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THE PETITION AND OTHER WAYS TO HELP TOFOREST JOHNSON:
https://www.toforestjohnson.com/how-you-can-help
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PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Johnson’s lawyers appealed to the nation’s highest court in April, arguing the key witness was secretly paid a reward for her testimony. Johnson’s attorneys said in their filing to the court that the $5,000 payment to Violet Ellison was disclosed two decades later “after years of the official denials that the witness was ever paid. According to State officials, who continue to pursue Johnson’s execution, it had been ‘misfiled’ all those years.” After his 1998 conviction, Johnson’s lawyers said prosecutors suppressed evidence that Ellison knew about a $5,000 reward being offered in the case and testified hoping to get the money. That argument was litigated throughout the court system from 2003 until 2018. In 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court reviewed Johnson’s case and sent the case back to state court. There was a hearing in Jefferson County, and in 2018 the copy of the check that was paid to Ellison surfaced. Johnson’s lawyers weren’t told about the payment and didn’t conclusively know about it until seeing that check."
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STORY: "Kim Kardashian: Alabama Death Row inmate Toforest Johnson ‘in prison for a crime he did not commit,’ by Reporter Ivana Hrynkiw, published by AL. com, on December 28, 2023. (Ivana Hrynkiw reports on the Alabama justice system which includes the Alabama Department of Corrections, state and federal courts, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, and the U.S. Supreme Court. She also covers issues affecting people incarcerated in Alabama prisons. Hrynkiw is a Birmingham native and an award-winning journalist, who also has experience reporting for both newspapers and broadcast.)
GIST: "An Alabama Death Row inmate has a new ally in his fight for a new trial: Kim Kardashian.
Kardashian, who is studying to be a lawyer, posted on social media Thursday morning about Toforest Johnson. Johnson, 50, has been on Alabama Death Row for more than two decades for a killing he says he didn’t commit.
“Who is Toforest Johnson? And why does the state of Alabama have an innocent man on death row?” read a graphic that Kardashian posted on her Instagram story.
She continued posting on her story — posts that last for 24 hours, but don’t show up on a person’s profile grid — facts about the case from Johnson’s website, toforestjohnson.com.
She added that the Birmingham man “spent his 26th Christmas in prison for a crime he did not commit,” and encouraged supporters to sign a petition on his website.
The case centers around the shooting death of off-duty Jefferson County Sheriff’s Deputy William Hardy in July 1995. The deputy had been working a second job as a security guard at a hotel in Birmingham when he was gunned down.
Johnson was convicted of capital murder in the case and sent to Alabama Death Row. He is currently housed at William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, where he is awaiting an execution date.
In October, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the case.
Johnson’s lawyers appealed to the nation’s highest court in April, arguing the key witness was secretly paid a reward for her testimony.
Johnson’s attorneys said in their filing to the court that the $5,000 payment to Violet Ellison was disclosed two decades later “after years of the official denials that the witness was ever paid. According to State officials, who continue to pursue Johnson’s execution, it had been ‘misfiled’ all those years.”
After his 1998 conviction, Johnson’s lawyers said prosecutors suppressed evidence that Ellison knew about a $5,000 reward being offered in the case and testified hoping to get the money. That argument was litigated throughout the court system from 2003 until 2018.
In 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court reviewed Johnson’s case and sent the case back to state court. There was a hearing in Jefferson County, and in 2018 the copy of the check that was paid to Ellison surfaced.
Johnson’s lawyers weren’t told about the payment and didn’t conclusively know about it until seeing that check.
The county circuit court judge ruled in favor of the state, and the case again was appealed to the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals. That court also ruled that Johnson’s team couldn’t show Ellison knew about the reward money when she talked to police.
In 2020, Jefferson County District Attorney Danny Carr voiced his own concerns about Johnson’s case and asked for a new trial, and the original prosecutor supported Carr’s motion. That motion for a new trial is pending in Jefferson County, and was on hold until the Supreme Court issued their opinion in October.
That’s currently where the case is being litigated.
The state argued in its filing to the high court this spring that Carr’s brief “does not raise any issues of national importance or point to the existence of a conflict.”
The state said Johnson’s attorneys had not proven their assertion that the key witness in the 1998 murder conviction testified in hopes of receiving a $5,000 reward from the governor. Marshall’s office said there was no evidence that the witness, Violet Ellison, knew about or hoped to get the reward when she took the stand.
“Of course, payment of the reward could not have been mentioned at Johnson’s trial in 1998 because the prosecutor did not apply for the reward until three years after the trial,” said the state’s filing.
Kardashian also posted a link pointing followers to a new podcast about Johnson’s case called Earwitness. The podcast is from Lava for Good and Birmingham-based journalist Beth Shelburne.
Former Alabama Chief Justice Drayton Nabers and former Alabama Attorney General Bill Baxley are among numerous lawyers, former judges and prosecutors who have voiced support a new trial for Johnson. Other supporters include former U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance, former magistrate Judge John Carroll, and three former jurors on the case."
The entire story can be read at:
| PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog; |
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/120008354894645705/47049136857587929
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.
