Chapter 8

THE VERDICT

Only Dale Johnston had been indicted and tried for the   double   murder.   After   2-1/2   hours  of deliberations,  Johnston was  found guilty  on two counts of aggravated murder.

Judge  Cirigliano  read   the  verdict.  Johnston,      wearing   the  same   chocolate  brown   coat  and western-style  string tie  he had  worn throughout the  trial,  stared  ahead  stoically,  showing no emotion.

Townspeople  listening  to  the  proceedings  being broadcast live over a  local radio station, cheered when  the  verdict  was  announced.  Sheriff  Jones appeared on a balcony  two stories above the street and shaped a “V for Victory” sign with his fingers.

A hostess at a nearby restaurant, where many of the trial participants had  eaten lunch, disagreed with the verdict.

“I  just  don’t  see  how  three  judges,  who are supposed  to go  on the  facts and  the law, could find him guilty. I  never heard such noise—people cheering,  and honking  their horns.  I thought it was a wedding,” she said. “Instead, it was a man’s life at stake. I was ashamed of Logan.”

As Schultz’s  family left the  courtroom in tears, his mother,  Sandra, commented, “Justice  has been done.”  She  couldn’t  decide  whether the verdict eased the loss of her  son. “Not yet, maybe later, maybe it will eventually, I don’t know.”

As expected, defense  and prosecution, once again, disagreed.   “The  evidence   clearly  established reasonable  doubt,” Tyack  said. Prosecutor  Chris Veidt  stated, “I’m  not happy  or glad.  I’m just relieved we are where we are.”

“I really haven’t figured  out what happened, I’ve searched  my mind  and  I  just can’t  figure what evidence the judges relied on to reach the verdict they did,” Tyack explained to reporters.

Both  defense  attorneys  said  Johnston  took the verdict as well as could be expected. “He’s a very amazing  person,” Suhr  said. “Living  in a county where the  people have prejudged his  guilt for 16 months has taken its toll  on him, but his feeling is just to get on with the appeal.”

Logan  Mayor Ed  Tucker expressed  his community’s sense of relief, but personally was distressed and apprehensive about the future of Logan’s image. He felt the  town “may be  personally scarred because of the tragedy. I doubt that we’ll ever get rid of that image,  because that’s not the  way the media works.”

Sarah Johnston  was not in the  courtroom when the verdict was delivered. She awaited the news at the restaurant.

She  “went  into   shock,”  said  an  unidentified witness.  “She went  white, she  couldn’t talk.  I thought  I was  going to  have to  slap her  face. Finally, she broke down.”

Telephone calls flooded the Schultz home as family and relatives celebrated, what they hoped was, the beginning of the end of a long ordeal.

“We  opened  a  bottle  of  champagne  and  made a toast—‘To justice,’” Sandra Schultz said.

Don  Schultz  recalled  the  words  etched  on the facade of the Hocking County Courthouse.

“’Never shall  we deny right or  justice.’ I think in this  case it fits.  Of course, if  the verdict had gone  the other way, I  would have wanted the county commissioners to sandblast it off.”