From the HERE City National Desk
MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Gov. Kay Ivey on Tuesday took Toforest Johnson off Alabama’s death row, reducing his sentence to life in prison with no chance of parole after years of doubts about the case that sent him there.
Johnson was convicted in the July 19, 1995, killing of Jefferson County Deputy Sheriff William Hardy, who was moonlighting as a security guard outside a Birmingham hotel when a gunman fired two shots into his head. Johnson has always denied the crime and has said he was across the city when the deputy was killed.
In a written statement, the Republican governor said she was not convinced there was enough direct evidence to justify carrying out a death sentence. She stressed that the move does not find Johnson innocent and that he will spend the rest of his life behind bars. She said she notified Attorney General Steve Marshall and a representative of the Hardy family before acting, as state law requires.
Marshall had urged Ivey just last week to turn down the clemency request and leave the jury verdict and the court rulings in place.
The case has drawn support for a new trial from the prosecutor’s own office. Jefferson County District Attorney Danny Carr, elected in 2018, wrote to the court in 2024 that the evidence against Johnson had come apart over the past 20 years. Carr pointed to alibi witnesses who put Johnson somewhere else that night and raised doubts about the central witness at the 1998 trial, a woman who testified that she listened in on a three-way phone call and heard a man she took to be Johnson admit to the shooting. She was later paid a $5,000 reward, and defense lawyers say the state hid that financial motive from jurors.
A former Alabama attorney general and two former chief justices of the state Supreme Court are among the onetime judges and prosecutors who have filed briefs or published opinion pieces calling for a new trial. The fight has also been the focus of a podcast and drawn national attention.
Ivey has commuted three death sentences since taking office in 2017 while overseeing 27 executions. She is term-limited and leaves office in January. Johnson remains in state prison, and his legal team says it will keep pressing the courts to overturn the conviction.
Section: More Washington DC crime news
Filed under: Washington DC Crime News
