He shot the cop. Or his co-defendant did. Or he did it, but with another uncharged codefendant.

Alabama prosecutors used all three theories to try Toforest Johnson and co-defendant Ardargus Ford for the 1995 murder of Jefferson County Sheriff’s Dep. William Hardy at a Birmingham motel. Ford was acquitted at trial in 1999, a year after Johnson was convicted—based not on eyewitnesses or physical evidence but on the testimony of Violet Ellison, who allegedly overheard his confession during a three-way phone call.

However, jurors were never told that Ellison asked for and was paid a $5,000 reward for her testimony. That information didn’t surface until 2019. Meanwhile, a series of appeals—one of which went all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) before a 2018 remand to the Jefferson County Circuit Court where Johnson was originally convicted—still failed to win Johnson a new trial. The state Court of Criminal Appeals upheld the trial court’s most recent decision in 2022, and SCOTUS declined to hear an appeal the following year. See: Johnson v. State, 2022 Ala. Crim. App. LEXIS 20 (Crim. App.); and Johnson v. Alabama, 144 S. Ct. 37, (2023).

That prompted Jefferson County District Attorney Danny Carr to get involved, leading eventually to a motion seeking a new trial filed on November 18, 2024. State Attorney General Steve Marshall (R) has fought that, predictably. Meanwhile, Johnson’s case got a boost in a different venue in January 2025 when Birmingham singer-songwriter Susie Cousins released Mercy for Toforest.

“It was really just the way I processed my anger that nothing is changing for this man,” she told Moth to Flame journalist Beth Shelburne. “It’s so obvious he’s innocent, and still he’s sitting there. What the fuck?”

The song’s lyrics drive home the injustice of that suspicious three-way call at the heart of Johnson’s case: “Lined up in their Sunday best/Hand to Bible they did confess/Condemned to reap what deceit had sown/In a deadly game of telephone.”

Johnson waits at Holman Correctional Facility for a new trial or for Marshall to request his date with death. Meanwhile, on February 28, 2025, Gov. Kay Ivey (R) commuted the sentence of fellow death row prisoner Robin “Rocky” Dion Myers to life in prison, as reported elsewhere in this issue. [See: PLN, Apr. 2025, p.41.]   

Additional sources: Alabama Reflector, Moth to Flame