This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Sentencing for a former Utah pediatrician convicted of murdering his ex-wife will be delayed until July, a Salt Lake City judge ruled Monday.

Johnny Brickman Wall, 51, was scheduled to be sentenced April 28 after a jury convicted him last month of first-degree felony murder in Uta von Schwedler's 2011 death.

The sentencing hearing is now set for July 8, after Wall's attorneys asked for time to file and argue a motion to arrest judgment in the case.

After a brief scheduling hearing on Monday, defense attorney G. Fred Metos declined to detail what arguments will be made in the motion.

"[In] the motion arrest judgment, the standard claim there is that the facts didn't justify the verdict," Metos said. "And there are some other issues that we are looking into."

If 3rd District Judge James Blanch grants the motion, he would acquit Wall of the murder charge, Metos said.

Prosecutors and the attorney who represents the couple's son Pelle Wall objected to the sentencing being continued.

Attorney Margaret Olson argued that the victim's family has a right to a speedy trial, and told the judge that her 21-year-old client is going to medical school and took the semester off to attend his father's trial and sentencing.

But Blanch granted the continuance, telling attorneys that the delay will be "one time and one time only."

"This will be the only continuation of sentencing," he emphasized at the end of Monday's hearing.

A jury convicted Johnny Wall of murder March 13 after seven hours of deliberation.

Prosecutors claim Wall drugged his 49-year-old ex-wife with Xanax and drowned her in a bathtub at her Sugar House home as the culmination of a messy divorce and custody battle over their four children.

Von Schwedler was found in an overflowing bathtub by her boyfriend, Nils Abramson, on the evening of Sept. 27, 2011; a near-lethal amount of Xanax was found in her system.

Prosecutors argued at trial that there were simply too many coincidences surrounding Wall: He can't remember where he was on the night von Schwedler died, he had his relatively clean car detailed the day she was found dead, he was late to work and disheveled that day, and he had a scratch on his eye that he claimed came from his dog. The former pediatrician also wrote a Xanax prescription for his mother in the months before von Schwedler's death, according to trial testimony.

But Metos had argued that von Schwedler's death wasn't a murder at all — she killed herself that September night, he told jurors.

Metos argued that injuries to von Schwedler's wrist and leg were likely self-inflicted, and said the "only reasonable explanation" for the level of Xanax found in her system is that she took the pills herself.

Metos further attacked the prosecution's theory that Wall injected a slurry of crushed Xanax and water into his ex-wife's wrist — a needle mark later supposedly covered by a knife puncture wound — arguing that there was no indication that von Schwedler was restrained in any way.

She was found wearing only shorts, and there was blood in her bedroom, at the edge of the bathroom sink and on a windowsill, according to an autopsy report.

The medical examiner's office ruled the woman died from drowning, but could not determine whether her death was a homicide or a suicide.

Pelle Wall, the couple's oldest child, has long believed his father killed his mother and filed a court petition in 2012 asking that his three younger siblings be removed from his father's custody.

A judge granted the request in April 2013, when family friends John and Amy Oglesby were appointed guardians of the two Wall children under age 18.

Twitter: @jm_miller