesn’t cry out for a maximum sentence, what does?
Iijayaj’s mother, Z’Ibreyea Parker is scheduled for trial on August 19.
Norfolk Commonwealth Attorney Ramin Faheti just won the Democrat primary despite Mayor Kenny Alexander and other prominent Democrats supporting his opponent because they saw the city’s top prosecutor as soft on crime. He will almost certainly be elected to a second term as the city’s top prosecutor.
Fatehi is a self-described “progressive prosecutor” who opposes cash bail, long prison sentences and who took $200,000 from George Soros PACs when he ran for office last time.
This isn’t his first contentious plea agreement.
Even the leftist Virginia Mercury noted the controversial prosecutor’s impressive record of rejected plea agreements. In a 2023 story headlined, “How Norfolk’s Progressive Prosecutor Ended Up In The Crosshairs Of Debate Over Rising Crime,” the Mercury raised questions about some of Fatehi’s plea agreements.
Most cases, though, are concluded with plea agreements. There, too, Fatehi’s office has run into trouble. In years past, judges rarely refused agreements between prosecutors and defense attorneys. But, according to Fatehi’s records, judges rejected at least 29 plea agreements his office sought last year. Most of the rejections came in early 2022 and dealt with a range of crimes, ranging from malicious wounding and aggravated sexual assault to making a false statement and child endangerment.
“It’s significantly higher than we’ve seen historically,” Fatehi said.
Pity Wednesday’s plea agreement wasn’t rejected. I suspect the autopsy report, the photos of the battered infant, the mind boggling statements initially given to law enforcement about the baby falling out of a jogging stroller would have argued in favor of the full 40 years.
Of course George Soros wouldn’t approve of maxing out a 24 year old simply for killing a tiny baby.
When I contacted Fahedi yesterday I asked why he pled the case out instead of taking it to trial in hopes of getting a more substantial sentence.
In an email, the prosecutor said he “very much would like to explain” his reasons for the offer but he wasn’t at liberty to talk about the agreement “while the case against the mother of the child is still pending, and the ethical rules for Virginia prosecutors bar me from making any statement that could affect the impartiality of the jury pool for the mother.”
The communications director for the prosector’s office told me Thursday that both cases were set to be bench trials, not jury trials.
Fahedi said he would talk more freely after Parker’s case resolves.
We’re going to hold him to that.
An explanation would be nice. But the short life of little Iijayah deserves justice.
