Alabama Death Row Prisoner Appeals to U.S. Supreme Court, With Support from the District Attorney and Trial Prosecutor

On April 17, 2023, lawyers for Toforest Johnson (pic­tured, cen­ter), who has spent 25 years on Alabama’s death row, filed a peti­tion for a writ of cer­tio­rari to the U.S. Supreme Court request­ing a new tri­al. The peti­tion was but­tressed by sup­port from the present District Attorney and from the orig­i­nal tri­al pros­e­cu­tor in Johnson’s case. 

Johnson’s con­vic­tion rest­ed on the tes­ti­mo­ny of a sin­gle wit­ness who claimed to hear him con­fess over the phone and who was secret­ly paid a $5,000 reward. For two decades, local offi­cials repeat­ed­ly denied the exis­tence of a reward. Only after defense coun­sel received infor­ma­tion from a retired state employ­ee did the state dis­close it. Nevertheless, the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals denied Johnson a new tri­al on May 6, 2022.

Johnson has also received sup­port from judges, oth­er pros­e­cu­tors, and three for­mer jurors from his orig­i­nal tri­al. In a March 2021 Washington Post op-ed, for­mer Alabama Attorney General Bill Baxley wrote, “[a]s a life­long defend­er of the death penal­ty, I do not light­ly say what fol­lows: An inno­cent man is trapped on Alabama’s death row. … Johnson’s mur­der tri­al was so deeply flawed, the evi­dence pre­sent­ed against him so thin, that no Alabamian should tol­er­ate his incar­cer­a­tion, let alone his exe­cu­tion.” Former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Drayton Nabers, Jr. voiced his con­cern in a 2022 Alabama Daily News op-ed titled ​“Why Is Toforest Johnson Still on Alabama’s Death Row?”

Johnson’s lawyers assert that the state was required to turn over infor­ma­tion about the reward pri­or to his tri­al and that such evi­dence prob­a­bly would have result­ed in a different outcome.