Oct. 21, 2026
Alabama Governor Spares Death Row Inmate’s Life; Now A Growing Push For His Freedom
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RSS Feed Alabama Governor Kay Ivey made the rare decision to commute the death sentence of a 53-year-old man convicted in the 1995 killing of a sheriff’s deputy. Ivey said there was “not enough direct evidence to carry out the most serious punishment.” The current district attorney has taken it a step further, publicly voicing concerns about prosecutorial misconduct, asking the courts to overturn Toforest Johnson’s conviction and grant him a new trial. Johnson has maintained his innocence from the beginning, with at least 10 witnesses who corroborate Johnson was nowhere near the scene of the murder and zero physical evidence tying him to the crime.
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00:00:02
Speaker 1: Hey there, folks. It is Wednesday, October 21st, and an extraordinary day for executions in the U.S. yesterday. In Florida, one man was being executed. In Alabama, another man was being spared. And with that, welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ Rowe, the day in which two men are off death row. Very different reasons that they're off death row, but We saw what we typically see in Florida yesterday, and we saw something we don't typically see in another state.
00:00:33
Speaker 2: Yes, in Alabama, Governor Kay Ivey made the decision to officially commute the death sentence of 53-year-old Taforis Johnson. He was convicted of the 1995 murder of Deputy Sheriff William Hardy. Look, Johnson has maintained his innocence from the very beginning, and as of late, you have a number of officials who are raising serious doubts about the conviction, including the current district attorney who has been asking for Johnson's conviction to be overturned. So the first step in this process was getting him off death row, and that is what Governor Ivey officially did yesterday.
00:01:16
Speaker 1: Wouldn't that sound right? We... We almost see the writing on the wall right now, right? This is the first step. It's going that direction. It did seem a little, and it will seem a little odd. We'll hear the statement in a second that I think there's enough doubt that I need to get him off death row, but not enough that I need to commute his sentence and get him out of jail, right? she could only go so far in what she was doing, but Robes, this is a huge step for a governor in Alabama.
00:01:44
Speaker 2: Correct. And this is a black man in Alabama who it seems like we'll get into the details.
00:01:51
Speaker 1: Yes.
00:01:51
Speaker 2: Was wrongly accused by one woman, a witness who was, it turns out, and this has just been recently revealed paid by the prosecution to To testify against this man.
00:02:08
Speaker 1: Some of these things, Robes, I can't remember the other one, but are downright criminal in what we hear that people are spending 30, 40 years in prison and then we find out that there was prosecutorial misconduct of some kind. Like you were set up. and you just lost your life because of it.
00:02:27
Speaker 2: Doesn't it make you physically ill to think about?
00:02:29
Speaker 1: That's sick.
00:02:30
Speaker 2: It does. You see movies like this, but to actually know that this is happening and has happened and probably is still happening. in our country today. But these are the stories that need to be told, and we will get into the details. But look, Governor Ivey, you have to give her credit. She has overseen 27 executions as governor. This is just the third time she has stepped in and commuted a death sentence.
00:02:58
Speaker 1: And I assure you, we know, every single one of those executions, she was lobbied hard by someone to stop it. So Robes... these governors are used to getting this type of, or all kinds of pressure, and they're used to resisting that pressure. For her to, I'm not saying she succumbed to it, but she, it takes a lot. So this must be extraordinary.
00:03:21
Speaker 2: Exactly. And so here is her official statement you were referencing it earlier. She said, when presented with Mr. Johnson's case, I had concerns there was not enough direct evidence to carry out the most serious punishment, death. My decision is not a determination of innocence, but a recognition that the circumstances of this case justify commuting his death sentence to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Capital punishment is too important of a tool for Alabama to not approach it carefully and seriously.
00:03:55
Speaker 1: Mr.
00:03:55
Speaker 2: Johnson will serve the remainder of his life behind bars for the senseless murder of Deputy Sheriff William Hardy. No doubt he is paying the price.
00:04:04
Speaker 1: That last part, what does that mean? He'll spend the rest of his life. She didn't sound like she was leaving open the possibility of the legal process kind of a thing.
00:04:10
Speaker 2: She was not, she didn't, I don't think she wants any part of that. I think she's, for anyone who is upset, look, she understands that folks, her constituents, a lot of them are very pro-death penalties. So to even hear that she stepped in and spared his life might anger some. So she was trying, I think, to say, hey, look, life behind bars without the possibility of parole is certainly punishment in and of itself. So I think she was trying to massage any ruffled feathers from those who believe this man should face an executioner.
00:04:43
Speaker 1: You know, we have politicians do this all the time, trying to thread a needle. I'm not so annoyed by this one. You know what she did? Probably the right thing by commuting if she has to cover her butt a little bit with some politics. I didn't mind it so much.
00:04:58
Speaker 2: Yes, yes. So that was from Herb. Johnson's attorneys said, Taforis Johnson is innocent. They made it very clear. Now it is up to the courts to overturn his conviction and grant him a new trial. We will keep fighting until he is home with his family.
00:05:25
Speaker 1: What is the state? We just had one, a guy was like, they only give you $ 50, 000 a year for wrongful conviction.
00:05:31
Speaker 2: Yes.
00:05:32
Speaker 1: What state? Was that Alabama?
00:05:32
Speaker 2: I'm trying to remember which state that was.
00:05:35
Speaker 1: It was in Alabama.
00:05:35
Speaker 2: And he died within a few years of being released. And so he never even fully got his compensation for being, and there is no true compensation for being behind bars and on death row for nearly 40 years, which I believe that man was.
00:05:51
Speaker 1: But I wonder what I'm immediately going to. He's not even out yet. And I'm going to compensation for this.
00:05:56
Speaker 2: Well, and when you hear the details of this and the crime, it seems at least based on the evidence we see right now or what what I will trust the officials of Alabama who have looked into this case significantly. and are saying the crime that happened was done to him, was done to this man. So obviously there was a crime. Deputy Hardy was shot twice in the head. He was working as an off-duty security guard at a Birmingham hotel in July of 1995. But here's the deal. The man who paid the price for that crime to Forrest Johnson was at a nightclub, according to him, and at least 10 others. He was at a nightclub on the other side of town at this time of the shooting. He was clear across town, not anywhere near this Birmingham hotel. So it literally would have been logistically impossible or 10 people are lying. And those witnesses have been described by the current DA as credible witnesses. 10. It's a nightclub.
00:07:01
Speaker 1: That's exactly where you want to be if you're being accused of a crime across town, in a crowded place. That's a lot of witnesses, babe.
00:07:08
Speaker 2: Absolutely. And so the current DA, his name is Danny Carr. There was a podcast that came out in 2023 that looked into the details, and then I believe that is what piqued his interest. He starts looking into all the details, and now he officially has gone on the record in 2024. Think about how long it takes, though, for this type of justice to actually get to this point. So two years ago, the current district attorney in Alabama put in a court filing asking for a new trial. He said evidence in this case has unraveled over the past 20 years. Those 10 credible alibi witnesses who don't place Johnson at the scene of the crime, the jurors never heard from one of them. And the one that they did hear from, her name, Violet Ellison. She claimed that she was on a three-way call and she was eavesdropping where she overheard Johnson confess. On the phone. That is what got him convicted. That testimony. There is zero, no physical evidence that links Johnson to the crime. He solely was convicted on this one woman's testimony.
00:08:24
Speaker 1: I didn't see an explanation, or a good one, for why the other witnesses weren't called.
00:08:30
Speaker 2: Unclear. Do not know. He didn't have, obviously he had a public defender. So yes, he had a, it appears he had a horrific representation. And that woman, Byatt Ellison, we referenced it at the top. We only found out literally two decades later that she was paid $ 5, 000 for her testimony. It was called a reward. I'm not sure how that's even legal. But the point being that information was not disclosed to the jury. It wasn't even revealed to his own lawyers until 20 years later. How does that happen in this country?
00:09:11
Speaker 1: Well, it doesn't matter. They should have been able, right, to put that before a jury and let them make a decision about if she's being truthful or if she has something she's getting out of this. I mean, I don't know how that works in compensation and putting up in hotels and taking care of this and that. I mean, it all comes off as these people will say anything for the sake of being paid by you. So that does factor.
00:09:34
Speaker 2: There's that, but also she's on a three-way call where she's eavesdropping. How can she even know that the man on the other end of the phone was actually Taforis Johnson? I mean, there's so many questions. That's such a weak, strange... Oh, and by the way, I left out this fun fact. Violet Ellison was also... a witness and testified in two other murder trials. So it's as if she was a professional witness who was paid by the prosecution in the state of Alabama to provide testimony against people they wanted to convict.
00:10:11
Speaker 1: And she apparently was good at her job. Well, if you're not, do they appreciate? Do they really not care? Another conviction, another conviction. We can clear this murder off of our books. I mean, what does that mean for the family now? Go back to the family of that deputy. You're telling me somebody got away with murder for the past 40 years?
00:10:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, the deputy's family couldn't possibly want the wrong person behind bars just so that prosecutors and police could close their case and check that box so that they look good, that they've been tough on crime. Let's pick a black man. Let's just say he did it and everyone will believe us. And look, a number of former judges... prosecutors, including the prosecutor that led, like one of the lead prosecutors in this case, have all joined this effort trying to get a new trial for Taforis Johnson. So yes, it is a big deal that he is no longer on death row, but there is a long fight ahead of him. When we come back, we're going to tell you what his own daughter had to say, where she was when she heard the news her father was taken off death row, and what is next for this case. Welcome back, everyone, to Amy and TJ. The state of Alabama, in a very rare moment, has stepped in and commuted the death sentence of 53-year-old DeForest Johnson. He was convicted of the 1995 murder of a sheriff's deputy. He has maintained his innocence, and now he is on his way, perhaps, to actually seeing freedom. And his daughter, Akiria, she's a middle school teacher. She said she was at school when she got the news. I mean, this is going to make me cry. Yesterday, that her father was being taken off death row. She said she cried tears of joy when she heard the news, and her first thought was, this is just the beginning.
00:12:14
Speaker 1: But my God, sometimes, man, can we rush to judgment on this one? Can we hurry this up for this man? He is sitting there. What was it, 95?
00:12:26
Speaker 2: 90. Well, the trial, the conviction, yes, but he was put in prison in 1995. His trial was in 1998. I mean, I'm terrible with math, but he has been behind bars for decades and decades and decades and on death row.
00:12:40
Speaker 1: That's 30 years now, babe.
00:12:43
Speaker 2: That's 30 years. So his, yes, his daughter's quote, it's kind of what you were just saying about him sitting there. This speaks to what these families go through. I know that having him sit there for a crime he didn't commit is still not fair. And so I would just really hope that the worst case scenario doesn't happen. You're just wasting someone's life and wasting someone's time and wasting their time away from their family because my kids haven't gotten to see him in person. My sister. my brother's kids, we don't get to see him in person. I just feel like it's not fair to our family, and it's not fair to him as well to just sit there for nothing. If you're on death row, can you not have in-person visits, right? So they have not been able to see their father. He has never met physically his grandkids, all because the prosecutor's It seems, this is what it seems, wanted to check a box and they would have rather paid a witness to lie so that they could move on to the next case. And whatever happens, whoever's life, whoever's lives were destroyed because of it, so be it.
00:13:56
Speaker 1: It's a lot of victims here, babe. It starts, of course, with that deputy. It starts there. But man.
00:14:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, that family deserves justice.
00:14:06
Speaker 1: Robes, after that, how wrong have they, somebody got it. You have no idea. Robes, we're sitting with them.
00:14:13
Speaker 2: No idea.
00:14:14
Speaker 1: You've gone through your whole life, the impact this has had on their lives, that we know it's had on that family. Just destroyed a family. And you telling me you've been waiting 30 years for some closure and some justice and We got to run this thing all back completely. And this ain't even the.
00:14:30
Speaker 2: And for 30 years, you thought this man killed your loved one. And now to be told, yeah, maybe he didn't.
00:14:36
Speaker 1: Well, they did.
00:14:37
Speaker 2: That is awful.
00:14:38
Speaker 1: They did everybody wrong.
00:14:40
Speaker 2: So what is next for Taforis Johnson? Well, his case is pending in a county court, pending. That must be the most frustrating thing to hear after you've spent 30 years behind bars on death row, away from your family, cut off from the world for a crime you didn't commit. You were at a nightclub. You got 10 people who can put you there and not one shred of physical evidence is that puts you at the scene other than this one woman who was paid by prosecutors to say she heard you confess over the phone. Are you kidding me? So it's up to the courts now to overturn his conviction. He would then be granted a new trial. I hate the fact that he'd even have to go through a new trial. Like at this point, if the district attorney fully believes... that this man was not responsible for this crime. I think they can probably fast track that or at least maybe decide to drop the charges. We've seen that happen in other cases, but my God, it's a slow process.
00:15:38
Speaker 1: That might be the way we're going. That should be the way it goes to have to go through this trial again. Can you imagine where they're going to get witnesses from? They're going to bring her back and give another five grand. I mean, just, yes. It's just at this point, the whole thing you hear now is frustrating because And now you're sitting and I've got to wait longer. I've got to wait another, what, year, two years, three years plus? What is the family on the other side, the victim's family, going to say? They're going to sit. They're going to wait. You're telling us you have to start a whole investigation over 30 years later? You will never get justice, potentially, for the person that was killed, baby. And maybe the family, they sat through the trial. Maybe they do think, absolutely, this is the guy.
00:16:19
Speaker 2: When you're told that a woman has heard the man sitting in the defendant's chair confess to killing your loved one, why wouldn't you believe it? You'd want to believe it. You'd want to think that police got the guy.
00:16:31
Speaker 1: And they have believed it and have been waiting for the moment to go into that room and watch him executed, babe.
00:16:36
Speaker 2: This is a shame. Well, the good... Like his daughter said, obviously, tears of joy, relief, absolute relief that her father wasn't going to be murdered. But now... She has to fight, as do so many others, to make sure he now finally gets his freedom.
00:16:53
Speaker 1: Did I see right, she was five when it happened? Yes. That's incredible, man.
00:16:57
Speaker 2: She lost her entire life with her dad. Well, we hope that this next step happens sooner rather than later. We will be watching Alabama. But until then, we always appreciate you listening to us, everyone. I'm Amy Robach, alongside TJ Holmes. We'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 1: Hey there, folks. It is Wednesday, October 21st, and an extraordinary day for executions in the U.S. yesterday. In Florida, one man was being executed. In Alabama, another man was being spared. And with that, welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ Rowe, the day in which two men are off death row. Very different reasons that they're off death row, but We saw what we typically see in Florida yesterday, and we saw something we don't typically see in another state.
00:00:33
Speaker 2: Yes, in Alabama, Governor Kay Ivey made the decision to officially commute the death sentence of 53-year-old Taforis Johnson. He was convicted of the 1995 murder of Deputy Sheriff William Hardy. Look, Johnson has maintained his innocence from the very beginning, and as of late, you have a number of officials who are raising serious doubts about the conviction, including the current district attorney who has been asking for Johnson's conviction to be overturned. So the first step in this process was getting him off death row, and that is what Governor Ivey officially did yesterday.
00:01:16
Speaker 1: Wouldn't that sound right? We... We almost see the writing on the wall right now, right? This is the first step. It's going that direction. It did seem a little, and it will seem a little odd. We'll hear the statement in a second that I think there's enough doubt that I need to get him off death row, but not enough that I need to commute his sentence and get him out of jail, right? she could only go so far in what she was doing, but Robes, this is a huge step for a governor in Alabama.
00:01:44
Speaker 2: Correct. And this is a black man in Alabama who it seems like we'll get into the details.
00:01:51
Speaker 1: Yes.
00:01:51
Speaker 2: Was wrongly accused by one woman, a witness who was, it turns out, and this has just been recently revealed paid by the prosecution to To testify against this man.
00:02:08
Speaker 1: Some of these things, Robes, I can't remember the other one, but are downright criminal in what we hear that people are spending 30, 40 years in prison and then we find out that there was prosecutorial misconduct of some kind. Like you were set up. and you just lost your life because of it.
00:02:27
Speaker 2: Doesn't it make you physically ill to think about?
00:02:29
Speaker 1: That's sick.
00:02:30
Speaker 2: It does. You see movies like this, but to actually know that this is happening and has happened and probably is still happening. in our country today. But these are the stories that need to be told, and we will get into the details. But look, Governor Ivey, you have to give her credit. She has overseen 27 executions as governor. This is just the third time she has stepped in and commuted a death sentence.
00:02:58
Speaker 1: And I assure you, we know, every single one of those executions, she was lobbied hard by someone to stop it. So Robes... these governors are used to getting this type of, or all kinds of pressure, and they're used to resisting that pressure. For her to, I'm not saying she succumbed to it, but she, it takes a lot. So this must be extraordinary.
00:03:21
Speaker 2: Exactly. And so here is her official statement you were referencing it earlier. She said, when presented with Mr. Johnson's case, I had concerns there was not enough direct evidence to carry out the most serious punishment, death. My decision is not a determination of innocence, but a recognition that the circumstances of this case justify commuting his death sentence to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Capital punishment is too important of a tool for Alabama to not approach it carefully and seriously.
00:03:55
Speaker 1: Mr.
00:03:55
Speaker 2: Johnson will serve the remainder of his life behind bars for the senseless murder of Deputy Sheriff William Hardy. No doubt he is paying the price.
00:04:04
Speaker 1: That last part, what does that mean? He'll spend the rest of his life. She didn't sound like she was leaving open the possibility of the legal process kind of a thing.
00:04:10
Speaker 2: She was not, she didn't, I don't think she wants any part of that. I think she's, for anyone who is upset, look, she understands that folks, her constituents, a lot of them are very pro-death penalties. So to even hear that she stepped in and spared his life might anger some. So she was trying, I think, to say, hey, look, life behind bars without the possibility of parole is certainly punishment in and of itself. So I think she was trying to massage any ruffled feathers from those who believe this man should face an executioner.
00:04:43
Speaker 1: You know, we have politicians do this all the time, trying to thread a needle. I'm not so annoyed by this one. You know what she did? Probably the right thing by commuting if she has to cover her butt a little bit with some politics. I didn't mind it so much.
00:04:58
Speaker 2: Yes, yes. So that was from Herb. Johnson's attorneys said, Taforis Johnson is innocent. They made it very clear. Now it is up to the courts to overturn his conviction and grant him a new trial. We will keep fighting until he is home with his family.
00:05:25
Speaker 1: What is the state? We just had one, a guy was like, they only give you $ 50, 000 a year for wrongful conviction.
00:05:31
Speaker 2: Yes.
00:05:32
Speaker 1: What state? Was that Alabama?
00:05:32
Speaker 2: I'm trying to remember which state that was.
00:05:35
Speaker 1: It was in Alabama.
00:05:35
Speaker 2: And he died within a few years of being released. And so he never even fully got his compensation for being, and there is no true compensation for being behind bars and on death row for nearly 40 years, which I believe that man was.
00:05:51
Speaker 1: But I wonder what I'm immediately going to. He's not even out yet. And I'm going to compensation for this.
00:05:56
Speaker 2: Well, and when you hear the details of this and the crime, it seems at least based on the evidence we see right now or what what I will trust the officials of Alabama who have looked into this case significantly. and are saying the crime that happened was done to him, was done to this man. So obviously there was a crime. Deputy Hardy was shot twice in the head. He was working as an off-duty security guard at a Birmingham hotel in July of 1995. But here's the deal. The man who paid the price for that crime to Forrest Johnson was at a nightclub, according to him, and at least 10 others. He was at a nightclub on the other side of town at this time of the shooting. He was clear across town, not anywhere near this Birmingham hotel. So it literally would have been logistically impossible or 10 people are lying. And those witnesses have been described by the current DA as credible witnesses. 10. It's a nightclub.
00:07:01
Speaker 1: That's exactly where you want to be if you're being accused of a crime across town, in a crowded place. That's a lot of witnesses, babe.
00:07:08
Speaker 2: Absolutely. And so the current DA, his name is Danny Carr. There was a podcast that came out in 2023 that looked into the details, and then I believe that is what piqued his interest. He starts looking into all the details, and now he officially has gone on the record in 2024. Think about how long it takes, though, for this type of justice to actually get to this point. So two years ago, the current district attorney in Alabama put in a court filing asking for a new trial. He said evidence in this case has unraveled over the past 20 years. Those 10 credible alibi witnesses who don't place Johnson at the scene of the crime, the jurors never heard from one of them. And the one that they did hear from, her name, Violet Ellison. She claimed that she was on a three-way call and she was eavesdropping where she overheard Johnson confess. On the phone. That is what got him convicted. That testimony. There is zero, no physical evidence that links Johnson to the crime. He solely was convicted on this one woman's testimony.
00:08:24
Speaker 1: I didn't see an explanation, or a good one, for why the other witnesses weren't called.
00:08:30
Speaker 2: Unclear. Do not know. He didn't have, obviously he had a public defender. So yes, he had a, it appears he had a horrific representation. And that woman, Byatt Ellison, we referenced it at the top. We only found out literally two decades later that she was paid $ 5, 000 for her testimony. It was called a reward. I'm not sure how that's even legal. But the point being that information was not disclosed to the jury. It wasn't even revealed to his own lawyers until 20 years later. How does that happen in this country?
00:09:11
Speaker 1: Well, it doesn't matter. They should have been able, right, to put that before a jury and let them make a decision about if she's being truthful or if she has something she's getting out of this. I mean, I don't know how that works in compensation and putting up in hotels and taking care of this and that. I mean, it all comes off as these people will say anything for the sake of being paid by you. So that does factor.
00:09:34
Speaker 2: There's that, but also she's on a three-way call where she's eavesdropping. How can she even know that the man on the other end of the phone was actually Taforis Johnson? I mean, there's so many questions. That's such a weak, strange... Oh, and by the way, I left out this fun fact. Violet Ellison was also... a witness and testified in two other murder trials. So it's as if she was a professional witness who was paid by the prosecution in the state of Alabama to provide testimony against people they wanted to convict.
00:10:11
Speaker 1: And she apparently was good at her job. Well, if you're not, do they appreciate? Do they really not care? Another conviction, another conviction. We can clear this murder off of our books. I mean, what does that mean for the family now? Go back to the family of that deputy. You're telling me somebody got away with murder for the past 40 years?
00:10:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, the deputy's family couldn't possibly want the wrong person behind bars just so that prosecutors and police could close their case and check that box so that they look good, that they've been tough on crime. Let's pick a black man. Let's just say he did it and everyone will believe us. And look, a number of former judges... prosecutors, including the prosecutor that led, like one of the lead prosecutors in this case, have all joined this effort trying to get a new trial for Taforis Johnson. So yes, it is a big deal that he is no longer on death row, but there is a long fight ahead of him. When we come back, we're going to tell you what his own daughter had to say, where she was when she heard the news her father was taken off death row, and what is next for this case. Welcome back, everyone, to Amy and TJ. The state of Alabama, in a very rare moment, has stepped in and commuted the death sentence of 53-year-old DeForest Johnson. He was convicted of the 1995 murder of a sheriff's deputy. He has maintained his innocence, and now he is on his way, perhaps, to actually seeing freedom. And his daughter, Akiria, she's a middle school teacher. She said she was at school when she got the news. I mean, this is going to make me cry. Yesterday, that her father was being taken off death row. She said she cried tears of joy when she heard the news, and her first thought was, this is just the beginning.
00:12:14
Speaker 1: But my God, sometimes, man, can we rush to judgment on this one? Can we hurry this up for this man? He is sitting there. What was it, 95?
00:12:26
Speaker 2: 90. Well, the trial, the conviction, yes, but he was put in prison in 1995. His trial was in 1998. I mean, I'm terrible with math, but he has been behind bars for decades and decades and decades and on death row.
00:12:40
Speaker 1: That's 30 years now, babe.
00:12:43
Speaker 2: That's 30 years. So his, yes, his daughter's quote, it's kind of what you were just saying about him sitting there. This speaks to what these families go through. I know that having him sit there for a crime he didn't commit is still not fair. And so I would just really hope that the worst case scenario doesn't happen. You're just wasting someone's life and wasting someone's time and wasting their time away from their family because my kids haven't gotten to see him in person. My sister. my brother's kids, we don't get to see him in person. I just feel like it's not fair to our family, and it's not fair to him as well to just sit there for nothing. If you're on death row, can you not have in-person visits, right? So they have not been able to see their father. He has never met physically his grandkids, all because the prosecutor's It seems, this is what it seems, wanted to check a box and they would have rather paid a witness to lie so that they could move on to the next case. And whatever happens, whoever's life, whoever's lives were destroyed because of it, so be it.
00:13:56
Speaker 1: It's a lot of victims here, babe. It starts, of course, with that deputy. It starts there. But man.
00:14:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, that family deserves justice.
00:14:06
Speaker 1: Robes, after that, how wrong have they, somebody got it. You have no idea. Robes, we're sitting with them.
00:14:13
Speaker 2: No idea.
00:14:14
Speaker 1: You've gone through your whole life, the impact this has had on their lives, that we know it's had on that family. Just destroyed a family. And you telling me you've been waiting 30 years for some closure and some justice and We got to run this thing all back completely. And this ain't even the.
00:14:30
Speaker 2: And for 30 years, you thought this man killed your loved one. And now to be told, yeah, maybe he didn't.
00:14:36
Speaker 1: Well, they did.
00:14:37
Speaker 2: That is awful.
00:14:38
Speaker 1: They did everybody wrong.
00:14:40
Speaker 2: So what is next for Taforis Johnson? Well, his case is pending in a county court, pending. That must be the most frustrating thing to hear after you've spent 30 years behind bars on death row, away from your family, cut off from the world for a crime you didn't commit. You were at a nightclub. You got 10 people who can put you there and not one shred of physical evidence is that puts you at the scene other than this one woman who was paid by prosecutors to say she heard you confess over the phone. Are you kidding me? So it's up to the courts now to overturn his conviction. He would then be granted a new trial. I hate the fact that he'd even have to go through a new trial. Like at this point, if the district attorney fully believes... that this man was not responsible for this crime. I think they can probably fast track that or at least maybe decide to drop the charges. We've seen that happen in other cases, but my God, it's a slow process.
00:15:38
Speaker 1: That might be the way we're going. That should be the way it goes to have to go through this trial again. Can you imagine where they're going to get witnesses from? They're going to bring her back and give another five grand. I mean, just, yes. It's just at this point, the whole thing you hear now is frustrating because And now you're sitting and I've got to wait longer. I've got to wait another, what, year, two years, three years plus? What is the family on the other side, the victim's family, going to say? They're going to sit. They're going to wait. You're telling us you have to start a whole investigation over 30 years later? You will never get justice, potentially, for the person that was killed, baby. And maybe the family, they sat through the trial. Maybe they do think, absolutely, this is the guy.
00:16:19
Speaker 2: When you're told that a woman has heard the man sitting in the defendant's chair confess to killing your loved one, why wouldn't you believe it? You'd want to believe it. You'd want to think that police got the guy.
00:16:31
Speaker 1: And they have believed it and have been waiting for the moment to go into that room and watch him executed, babe.
00:16:36
Speaker 2: This is a shame. Well, the good... Like his daughter said, obviously, tears of joy, relief, absolute relief that her father wasn't going to be murdered. But now... She has to fight, as do so many others, to make sure he now finally gets his freedom.
00:16:53
Speaker 1: Did I see right, she was five when it happened? Yes. That's incredible, man.
00:16:57
Speaker 2: She lost her entire life with her dad. Well, we hope that this next step happens sooner rather than later. We will be watching Alabama. But until then, we always appreciate you listening to us, everyone. I'm Amy Robach, alongside TJ Holmes. We'll talk to you soon.