Tia Johnson Moves to Dismiss Her Murder Conviction, Claiming a Brady Violation Because the State Failed to Disclose Record of 911 Call She Made

Pursuant to the Brady doctrine, the State has an affirmative duty under the Due Process Clause to disclose material exculpatory evidence to the defense. Evidence is material and exculpatory when there is a reasonable probability that, had the State disclosed it to the defense, there is a reasonable probability that the outcome would have been different (e.g., a guilty verdict would have changed to a hung jury). A case out of Chesapeake, Virginia, looks like a textbook example of a Brady violation that could lead to a conviction being overturned.

According to WTKR, “Tia Johnson was convicted in January 2025 for the shooting death of her boyfriend, Martario Gee.” Johnson claimed that the killing was in self-defense because she reasonably feared Gee. 

Prior to the trial, Johnson told her attorney that she had previously called 911 on Gee a few weeks before she shot and killed him, requesting help to get him to leave her house.

The Commonwealth claimed that there was no record of such a 911 call, with the prosecutor arguing the following at trial:

“So what fear could she possibly have had? Even if you believe that from past experiences—because she did tell you there were times in the past where Mr. Gee had been physical with her. May he was. May he wasn’t. I don’t know because there’s no evidence of it, and the reason I say there’s no evidence of it is because you heard Detective **** say he search. He tried to find reports of domestic calls, of assault calls, of something between Mr. Gee and the defendant and couldn’t find any reports. She said she called police. No report.”

There’s just one problem. Gee did call 911, and there was a record of it:

WTKR News 3 Investigator Margaret Kavanagh started looking into the case after the conviction. Through a Freedom of Information Request, Kavanagh obtained records that show there was a domestic incident call along with a citizen assist call made on January 3, 2024, just a few weeks before the shooting.

The State has claimed that they had no knowledge of the call during trial, which isn’t dispositive because Brady violations can be in good faith or bad faith. The State has also claimed that they couldn’t have had knowledge of the call because Johnson refused to give her name during the call, which is why it didn’t come up in its database? Of course, this leads to the question of how it was produced in response to Kavanagh’s FOIA request.

Johnson’s attorney has moved to dismiss the conviction, and a hearing is scheduled for today, so we’ll see where this all goes.

-CM