SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH, Nov. 25, 2015 (Gephardt Daily) ─ Johnny Wall, who was found guilty in the death of his ex-wife Uta von Schwedler, will not get a chance to meet with the Board of Pardons for 28 years.
According to the Board of Pardons and Parole, Wall’s first scheduled hearing has been set for April of 2043. Wall, a former Salt Lake City pediatrician, was convicted of killing his ex-wife during a bitter custody battle in 2011, and in March was sentenced 15 years to life.
Uta von Schwedler, who was found dead in her bathtub in her Sugar House home in September 2011, died of drowning and a lethal dose of Xanax, according to the medical examiner, but no manner of death was officially established.
Prosecutors argued that Wall used one of his children’s keys or a hidden, spare key to sneak into his ex-wife’s home while she was sleeping, force a large dose of Xanax into her body, struggle with her on her bed and stage her suicide. Von Schwedler drowned in her tub, her wrists slashed.
Marcella Fierro, a former chief medical examiner and the state’s expert witness, said Wall could have easily injected the Xanax into her system without an obvious injection site being detected, or he could have made a slurry mixture and stuck it in her mouth. An autopsy shows a bruise on her lip─perhaps an injury during that process.
Von Schwedler had never taken Xanax, according to family and friends, but Wall had prescribed it for himself years before, and for his elderly mother months before von Schwedler’s death.
Wall could not explain his whereabouts during the time that von Schwedler was killed, and he had a scratch on his eye the next day. He appeared to have defensive wounds von Schwedler may have caused when putting up a fight, prosecutors said.
Metos disputed the testimony of Fierro, a former chief medical examiner. Fierro, he said, made claims to support her theory of a homicide, despite the validity of the information.
