Counsel Changes Terms of Plea Deal in Sex Abuse Case

Thank you for reading D.C. Witness. Help us continue our mission into 2024.

Parties in a sex abuse case changed the sentencing range in their plea agreement.

Paul Johnson pleaded guilty to attempted first-degree child sexual abuse in January 2019. He is currently waiting to be sentenced.

The plea agreement originally included an agreed upon sentencing range of two to three years. Parties have now changed that range to zero to four years.

During the May 19 hearing, defense attorney Ronald Resetarits also asked Judge Marisa Demeo to relax the home confinement requirement, which he said the Pretrial Services Agency (PSA) also recommended due to his client’s compliance.

Resetaris said he’s never seen someone successfully spend this much time on home confinement.

Johnson was on pretrial release until he entered his guilty plea. In March of last year, he was released from jail into home confinement due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Despite the prosecution’s opposition, Judge Demeo agreed to put Johnson under less restrictive release conditions.

She ordered him to comply with an 8:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. curfew, have no unsupervised contact with children and none at all with the victim and stay away from parks, schools and playgrounds.

Johnson is set to be sentenced on Aug. 5.

Notifications are not yet available for this specific case. Please check back later for updates. Thank you.