Discussions with DPI Podcast: Earwitness Podcast Creator Beth Shelburne on Toforest Johnson’s Case

In this month’s episode of Discussions with DPI, Managing Director Anne Holsinger speaks with Beth Shelburne, a jour­nal­ist who has report­ed on the crim­i­nal legal sys­tem for over 25 years and cre­ator of the pod­cast Earwitness. Released in 2023 to crit­i­cal acclaim, Earwitness tells the sto­ry of Toforest Johnson, a death-sen­tenced man who is fac­ing exe­cu­tion in Alabama despite strong evi­dence of his inno­cence. On November 14, 2024, Mr. Johnson filed a peti­tion with the Jefferson County Circuit Court request­ing a new hear­ing, the lat­est in a series of appeals.

“I real­ized that this is such a pro­tract­ed injus­tice with so many twists and turns over a quar­ter of a cen­tu­ry. So many peo­ple have been exploit­ed in the process that it real­ly is a case that’s emblem­at­ic of many ter­ri­ble issues in our crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, and I felt like in order to cap­ture all of that in its total­i­ty, I want­ed to slow down and real­ly unpack this case in a mean­ing­ful way,” explains Ms. Shelburne on why she decid­ed to cre­ate the Earwitness pod­cast. She shares the chal­lenges she and her team faced, includ­ing the ​“fad­ing mem­o­ries of peo­ple … [who] just could­n’t remem­ber the finite details that we felt were so crucial…to pin down. Luckily, we were able to get our hands on quite a bit of source material through.” 

Mr. Johnson was con­vict­ed in 1998 of the 1995 mur­der of Deputy Sheriff Hardy, who was killed in a hotel park­ing lot. Mr. Johnson has main­tained his inno­cence for 26 years, and says he was at a night­club across town on the day of the mur­der. His con­vic­tion relied almost entire­ly on tes­ti­mo­ny from Violet Ellison, the so-called ​“ear­wit­ness” who claimed that while lis­ten­ing to a phone call between her daugh­ter and anoth­er per­son at the Jefferson County Jail she over­heard a third per­son iden­ti­fy him­self as ​“Toforest” and con­fess to killing the vic­tim. In a 2018 hear­ing, it was revealed that Ms. Ellison received $5,000 from the state for her tes­ti­mo­ny against Mr. Johnson — a pay­ment that the pros­e­cu­tion did not dis­close to defense coun­sel and denied mak­ing for decades. Earlier this year, Jefferson County District Attorney Danny Carr filed an ami­cus brief in sup­port of a new hear­ing for Mr. Johnson, say­ing that his con­vic­tion is ​“fun­da­men­tal­ly unre­li­able.” Mr. Carr’s office pre­vi­ous­ly com­plet­ed an inves­ti­ga­tion into Mr. Johnson’s case in June 2020 and sub­se­quent­ly filed a motion request­ing a new trial.

“I think that the case high­lights many issues that are evi­dent, not only in wrong­ful con­vic­tions, but in over pros­e­cu­tions and over pun­ish­ment that’s so preva­lent across our coun­try,” con­cludes Ms. Shelburne. ​“The issues of racial bias. The issues of the pre­sump­tion of guilt when it comes par­tic­u­lar­ly to young black men. I think this inter­sec­tion of mon­ey and jus­tice, whether it’s an appoint­ed attor­ney not being paid what they deserve for their work, to mea­ger offer­ings for mit­i­ga­tion work or inves­tiga­tive work in a cap­i­tal case, to cash rewards being offered in crim­i­nal cas­es, and the state not being com­plete­ly trans­par­ent with all sides about those cash rewards. I think that this case def­i­nite­ly demon­strates the dif­fi­cul­ty in in all of those issues.”