She blew the whistle on an Alabama prosecutor. She tells her side from prison. (2024)

The woman who blew the whistle on a former Houston County prosecutor wants to set the record straight.

Jamie Connolly never got to testify at the trial of Mark Johnson, who was found guilty last week on six charges of ethics violations for his treatment of female defendants who provided revealing photos or escorts. A jury convicted the former prosecutor on three misdemeanor charges of using his office for personal gain and three felony charges of soliciting things for corrupt purposes.

But it was Connolly who initially blew the whistle when she sent a letter in February 2022 to a local judge, saying that Johnson had sent her steamy messages on Facebook for two-and-a-half months.

Pat Jones, who was the Houston County District Attorney at the time, placed Johnson on paid leave after Connolly sent the letter.

Local media pounced on the story. Reporters called the messages a “love affair” and a “tryst.” Numerous stories focused on Connolly’s pending criminal cases and called her Johnson’s “cyber-girlfriend.”

But Connolly said she was not a girlfriend, rather a woman battling addiction who felt suddenly compelled to carry on a relationship with the man she believed held the keys to her freedom. She and her family found the coverage painful to watch, as the focus shifted to her legal woes and away from her difficult position as a criminal defendant speaking up against a powerful public figure.

“On his birthday he texted me,” Connolly told AL.com from prison. “He wanted me to meet up with him. And I went along with those things because frankly, I didn’t know what else to do. Here’s this man, and he’s got my whole entire life in his hands.”

After the guilty verdicts, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall on Friday described Johnson as a man who used his “position to exploit vulnerable women for his own gratification.”

How it started

At first, Connolly thought it was a joke. The Facebook friend request. The waving hand emoji. Both appeared in her inbox a couple of days before Halloween 2021. Connolly’s family provided copies of the messages to AL.com.

Connolly, a 54-year-old from Enterprise, hadn’t always had a friendly relationship with law enforcement. She had been in and out of trouble for years, picking up drug charges in a rural corner of southeast Alabama as she battled an addiction to methamphetamine.

But here she sat, staring at an online greeting from Mark David Johnson, a prosecutor in her 2019 drug case.

“At first I just thought that someone was messing with me,” Connolly told AL.com.

She decided to play along. Connolly sent a cautious reply, just the word “Hi.”

The conversation escalated quickly and turned flirtatious within a day, she said. Messages flew back and forth at all times of the day and night.

Connolly’s case is complicated. She has a lengthy criminal history dominated by drug arrests and she already faced charges in three different counties when Johnson reached out to her.

Disciplinary panels police the professional conduct of attorneys, including allegations of harassment and sexual assault. The victims often have criminal records, and the perpetrators wear the cloak of professional respectability.

Researchers who study misconduct say attorneys who cross the line with clients or defendants often end up with reprimands or suspensions. Disbarment — the loss of a law license — is rare, even in egregious cases.

An analysis by Law360 looked at more than 100 lawyers who violated rules against sexual contact or harassment of clients and found that 86% kept their licenses. Some cases were much more extreme. In Missouri, the state Supreme Court in 2023 voted to suspend, but not disbar, a lawyer caught on camera groping women he represented as a public defender.

Alabama, like most states, has rules regulating personal relationships between attorneys and clients. However, that doesn’t apply in this case. The women were not his clients, but defendants, subject to his authority in the courtroom. Prosecutors can choose which cases to drop or pursue and have the power to offer plea deals that can reduce the amount of prison time.

During Johnson’s trial, one woman testified that she faced up to 99 years in prison. Johnson asked her to provide an escort and then intervened in her case to get her work release, prosecutors said. Another said Johnson kept her out of court-ordered rehab so she could stay in Houston County after she sent him sexual photos.

Johnson’s lawyers said there was no proof he got involved in their cases.

Connolly said she believes she was approached by Johnson because of her extensive criminal history. The women who testified at trial all had drug convictions in their pasts and faced charges related to drug possession or trafficking.

“Why do you think he’s going to pick any of those women?” Connolly said. “Because, of course, they’re felons. Who’s going to believe a felon over Mark Johnson, right?”

Lawyers and the law

Johnson’s case is unusual for Alabama.

A search of cases in Alabama found just 12 since 2014 involving lawyers disciplined for sexual misconduct. In five cases, the lawyers were disbarred. Two of those were lawyers found in possession of child p*rnography and another had a long list of prior disciplinary actions.

Melissa Warnke, spokesperson for the Alabama State Bar, said the group typically pauses investigations and disciplinary proceedings when lawyers are also facing criminal charges. The Bar cannot comment on ongoing investigations, she said.

“Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for the Office of General Counsel to receive complaints against lawyers for sexual misconduct,” Warnke said. “We routinely punish lawyers for these type violations of the Alabama Rules of Professional Conduct.”

But Gillian Chadwick, a professor at Washburn University School of Law in Kansas, has studied cases of sexual abuse by lawyers and concluded that the disciplinary system often fails victims. Chadwick found that the disciplinary panels set up to hold attorneys accountable often blame victims and discount their experiences.

“I was just really surprised and disappointed by how our discipline system treats cases,” Chadwick said.

An informant speaks

Connolly had been accused of drug trafficking in 2018. A potential sentence of 22 years hung over her head when Johnson reached out in 2021.

AL.com reviewed copies of the messages between Johnson and Connolly. After some casual chitchat about weekend plans, he messaged, “Wish you was fishing with me.”

Connolly acknowledged that the conversation looked mutual on paper. But she said that it didn’t feel that way to her.

“If you read those text messages, it was like we were in a relationship,” Connolly told AL.com. “That’s what the FBI guy said. He was like, it sounds like you guys were having an affair. And I was like, yeah it does. It sounds like that. But I had not met up with him. Then all of a sudden, he said ‘All right, I’m ready to see you.’ Then I got scared.”

That message landed in her inbox on Nov. 8, 2021. She put him off, citing car troubles and a busy schedule at work.

On Nov. 14, 2021, officers from the Houston County Drug Task Force pulled her over in neighboring Dale County. They said they found methamphetamine and a syringe in the car, which did not belong to Connolly, and they left without arresting her, according to court documents.

Her lawyer at the time wrote in court records the only reason for the stop was to “harass her based on her previous history with Houston County.”

Connolly was shaken, she said. She sent several pictures of herself to Johnson the next day.

“You have beautiful eyes and lips,” Johnson wrote in messages. “I bet you are a great kisser.”

It’s complicated

In mid-December, Johnson messaged Connolly again: “I’m ready to see you.”

Connolly said she couldn’t. Her schedule at the chicken plant kept her working until 2:30 a.m. The messages petered out after that. Days would pass between check-ins.

In early January, it was Connolly who reached out.

“I’ve been wondering why I haven’t heard from you! How are you love?” she wrote.

On Jan. 11, 2022, officers in Dale County called her to the sheriff’s office and arrested her for trafficking methamphetamine – charges that carried a potential life sentence.

Connolly’s experience in the criminal justice system had taught her a few things about the value of information. So, as she sat in the Dale County Jail, she sent a letter to the Alabama Attorney General’s Office, the U.S. Department of Justice, the state bar and the judge overseeing her drug case in Houston County.

“The fact remains that I have been a victim of the police and now the assistant district attorney,” she wrote. “Nobody cares that I am the one being hung out to dry.”

The trials

In his messages with Connolly, Johnson never mentioned her legal issues or status as a criminal defendant. Her name on Facebook, Jazmine Connolly, is different than her legal name of Jamie Connolly.

Johnson was not criminally charged for his messages to her, and his lawyers asked that they not be brought up as evidence in his trial. However, her attorney from the time, Patrick Amason, did take the stand and described the messages between the two as “flirty.”

Johnson’s attorney, Dustin Fowler, said he and his client plan to file an appeal.

After Connolly blew the whistle, a judge in Dale County tossed the methamphetamine trafficking case that started with the strange traffic stop in November 2021, just weeks after Johnson sent his first message.

She hoped the older charges in Houston County would also be dismissed after she exposed Johnson. Instead local prosecutors shifted the case to the Alabama Attorney General’s Office — the same agency that prosecuted Johnson.

It’s not uncommon for prosecutors to offer to help criminal defendants who serve as key witnesses, said Bennett Gershman, a professor and expert on prosecutors at Pace Law School in White Plains, New York.

“You would think that somebody who is helping the prosecution in a criminal case would deserve some kind of benefit,” Gershman said.

However, Gershman said there’s no reason to dismiss the criminal cases against Connolly if they started before the online messages with evidence untainted by Johnson.

“You look at the case in isolation and separate and apart from any involvement by the DA’s office, which would be a problem, you have a credible case which may be very well reliable, trustworthy and prosecutable,” Gershman said.

Path to prison

At first, it looked like Connolly might not go to prison for the drug arrests from 2018. In 2023, a judge in Coffee County ruled that she could go to community corrections after receiving treatment at a program in Anniston.

Court records show she was dismissed from rehab for improperly taking her medication. A director of the facility said she snorted her pills, but Connolly disputes that. Either way, she hadn’t been accused of abusing illegal drugs when she went back to court to face the judge.

“I didn’t fail a drug test,” Connolly said. “How are you going to revoke my community corrections?”

He ordered Connolly to serve the remainder of her sentence in prison. Soon after, a judge in Houston County gave her a 15-year sentence in prison for drug and escape charges for allegedly running away when they tried to arrest her.

Looking back, Connolly said she doesn’t know whether coming forward with the messages from Johnson was the right move for her criminal case. All week during Johnson’s trial, she heard about the testimony of the other women who agreed to provide escorts or revealing photos to Johnson.

“I thought, what if I would’ve taken him up on it?” Connolly said.

Her mother, 81-year-old Shirley Connolly, said things got worse for her daughter after that.

“One of the reasons for turning him in was so other women don’t have to do this,” she said.

Connolly has been in prison for a year and faces the prospect of spending many more behind bars. The Alabama Department of Corrections shows a minimum release date in 2028.

“I feel like most people probably wouldn’t have even brought it out like I did,” she said. “The FBI agents said most people probably wouldn’t have said anything.”

Johnson has not yet been sentenced. He faces between two and 20 years for each felony conviction.

Connolly could get some time shaved off her sentence. She has a hearing coming up to consider reducing her sentence due to the length of time she spent in jail awaiting trial.

It’s also possible that she and Johnson could both be in prison at the same time. That would put the former prosecutor in one facility for abusing the power of his office, while the woman who blew the whistle waits out her time in Wetumpka.

Connolly said she is disappointed she never got to testify at Johnson’s trial, but she is proud of the role she played in the case.

“I’m glad that I did it,” she said. “And if I had to, I would have done it all over again.”