Shortly after midnight on July 19, 1995, an Alabama sheriff’s deputy was shot in the head and killed in the parking lot of the hotel where he was working a second job as a security guard.
Three years later, a man named Toforest Johnson was convicted of the murder and sentenced to death — but to this day, Mr. Johnson maintains his innocence. Now others — including the elected District Attorney in the county he was tried — are questioning his conviction as well.
Bill Baxley writes, “Before putting someone to death, we must be absolutely certain of their guilt. In this case, the facts point to the outright innocence of the defendant, Johnson.”
Indeed, multiple alibi witnesses said Mr. Johnson was across town at the time of the crime, and the only witness against him was paid $5,000 for her testimony. Also — and most shockingly — prosecutors could not settle on one story of who committed the crime, so they presented five completely different theories in five different court proceedings.
Even the District Attorney, who spent nine months reviewing the case, has called for a new trial. His legal team at the Southern Center for Human Rights and U.C. Berkeley School of Law Death Penalty Clinic are in court now, asking the court to agree to this request. Here at the Innocence Project, we recently filed a brief urging the court to grant a new trial. In the meantime, Toforest Johnson remains on death row.
“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. His name is Toforest Johnson, and Alabama must not execute him,” Baxley says.
The Innocence Project exonerates the wrongly convicted through DNA testing and reforms the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice. www.innocenceproject.org
