Johns given 6 years in Tift’s death

When Owen Tift was 3 months old, his mom, Candace, wrote him a letter.

“I loved you so much before I met you. Now you are three months [old] and that love is so strong. I will try with all my might to be the best mommy for you,” the letter read. “I never knew I could love something so much until you came into my life. I love you always, Mommy.”

About a year later, Candace Tift was killed as she rode her bike on the sidewalk when a woman driving under the influence of prescription drugs fell asleep at the wheel and hit her. That woman, 53-year-old Janene Johns of Irvine, was sentenced to six years in prison Friday.

“Honorable judge, on the evening of Aug. 23, 2006 I got the phone call that every parent dreads. It was the phone call that knocked me down and brought me to my knees,” said Mary Logan, Candace Tift’s mother, before the sentencing.

“It was from Wade [Tift’s husband] telling me that Candace was in a coma, brain dead and on life support, and I only had hours to say goodbye,” she said.

Logan, who lives in Arizona, was able to make it to her daughter before she died, though one of Tift’s younger sisters was not. Facts like that, the family argued, are why Judge Daniel McNerney should have sentenced Johns to the maximum 10-year sentence. Instead, he gave her six years, and with time off for good behavior she could be released in three.

In a packed courtroom on the 10th floor of Santa Ana’s Central Justice Center, more than a hundred people gathered to hear Johns’ sentencing. Johns’ family was seated to the right with Tift’s family next to them in the center. While only a few feet separated the two, it could have been an ocean as the day began. Johns sat in the front, in a navy blue Orange County Jail jumpsuit, with her head down, crying almost the whole time.

Candace Tift’s friends and family have often said it’s hard to sympathize with Johns, whom they say has shown no remorse or accepted responsibility for Tift’s death.

Johns was convicted of being under the prescription of cough medicine, Xanax and the sleeping aid Ambien when she fatally hit Tift on West Coast Highway in 2006. Defense attorneys argued she was not asleep but in an unconscious state triggered by acute grief from her husband’s death a month earlier.

The Johnses did their best to mend fences Friday. Johns asked for the Tift family’s forgiveness, and her daughter, Lauren, seemed to blame herself. Lauren Johns approached the podium visibly nervous, with shaking hands and shallow breaths.

“The empathy, sadness, remorse, pain, hurt and all the other feelings that I have for Mr. Tift and the family, and their son ... how sorry I am. How I wish I could have done more to stop this from happening,” she said. Johns did not address the judge, only the Tift family and her mother.

“My heart breaks for [Johns’] children, and I accept Lauren’s apology. It wasn’t her fault, it wasn’t her children’s fault,” Tift’s mother, Logan, said after the sentencing.

Lauren Johns finished her comments turning to her mother.

“Even if we can’t see you, know that we love you,” she told her mother. “I am just so sorry.”

“We are deeply sorry and deeply saddened. We love our mother,” said Johns’ son Andrew. “We know what kind of person she is and what good she could do.”

Judge McNerney said he recognized the good in Johns, but that does not excuse her actions.

“Janene Johns has been a model citizen her entire life. She was a person who all her life gave selflessly to helping others, and it was only in her grief over the loss of her husband she deviated from that path,” McNerney said, addressing Johns directly.

“We give those who are grieving over the loss of a loved one a measure of space and an extra share of love and understanding. We only hope they will not turn that grief into someone else’s tragedy,” he said. “That hope was lost on you the moment you got into the car that night.”

Tift’s family urged McNerney to give the maximum, 10-year sentence, even submitting a petition with 931 signatures from the community. While they spoke of the loss of a wife and daughter, it was 3-year-old Owen’s loss that took on the greatest significance.

“Janene, do you remember the first touch of your children? The hope, the promise of their future? What would your last words be to your children? Candace was not afforded that. What do you think about that?” Wade Tift said. “What about my life? What about my son who will never have his mother again? He will not be the same person he was born to be.”

TRIAL EXCERPTS

“I never set out to harm Candace [Tift], nor did I knowingly or willfully act irresponsibly. ... The pain of losing a partner is unforgiving. God knows that if I could give my life to bring Candace back I would humbly go there.”

“Her loss has clearly created a void that nothing, no judgment could ever fit.”

Judge Daniel McNerney

“I ask myself daily who is this person I see in the mirror? The woman who’s screaming inside ‘My dead daughter, I want her back. I want her back.’”

“A walk on the sidewalk has become a walk of anxiety as I too worry if I’ll get hit.”

Mary Logan

“This is a horrible, terrible tragedy on both sides. ... But I want you to know whatever emotion you saw on my mother’s face during the trial, it was just a way to get by.”

Janene Johns’ son

“It’s a living hell. I want you to know that since the accident when I took Candace, my life has not merely gone on.

The hole I’ve created in both families’ hearts will never be filled.”

Janene Johns

JOSEPH SERNA may be reached at (714) 966-4619 or at joseph.serna@latimes.com.