Introducing - Bone Valley Season 4 | Earwitness
Today we're introducing you to Earwitness. Earwitness is one of Lava for Good’s most important investigative series and will be released right here in the Bone Valley feed. You’ll see it shown here as Bone Valley Season 4 but it is a completely different show told by a different host - noted Alabama-based journalist and podcaster Beth Shelburne. We hope you enjoy.
One hot July night in 1995, Deputy Sheriff William G. Hardy was shot dead behind a Birmingham, AL hotel. At the same time, four miles away at least ten people saw Toforest Johnson at a packed nightclub called Tee’s Place. It didn’t matter. The cops zeroed in on Toforest as the culprit anyway.
What followed was a familiar American ritual: arrest, trial, conviction, death sentence. No eyewitnesses. No physical evidence. Just unjustifiable confidence. For more than 25 years, Toforest has lived in a five-by-eight cell on Alabama’s death row.
In 2019, journalist Beth Shelburne reopened the case and found something far worse than incompetence. The state once tried to pin the murder on another man. Its case hinged on an “earwitness,” a woman secretly paid by prosecutors to testify about an overheard phone call. The jury never knew. Neither did the defense. They found out 17 years later.
Earwitness, an eight-part docuseries from the team behind Bone Valley, pulls back the curtain on a justice system that refuses to admit it got it wrong. With rare access to detectives, prosecutors, jurors, and witnesses, Shelburne asks the only question that matters: how did an innocent man end up on death row, and why is the state still trying to kill him?
On February 4, we'll be releasing all eight episodes right here in the Bone Valley feed as Bone Valley Season 4 | Earwitness. For those who want to hear Earwitness early and ad-free, subscribe to Lava for Good+ on Apple Podcasts.
Earwitness is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Speaker 1: Hi everyone, this is Gilbert King. Today we're introducing you to the podcast ear Witness and the Alabama wontful conviction case of Tafaris Johnson. As many Bone Valley listeners know, after the attention Season one brought to Leo Schofield's case, Leo was finally released from prison after spending thirty six years behind bars for a murder he did not commit. And as fans of season three Graves County know, the attention Maggie Freeling brought to Quincy Cross's case has led key witnesses to recant their testimony, resulting in new evidentiary hearings that could grant him a new trial and potentially free him after decades of incarceration. There's something unique happening across these Bone Valley series. Storytelling with heart grounded in rigorous investigation is making a real difference where the courts have often fallen short. We're seeing meaningful developments and it underscores the urgency of revival visiting official narratives in cases we believe resulted in wrongful convictions. This has been essential to the work of Jason Flohm and the entire team at Lava for Good. That's why we wanted you to hear the story of Tafaris Johnson, who has been on Alabama's death row for more than twenty five years. Beginning January twenty eighth, we'll be releasing all episodes right here in the Bone Valley Feed as Bone Valley Season four Ear Witness available as a binge on Lava for Good plus on Apple Podcasts. Then on February four, all episodes will be released as a binge in the Free Bone Valley Feed.
00:01:47
Speaker 2: I yes, ma'am, if you're very for crowdstely fit, I have what appears to be a jot to the county police officer shot in the back of our building. Here is that movie.
00:02:00
Speaker 1: It is one of us.
00:02:01
Speaker 2: They have got one down and I did it look for diag.
00:02:06
Speaker 3: In nineteen ninety five, Detective Tony Richardson was trying to figure out who killed a fellow officer, Deputy Bill Hardy.
00:02:15
Speaker 2: Had it been my decision the day we caught the people they did it, let's put them on death.
00:02:22
Speaker 3: Throat Without solid evidence, the case comes down to who is believed and who is ignored.
00:02:30
Speaker 4: Evidence wise, we had visually no evidence. We had the.
00:02:35
Speaker 2: Word of a fifteen year old who told lies, a lot of lies.
00:02:41
Speaker 3: So when she said she was there and all of there, that's a lie.
00:02:46
Speaker 2: That's that's a shame.
00:02:48
Speaker 3: When the deputy was shot at the hotel, to Forrest Johnson was four miles away, but now he's on death row.
00:02:57
Speaker 4: This case is all about alternative worlds that are in conflict with each other and in conflict with truth and in conflict with what our justice system stands for.
00:03:10
Speaker 2: We had a week case. It's based on testimony in one witness.
00:03:14
Speaker 4: The only evidence supposedly they had against was this ear witness who had never heard him speak before, who had no idea who he was.
00:03:23
Speaker 2: Glad to start it, sobbing like uncontrollable because I was like, oh my goodness, we did convict an innocent man and he's been on death row all these years and I didn't know it.
00:03:37
Speaker 3: I'm Beth Shelburne from Lava for Good podcasts. This is ear witness.
00:03:44
Speaker 2: The best thing that a person probably can do for themselves that's suspected of a crime is do not talk to the police. Period.
00:03:53
Speaker 3: Now that's really interesting coming from a retired detective, but.
00:03:56
Speaker 2: That's the truth.
00:03:58
Speaker 3: Listen to ear witness on the iHeartRadio, app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, and to hear episodes with no ads, subscribe to Lava for Good plus on Apple podcasts
