Earwitness Podcast Creator Beth Shelburne on Toforest Johnson’s Case

Discussions With DPI

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.”