Former English lecturer Joanna Findlay was sentenced to five years in prison Tuesday in connection with the 2010 death of her husband.
Findlay was found not guilty of first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder and first-degree assault, court documents show. According to media reports, jurors concluded that although she fired a gun at Gary Trogdon, she missed and he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Judge Karen Abrams sentenced Findlay to five years for use of a handgun in connection with a felony and issued a five-year suspended sentence for second-degree attempted murder.
Findlay — who has maintained her innocence — plans to appeal the verdict, innocence — plans to appeal the verdict, according to her attorney John Ray.
At the time of Trogdon’s death, Findlay was teaching a total of 88 students in ENGL398C: Writing Case Studies and Narratives and two sections of ENGL393: Technical Writing in the Professional Writing Program, according to Testudo. She was promptly suspended after her arrest.
St. Mary’s County police responded to 911 calls Oct. 30, 2010, and found Findlay in the driveway of her Hollywood, Md., home and Trogdon shot dead inside. The verdict was issued last fall in advance of this week’s sentencing.
According to Ray, Abrams issued the minimum sentence in part because of court filings from Findlay’s co-workers and students attesting to her character.
“A lot of professors and a lot of people wrote letters of support that were considered by the judge,” Ray said. “Students wrote letters of support in her case, too. That helped her case tremendously.”
Findlay, 41, served 65 days in jail before a family member paid her $100,000 bail. Ray said she could serve at least a year of her sentence before her appeal is heard.
“She knew she was getting at least five years because that was the mandatory minimum,” Ray said. “She was happy that the judge gave her the least possible sentence that the judge could do by law, but she’s appealing the verdict.”
To some of Findlay’s students, the news of her sentencing came as a shock.
“It’s sad to hear that because she had a great influence on my college career,” said Harris Brown, a university alumnus who took Findlay’s professional writing course in spring 2010. “I think it’s just a statement of how fast life can change. She was my teacher, and she did a lot of great things for me and the others in my class, but we don’t know how she was outside of the classroom. Something happened that changed the trajectory of her life.”
Brown added that although the original allegations against Findlay astonished him and his fellow classmates, Findlay also outwardly expressed her passion for guns during class time — a recollection many of her students have shared.
“It was definitely shocking to hear, but at the same time she used to talk about her interest in guns during class as a hobby that she was into,” Brown said. “It didn’t completely blow my mind when that came out. But she was a really great professor, and she did a lot of great things for me. She was definitely one of my favorite professors that I’ve ever had in College Park.”
English department chairperson Kevin Cartwright said yesterday that his department has no official comment on the Findlay case. Representatives from the Professional Writing Program could not be reached for comment.
egan@umdbk.com
