Alabama Supreme Court denies retrial for man former AG says is 'trapped on death row'
The Alabama Supreme Court on Friday denied a request for a new trial for Toforest Johnson, who has been on death row since 1998.
Johnson says he didn't commit the crime. Moreover, several former judges, activists and the district attorney of the county he was convicted in have called for a re-examination of Johnson’s death sentence.
Johnson, 49, was sentenced to die for the 1995 killing of an off-duty law enforcement officer in Birmingham. Jefferson County Deputy Sheriff William G. Hardy was shot twice in the head in the parking lot of a hotel where he was working off-duty security.
The state prosecuted two men, Johnson and Ardragus Ford. Both men’s first trials ended with hung juries. Ford was acquitted on a second trial, while Johnson was convicted and sentenced to death.
Johnson’s attorneys argued that prosecutors violated due process by paying $5,000 to a key witness without informing the defense.
“It is a case that indisputably rests on the testimony of one witness, Violet Ellison,” Johnson’s attorneys wrote. Ellison claimed she listened to a three-way phone call in which someone named Toforest admitted to killing Hardy.
“The State paid Ellison $5,000 without informing Johnson until almost eighteen years after the fact and only when compelled by the court to do so. Ellison’s 1998 trial testimony – the only evidence against Johnson, and the reason he has been in prison for the last quarter century — was at odds with the physical evidence and directly contradicted by the State’s theory of the case in other proceedings,” Johnson’s attorneys wrote to the Alabama Supreme Court in their petition for a new trial.
The court didn’t offer a written opinion of its decision to deny a retrial.
Johnson’s lawyers will appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. They have 90 days to do so.
Jefferson County District Attorney Danny Carr in June wrote to the Alabama Supreme Court in support of a new trial. Carr, who was not the district attorney when Johnson was tried, said he met with the original lead prosecutor of the case who had concerns about the case and also supports a new trial.
Several others, included former Alabama Chief Justice Drayton Nabers, Jr.; former Alabama Attorney General Bill Baxley; former Jefferson County District Attorney for Bessemer Arthur Green, Jr.; and three jurors who convicted Johnson have spoken out for a new trial, some claiming he is innocent.
“As a lifelong defender of the death penalty, I do not lightly say what follows: An innocent man is trapped on Alabama’s death row,” Baxley wrote in an op-ed with The Washington Post.
Evan Mealins is the justice reporter for the Montgomery Advertiser. Contact him at emealins@gannett.com or follow him on Twitter @EvanMealins.
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This article originally appeared on Montgomery Advertiser: AL Supreme Court denies retrial for death row inmate Toforest Johnson
