Talk:Trial of Arne Cheyenne Johnson

Grammar and Style
This article needs some work to address grammatical and stylistic issues. The 'Events preceding the attack' section in particular reads like a story rather than an article in an encyclopaedia, and delivers statements such as 'It was then they decided not to take the rental property because it was evil.' Helenabella (talk) 12:52, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

More than that; it is extremely confusing, vague, all-but unintelligible in several places, and is written as if the presence of a "demon" were an established fact. The description of the fight that resulted in the killing is especially egregious, and is practically indecipherable. For example, this segment:

"Wanda Johnson, who recounted her story to the police, stated that "it just broke". Mary ran for the car, as Debbie stood between the two men.  Wanda, who was holding on to Johnson, remembers he was "like stone", and couldn't be moved. Wanda heard Johnson growling like an animal, saw a flash through the air, and stated that "it just stopped".  Johnson walked towards the woods, staring straight ahead, and Bono continued to punch his fist into his palm, before falling on his face."

"It just broke" and "it just stopped." What broke, and what stopped? I can make neither heads nor tails of this entire section. After this quoted text, it goes on to describe knife wounds on Bono, which apparently just spontaneously appeared, since there is no mention of a knife fight or any other kind of physical altercation at all. What "flash[ed] through the air"? Lightning? A knife? A demon? A UFO?! Did the "demon" supposedly cause the knife wounds? It doesn't say, the quotes are presented without any kind of context, and the entire sequence is inexcusably vague.

Further, the presence of the alleged "demon" is repeatedly presented as a fact rather than a claim. The article is also riddled with statements such as "("charred" and "hooves" being common signs for a demon)" which cause it to read like an apologia for the demonologists' claims rather than an impartial scientific encyclopedia entry.

I seriously can't understand half of what the article is trying to say; it is extremely poorly written, vague, and, as pointed out, mostly written as if it were a story rather than an encyclopedic article. The entire page should be rewritten; I would do it myself, but I honestly can neither parse the choppy prose nor follow the mangled narrative well enough to even understand what supposedly happened. Someone who knows more about this seriously needs to go trough it with a chainsaw and completely rebuild the article from the ground up.

RyokoMocha (talk) 08:54, 19 July 2013 (UTC)
 * I wrote it, but it has been added to over time, not always with references. I agree though, chainsaw is needed, so I'll start drafting a page one rewrite. Judgesurreal777 (talk) 12:06, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

I've removed much of the article that reads as a story and presented the demonic possession claim uncritically. --Harizotoh9 (talk) 02:52, 21 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Harizotoh9, I appreicate you are trying to fix the articles problems, but eliminating all the content.that comes from reliable sources is not a good option. The article is about this trial, and it was called the "Demon Murder Trial". That isn't something any wikipedian made up, it's what the media called it. The article is about the incident and everything that was claimed to have happened, and when I originally wrote it it did a decent job of explaining all the events in an unbiased way. Since then, others have marred it significantly, but changing the title without discussion and deleting everything is a bad option. Let me have a crack at it first, ok? Judgesurreal777 (talk) 16:19, 23 September 2014 (UTC)
 * It looks like this article was in better shape when I arrived today than it was when it was criticized by the editors above. I removed the most over-the-top dramatic story-telling aspects of the prose, changed the remaining portions that treated the demonic possession as factual instead of a claim, and provided a few more copy edits. I also corrected the name of the convicted person based on sources (including the New York Times) and moved the article to match the corrected name. Happy editing! – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:23, 7 November 2014 (UTC)