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The trial of Arne Cheyenne Johnson, also known as the "devil made me do it" case, is the first known court case in the United States in which the defense  sought to prove innocence based upon the claim of demonic possession  and denial of personal responsibility for the crime. On November 24, 1981, in Brookfield, CT, Arne Cheyenne Johnson was convicted of first-degree manslaughter  for the killing of his landlord, Alan Bono.

According to testimony by the Glatzel family, 12-year-old David Glatzel allegedly had played host to a demon. After witnessing a number of increasingly ominous occurrences involving David, his family, exhausted and terrified, decided to enlist the aid of Ed and Lorraine Warren in a last-ditch effort to "cure" the child. The Glatzel family, along with the Warrens, then proceeded to have multiple priests petition the Catholic Church to have a forma exorcism performed on David. The process continued for several days, concluding when, according to those present, a demon fled the child's body and took up residence within Johnson. These events were documented in the book The Devil in Connecticut by Gerald Brittle.

"The first of the troubling events happened in July 1980, when David and Johnson were working together to clean up a rental property the Glatzel family was preparing to move into. David claimed that as he was helping, he encountered a “burnt”-looking old man who pushed him onto a waterbed and told him that if anyone moved in, he would harm them.

According to archived stories from People, David claimed for months that hecontinued to see the menacing old man,  who would speak to him in Latin, threaten to harm his family and vow to take his soul. He also claimed the old man visited him in a dream and told him: 'Beware.' In the following days, the family reported that David would randomly recite Bible passages or lines from Paradise Lost, his body shaking from head to toe as if he was being attacked by an invisible force. Bruises and scratches that couldn’t be explained began showing up on his body. Increasingly concerned, David’s family began taking shifts watching over the boy at night. During the middle of the night, they said, he would sit up suddenly and rapidly perform sit-ups for half an hour at a time.

“He would kick, bite, swear, — terrible words,” his mother, Judy, told The New York Times in 1981.The Glatzel family, devout Catholics, also reached out to their church, hoping a member of the clergy might be able to help. - https://globalnews.ca/news/10026851/the-devil-on-trial-netflix-documentary-arne-cheyenne-johnson-alan-bono/

Several months later, Johnson killed his landlord during a party. His defense lawyer argued in court that he was possessed, but the judge ruled that such a defense could never be proven and was therefore infeasible in a court of law. Johnson was subsequently convicted, though he served only five years of a ten to twenty-year sentence.

The trial attracted media attention from around the world and has obtained a level of notoriety due to numerous depictions of the events in literature and television. A live-action TV prequel titled Where Demons Dwell was released on August 31, 2006. The story was later made into a film adaptation titled The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (2021), and was the subject of a documentary, The Devil on Trial, in 2023. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_Arne_Cheyenne_Johnson

Arne Johnson's case

Once the judge threw out all evidence related to possession, the defense found it increasingly difficult to argue the case. Johnson’s sisters had been at the scene of the crime when it happened, and they had signed police statements saying that they had seen Johnson stab Bono. (Bono was stabbed four times.)

Still, to this day, Johnson maintains his innocence. “I’ve never hurt anybody,” he says in the documentary. “Never. And I said, ‘There’s no way I did this. You got the wrong person.’” The detective who processed Johnson after the stabbing said that he seemed not to be able to recall anything about the killing. 

“I believed in the story, I believed in the defense,” says Johnson’s attorney, Martin Minnella, in the documentary. “And I also believed there probably wasn’t another lawyer in the state that would represent him with this defense.”

David Glatzel, the youngest brother-in-law of Arne Johnson. (At the time of the killing, Arne had not yet married David’s sister, Debbie, but was very close with the family.)

This experience would eventually lead to what David, Arne, Alan, and Carl characterized as full-scale demonic possession. The brothers’ mother, Judy, eventually called Ed and Lorraine Warren, paranormal investigators who were made famous by the Amityville Horror incident. Together, Judy and the Warrens secured an exorcism from the Catholic Church.

When it appeared that David was struggling during the exorcism, Arne intervened. “I yelled at this thing to the top of my lungs,” he says in the documentary. “I said, ‘Leave this little kid alone. Take me on. I’m here. Take me on.’ I felt this coldness come over me, ice cold. Lorraine said, ‘Oh my God, what did you do?’”

The Warrens and most of the Glatzel family believe that the entity that was supposedly possessing David then migrated into Arne. Five months later, they say, it resurfaced, took over Arne’s body, and killed Alan Bono.

In general, “the devil made me do it” does not appear to be a valid murder defense in a court of law. Certainly, it is not one that many people attempt, even if they are genuinely convinced that they are obeying an evil spiritual entity. Allowing such a claim would set a precedent for courts to allow lesser sentences for those who can convince the court that they were possessed. Without solid proof that spirits exist and can, in fact, possess people, the defense of demonic possession in court cases will likely remain ineffective.

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