PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "The Innocence Project argues in their filing that the state presented “at least five different, contradictory theories of who shot Deputy Sheriff William Hardy” during the long legal battle that led to Johnson’s 1998 conviction. Both Jefferson County District Attorney Danny Carr and the original prosecutor in the case have called for a new trial in Johnson’s case. And, Johnson has many high-profile supporters, including Former Alabama Chief Justice Drayton Nabers and former Alabama Attorney General Bill Baxley. “Each of these aspects of Johnson’s case is a hallmark of wrongful conviction, a red flag that should stop reviewing courts in their tracks. All of them combined in a single case should create unavoidable doubt in the outcome of the trial,” said The Innocence Project filing."
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STORY: "Innocence Project asks Supreme Court to review case of Alabama Death Row inmate Toforest Johnson," by Reporter Ivana Hrynkiw, published by al.com, on May 22, 2023.
GIST: "A national group dedicated to helping the wrongfully convicted is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case of Alabama Death Row inmate Toforest Johnson because of “numerous warning signs” that Johnson is set to die for a crime he did not commit.
The Innocence Project provided an amicus brief in support of Johnson’s case on Monday. “If ever a case bore the hallmarks of a wrongful conviction, Toforest Johnson’s is it,” reads the filing.
Johnson, 50, was convicted of the 1995 shooting of Jefferson County Deputy Sheriff William Hardy. Johnson is currently incarcerated at William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore. His lawyers are arguing the nation’s highest court should review his case because, they claim, the key witness was secretly paid a reward for her testimony.
According to their filing, The Innocence Project -- a national, nonprofit organization that provides services to people who are incarcerated -- “has provided representation or assistance in most of the 375 DNA exonerations in the United States, as well as numerous exonerations based on constitutional violations.”
The Innocence Project argues this case “presents numerous warning signs” that “strongly point to” Johnson’s innocence.
The legal brief comes on the day the Alabama Attorney General’s Office was set to file their response to Johnson’s argument, but the state’s deadline was pushed back after they asked for more time to reply.
Lindsey Boney, partner at Bradley Arant Boult Cummings in Birmingham who represents The Innocence Project, filed the brief. “New evidence suggests that a tragic mistake has been made here,” he said Monday morning, “and the Supreme Court has the power to intervene.”
The filing said, “Inconsistent prosecutorial theories, a prosecution that depends on a single ‘earwitness’ identification (who was paid an undisclosed reward for her testimony, no less), and later-expressed prosecutorial doubt about the strength of the case . . . this case checks all the boxes.”
The U.S. Supreme Court justices have reviewed the case before. In 2017 the court ruled in favor of Johnson, sending the case back to Alabama courts. That appeal wound its way through the state court system for years, with the Alabama Supreme Court declining to review the case in December.
Now, Johnson’s case is again pending in the U.S. Supreme Court, waiting to see if the justices will take a look at the case based on claims regarding a witness who said she heard Johnson confess over a phone call. She was later paid $5,000 for her testimony, which Johnson’s legal team did not confirm until 2018.
Following his 1998 conviction, Johnson’s lawyers argued that prosecutors suppressed evidence that Violet Ellison knew about the reward money being offered in the case, and that she was hoping to get the cash. That argument was litigated throughout the court system from 2003 until 2018.
The Innocence Project argues in their filing that the state presented “at least five different, contradictory theories of who shot Deputy Sheriff William Hardy” during the long legal battle that led to Johnson’s 1998 conviction.
Both Jefferson County District Attorney Danny Carr and the original prosecutor in the case have called for a new trial in Johnson’s case. And, Johnson has many high-profile supporters, including Former Alabama Chief Justice Drayton Nabers and former Alabama Attorney General Bill Baxley.
“Each of these aspects of Johnson’s case is a hallmark of wrongful conviction, a red flag that should stop reviewing courts in their tracks. All of them combined in a single case should create unavoidable doubt in the outcome of the trial,” said The Innocence Project filing.
Amicus curiae briefs are sometimes called “friend of the court” filings and are provided by people not directly involved in the particular case, but who have a “strong interest” in the matter, according to Cornell Law School’s legal information institute.
A second amicus brief also was filed Monday by Washington D.C. law firm Morrison Foerster on behalf of a Texas man who spent over 18 years in prison and 12 years on death row before being exonerated."
The entire story can be read at:
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL:
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/4704913685758792985
FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."
Lawyer Radha Natarajan:
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
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YET ANOTHER FINAL WORD:
David Hammond, one of Broadwater’s attorneys who sought his exoneration, told the Syracuse Post-Standard, “Sprinkle some junk science onto a faulty identification, and it’s the perfect recipe for a wrongful conviction.”
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