Toforest Johnson

Toforest Onesha Johnson (born February 8, 1973) is an American man on death row for the 1995 execution-style murder of Jefferson County deputy sheriff William Hardy in Alabama. Johnson was one of four men accused of shooting Hardy to death on July 19, 1995, near a hotel where Hardy worked as a security officer while off duty. Out of the four suspects, only Johnson and his friend Ardragus Ford were subsequently put on trial, and after a mistrial in 1997, Johnson was found guilty and sentenced to death in 1998, while Ford was acquitted during a re-trial.

Toforest Johnson
2019 mugshot of Toforest Johnson
Born	Toforest Onesha Johnson (1973-02-08) February 8, 1973 Birmingham, Alabama, U.S.
Other names	Carlos
Criminal status	Incarcerated on death row
Conviction(s)	Capital murder
Criminal penalty	Death
Details
Victims	William Hardy, 49
Date	July 19, 1995
Country	United States
State(s)	Alabama
Imprisoned at	Holman Correctional Facility

The case of Johnson was controversial, given the fact that he was convicted based on the testimony of a single witness, who allegedly overheard Johnson confessing to the murder to another prisoner during a prison phone call she eavesdropped. The defense submitted alibi evidence that showed that Johnson and Ford were both together at a nightclub when the murder happened, meaning Johnson could not possibly be the real killer. Many, including the district attorney and civil rights groups, have since called for a new trial for Johnson to hear his claims of innocence.

Currently, Johnson remains on death row at the Holman Correctional Facility and his execution date has yet to be scheduled.

Personal life

Toforest Onesha Johnson was born in Birmingham, Alabama on February 8, 1973. Johnson, who had at least one sibling, was married with five children as of 1995 when he was arrested for the murder of an off-duty police officer.

Murder of William Hardy

On July 19, 1995, between 12:30 a.m. and 1:00 a.m., a 49-year-old off-duty police officer was murdered outside a hotel in Birmingham, Alabama.

On that night itself, Barry Rushakoff, the night manager of the hotel, heard two pop-like sounds echoing outside the hotel. He attempted to contact the part-time security officer, 49-year-old William Hardy, over the radio and ask Hardy to check the source of the sounds. However, Hardy did not respond. Later, Rushakoff then received calls from several hotel guests, who reported hearing gunshots in the parking lot. He called 911 to report the shots and request backup for Hardy. Rushakoff again attempted to reach Hardy via radio, but without success. Several guests of the hotel, including Larry Osborne and Annie Colvin (who later became trial witnesses), testified that they were awakened by gunshot sounds on that night itself.

Rushakoff proceeded to the back of the hotel. On his way, he passed a table in the atrium where Hardy frequently sat, noticing the deputy's radio, a cup of coffee, and a cigarette still smoldering in an ashtray. When Rushakoff reached the glass doors at the rear of the hotel, he discovered ardy's body in the parking lot. He returned to the front desk and called 911 again to report the deputy had been injured. While on the phone with 911, a hotel guest, Leonard Colvin (husband of Annie Colvin), approached the desk to ask about car keys that his stepson, Michael Ansley, was supposed to have left for him earlier. Rushakoff gave Colvin the keys, then completed the 911 call and went to the rear parking lot to wait for the police. Rushakoff stated that, while waiting, he did not see anyone else in the parking lot except for Hardy, who was later pronounced dead at a nearby hospital. At the time of his death, Hardy was the deputy sheriff of the local police force in Jefferson County.

An autopsy was conducted by Dr. Robert Brissie, chief medical examiner for Jefferson County. Dr. Brissie certified that the cause of Hardy's death was multiple gunshot wounds. He added that the gunshot wound to Hardy's forehead and the exit hole in both Hardy's hat and back of his head suggested that one of the two bullets was delivered about 12 to 20 inches away from Hardy's forehead and at approximately a 15-degree upward angle.

At around 4 a.m. on that same day, a vehicle was stopped by police at a motel in Homewood nearby the crime scene, after the police received a report about a suspicious vehicle roaming around the area. The car was filled with four African-American passengers (two men and two women), one of whom was 22-year-old Toforest Johnson and another was his 21-year-old paraplegic friend Ardragus Ford, while the other two were Latanya Henderson and Yolanda Chambers. Johnson was later arrested at the scene due to an outstanding warrant of arrest for an unrelated crime, before the police investigations led to him being classified and taken into custody as a suspect of Hardy's murder.

Johnson was not the only one to be arrested for the murder. Three other men, one of whom was Ford, were also caught by police; the other two were 22-year-old Omar Rahman Berry and 20-year-old Quintez Wilson. The four men were all charged with capital murder, an offence that carries either life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, or the death penalty under Alabama state law. The four were later indicted by a grand jury in March 1996 for trial on a later date.

Murder trials

Two years later, in late 1997, Toforest Johnson and his friend Ardragus Ford stood trial before separate courts for the murder of William Hardy, while the murder charges against both Omar Berry and Quintez Wilson were dismissed. More than a decade after his release, Wilson died in 2008 from a shooting incident that left two men dead.

Based on the prosecution's case, it was argued in the trials of both Johnson and Ford that both of them were involved in the murder, and that either one of the men had shot Hardy to death. The testimony of Yolanda Chambers showed that on the day in question, she had seen both Ford and Johnson coming face to face with Hardy, and she seen Hardy being shot by either one or both of the men. However, the testimony of Chambers was riddled with countless inconsistencies; she kept changing her story on the identity of the shooter, claiming it was Ford at one point while pinning the blame on Johnson at another point. Chambers even claimed the shooter was neither Johnson nor Ford, but either Wilson or Berry, before she admitted to lying on a few occasions; these multiple inconsistent testimonies led to the prosecution withdrawing all the murder charges against Berry and Wilson while proceeding to prosecute Johnson and Ford in court. As for the reason why Johnson and Ford appeared near the crime scene, Chambers said in one version that they were settling on a drug deal and it was witnessed by Hardy, who was killed as a result, while stating in another version that they had a plan to rob another person on the night Hardy was murdered.

The prosecution also summoned a woman named Violet Ellison as a witness. According to Ellison, she overheard a prison phone call, which concerned a conversation allegedly between Johnson and another inmate, and during the conversation, Johnson allegedly said that he had shot Hardy in the head and admitted to the murder.

In response, Johnson entered his defense and maintained that he was innocent. In his two-tier defense, Johnson put forward one alternative defense, which was that he was present at the scene but did not take part in the shooting or expect the shooting to happen. The second, yet more major defense was that Johnson had an alibi at the time of the murder. According to Johnson, on the date he supposedly murdered Hardy, he was actually in another part of town and was at a nightclub with several friends, including Ford. Some of Johnson's acquaintances were also called to testify to support Johnson's alibi. One notable detail was that Johnson was seen wearing a specific shirt at the nightclub, and that shirt was the same shirt worn by Johnson when he was arrested hours after the murder of Hardy.

On December 11, 1997, Johnson's trial was declared to be a mistrial after the jury deadlocked and unable to reach the verdict, and Johnson's case was later remanded for a re-trial by another jury. Johnson was subsequently convicted of capital murder on August 23, 1998, at the end of his re-trial, and two days later, by a vote of 10–2, the jury recommended the death penalty for Johnson, who was therefore sentenced to death during a formal court hearing on October 30, 1998.

As for Ardragus Ford, his original murder trial also ended with the jury deadlocked on his conviction, which similarly led to the declaration of a mistrial on November 21, 1997. Ford was later granted a re-trial, and he was acquitted in the end after the jury found him not guilty of murder on June 13, 1999.

Appeal process

On June 29, 2001, the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals rejected Toforest Johnson's appeal against his murder conviction and death sentence.

On September 28, 2007, Johnson's second appeal to the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals was also dismissed.

On June 14, 2013, the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals turned down Johnson's third appeal.

On August 14, 2015, Johnson's fourth appeal was rejected by the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals.

On June 26, 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court sent the case of Johnson back to the state courts for re-hearing after they overturned a state court order that rejected his previous appeal, pertaining to a precedent rule about the prosecution's rights to reveal exculpatory evidence against the accused.

On April 27, 2018, the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals dismissed Johnson's fifth appeal.

On May 6, 2022, Johnson's appeal was once again rejected by the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals.

On December 16, 2022, Johnson's request for a re-trial was rejected by the Alabama Supreme Court.

Johnson later appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court in April 2023. On October 2, 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Johnson's appeal and therefore upheld both the death penalty and murder conviction.

On November 18, 2024, Johnson appealed to the Jefferson County Circuit Court for a fresh review of his case. The appeal is currently pending.

Claims of innocence

Over the years while he was incarcerated on death row, Toforest Johnson's case gradually became controversial due to the fact that he was allegedly innocent of the murder of William Hardy, and the circumstances surrounding his trial and conviction. Mainly, it was debated that Johnson's conviction was unsafe since it was based on the testimony of a single witness who pinpointed Johnson as the person she overheard confessing to the murder, and there was a possibility that the witness, Violet Ellison, could have either misheard or concocted the evidence. It was revealed in later years that Ellison received payment of $5,000 from the prosecution for her testimony in 2001, and it was argued that her evidence cannot be relied on in finding Johnson guilty of the murder of William Hardy.

Another major point of Johnson's case was that several witnesses had previously testified that Johnson was not at the scene of crime when Hardy was killed, and that he was at another location when the offence itself happened. A lesser known ground of the controversy was the alleged ineffective legal representation Johnson received during the trial.

On these grounds, Johnson's lawyers argued that Johnson's murder conviction and death sentence were both unsafe to maintain and urged the courts to vacate his conviction and sentence and grant him a re-trial to hear his claims of innocence. Also, civil groups and activists, including the Innocence Project, considered Johnson's case as a wrongful conviction and appealed for a review of Johnson's case to re-determine his guilt. Local celebrity Kim Kardashian also supported the efforts to prove Johnson's innocence and requested a re-trial, stating that an innocent man was on death row for a crime he did not commit. More than 400 people gathered at a church event in April 2023 to show support for Johnson on the same date his appeal was first heard by the U.S. Supreme Court. Some former jurors of Johnson's trial also expressed their hopes that Johnson could be acquitted and felt that they should not have found him guilty of William Harry's murder.

The case of Johnson also garnered rare significant support from legal professionals, who expressed concerns that he was possibly innocent of the crime. Jefferson County District Attorney Danny Carr, a longtime supporter of capital punishment, submitted a brief in 2020, supporting Johnson's request for a new trial. Although Carr expressed no stance on whether Johnson was innocent or not, he was concerned that Johnson did not receive a fair trial and felt that using a single witness's testimony to convict Johnson gave rise to grave concerns that Johnson was likely wrongfully convicted of murder, and even the original lead prosecutor of Johnson's trial had earlier told Carr of his concerns regarding Johnson's possible innocence. Carr reiterated in his brief that the duty of the prosecution was "not merely to secure convictions, but to seek justice". Carr reiterated his support for Johnson in December 2023, although he revealed his concern about the chances of securing a new trial for Johnson. In May 2024, Carr once again urged the judicial system to uphold the ends of justice by granting Johnson a new trial, citing that the evidence of the prosecution witness Ellison contradicted the objective evidence and testimonies of the alibi witnesses supporting Johnson's defense.

In March 2021, former Alabama Attorney General Bill Baxley, former Chief Justices Sonny Hornsby and Drayton Nabers, and several former judges and prosecutors submitted briefs to support their efforts for a new trial for Johnson, stating that the evidence against Johnson should not have been sufficient to warrant his conviction and urged the courts to re-investigate his case. However, the Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall did not support the need for a new trial for Johnson and stated that the case did not fit the criteria to be re-tried.

Despite this support, Johnson's request for a new trial was rejected by the courts from 2022 to 2023, although he still could appeal to the courts at that point.

See also

• Capital punishment in Alabama
• List of death row inmates in Alabama
• Nathaniel Woods, another death row inmate from Alabama who proclaimed his innocence before his execution in 2020.