Earwitness: The Toforest Johnson Story

Toforest Johnson claims he as wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death row for killing Deputy William Hardy in 1995. Investigative Journalist Beth Shelburne host of the new podcast EARWITNESS tells his story, and the battle he faces as he fights to survive the death penalty. Beth presents witnesses and explanations of why Johnson was wrongly convicted.

Episode Transcript

(00:14):
Johns the comedy plays Officers Shot theback of our ability he is that movie
is one of us. They havegot one down. It happened in Birmingham
almost thirty years ago, But whatreally happened? Hello, I'm John Mounds
and this is Viewpoint Alabama on theAlabama Radio Network. A new podcast hosted

(00:36):
by award winning journalist Beth Jolborne calledYour Witness explores the story of DeForrest Johnson.
He has been on death row fortwenty five years for a crime he
said he didn't commit. And there'sa lot of evidence that would confirm this.
But what really happened. Let's goto the expert, Beth. Welcome
to the show. Thank you somuch for having me. Absolutely so take

(00:56):
me back. I guess we're talkinglike thirty years What happened in I guess
it was in Homewood. Yeah,it's now in Embassy Suites, but at
the time the hotel was called theCrown Sterling Suites and it's right at the
border of the city of Birmingham andthe city of Homewood. If people know

(01:17):
Birmingham, it's where the Red MountainExpressway cuts from Birmingham into Homewood and there's
a big hotel with the roofs ChristSteakhouse, right, I know right where
it is. I stayed there before. I know right where that is.
Yeah, most people do. It'skind of a special occasion place. And
that's where the crime happened in nineteenninety five, July nineteenth, at about

(01:40):
twelve forty five twelve fifty am behindthe hotel, Deputy Bill Hardy was shot
and killed. And unfortunately there wereno eyewitnesses to the crime, and so
of course police went to work.Was this the Birmingham Police or the Homewood
Police? So Deputy hard was withJefferson County Sheriff's Office, and of course

(02:02):
when a law enforcement officer is shot, you can imagine there was a huge
police response to the crime scene.I believe there were four agencies, including
Birmingham Police and Homewood Police, butultimately it was the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office
that ended up taking the lead inthe investigation. And the investigation I guess

(02:24):
did they immediately How did Johnson getindicate? Was he this wrong guy at
the wrong wrong place at the wrongtime, or was there extenuating circumstances?
How did it become that they decidedhe was the guy. Yeah, there's
so many twists and turns in thisinvestigation, especially in the first couple of

(02:45):
weeks. It's one of the reasonswhy I wanted to unpack it in a
podcast, because I felt like itneeded time to breathe and for people to
absorb everything that happened. But toForrest Johnson has always maintained the same alibi.
He was four miles away from theCrown Sterling Suites at a downtown Birmingham

(03:05):
nightclub called T's Place when the crimehappened. There's at least ten people who
have either signed affidavits or testified underoath that they remember seeing him during that
time frame. So he had afollowed alibi and has always had the same
alibi and the same story about thatnight. How he was implicated, along

(03:29):
with three other young black men whowere also charged with capital murder, was
through a fifteen year old witness whocame forward saying she had information about the
crime and her mother called police andlet them know and then hired an attorney.

(03:49):
Pursuing the reward money that was attachedto the case. It was a
twenty thousand dollars reward at the time, which is a lot of money that's
forty today. But this fifteen yearold witness was the initial tip that came
in that named to Forrest his codefendant, a man named Ardragus Ford,

(04:13):
who was also charged and tried.Ardragus was acquitted, and then two other
men who were charged stayed in jailfor eighteen months, and then when this
young fifteen year old witness changed herstory over and over again, she finally
told police that these other two suspectsdidn't have anything to do with it,

(04:33):
and the charges against them were droppedand to Forrest and his co defendant were
the ones that were tried. Thisis a Viewpoint Alabama on the Alabama Radio
Network. I'm talking with best Yearill Born about her new podcast is coming
out called ear Witness. It coversthe case against a top fust Johnson.
And let's go back to this fifteenyear old witness you mentioned. Now,

(04:56):
obviously at the time they don't theywouldn't. She's a so they wouldn't let
her name out there. And Iguess because she came forward to is does
she go into some sort of witnessprotection? I notice you don't give her
name does anyone know her name?Oh, actually we do get her name.
And you know it's interesting, John. At the time, her name
was all over the news. Oneof the things that I did in investigating

(05:21):
this case and preparing for this podcastas I did a full audit of all
of the media coverage, and that'sone thing that really jumped out at me
is you know how many different minersnames were just out in the media.
This was nineteen ninety five, soI think there wasn't as much awareness about

(05:45):
the risks of child witnesses or childsuspects. I don't think that her name
would have been released now, atleast initially when she was fifteen years old,
but her name was in the news. It was Yollo the Chambers And
yeah, we cover the extraordinary ordealthat she went through in becoming a key

(06:10):
witness and having detective interview her overtwenty five times about the case, which
is really extraordinary. And you saidher story changed a little bit each time
they talked to her. It changedhundreds of times. She changed details of
the story. And one thing wewere able to do for listeners is we

(06:30):
got access to the interrogation tapes.The many hours I think over fifty hours
of police conversations with suspects, withwitnesses. We had personally nowhere ever needs.
We had the word of a fifteenyear old who told lives a lot

(06:54):
of lives. So what she saysshe was there and I was there,
that's that's a shame. And withYalanda Chambers, that's fifteen year old witness.
We hear over and over again detectivesstopping the tape and then they come
back and some aspect of the casehas changed when they come back and go

(07:15):
back on the record. What's reallyextraordinary is I was able to sit down
with the lead detective. He agreedto speak to me on the record,
and so we're able to talk throughwith him, what was going on,
why did they turn the tape off, what his take is and was on

(07:36):
this fifteen year old witness, andhow he feels about it twenty five years
later. So it's not one ofthose podcasts where we're chasing down the key
people who don't want to talk aboutthe case. We actually got them to
the microphone and they sit down withus for hours of on the record interviews.
So I think it makes this podcastreally substantive and unique. So in

(08:01):
your witness you kind of you kindof go through each one of these aspects
of the case and sort of unpackit for the listener. Do you talk
to to Forrest Johnson? Are youable to talk with him on your podcast?
Unfortunately no, The Alabama Department ofCorrections has in their administrative regulations that

(08:22):
death row inmates are not allowed tospeak to journalists. And so the closest
I was able to get to toForrest is through his family members, and
he has a very close extended family. He has five children, he has
fifteen grandchildren. He's very close withhis mother. So I was in regular

(08:43):
contact with his family and also interviewedhis legal team for the podcast. Had
to Forest been in any sort oflegal trouble in the past or was this
kind of out of the blue toForrest had a pretty harrowing upbringing. He
grew up in Pratt City and Ensley, and the neighborhood in Birmingham's Insley community

(09:09):
used to be called the Brickyard.It's the Tuxedo Projects, but back in
the mid nineties, early to midnineties it was like an open air drug
market. It was extremely violent andto Forrest's family was low income. They
were really fractured through substance use anddifferent issues. But he had seven friends

(09:37):
that were shot and killed during histeens. He was shot and survived.
It was just a harrowing, unbelievableupbringing. He had gotten into trouble on
relatively minor cases, some misdemeanor,driving without a license, disorderly conduct,

(10:01):
things like that. He had beento prison once on a drug possession charge,
and he pleaded guilty and did almosta year in prison. You know,
you wouldn't do a year in prisonnow on simple drug possession at least,

(10:22):
you know, theoretically people are shouldn'tbe going to prison for a year
for that in Alabama. But atthe time, you know, they were
really sending people away. So thatwas the extent of his record was one
drug possession conviction that he pleaded guiltytoo. You know, he had no
history of violence, no gun charges, no weapons charges, nothing like that.

(10:48):
What we learned about to Forest isthat at the time that he got
swept into this, he was reallysomewhat addrissed, trying to figure out what
he wanted to do with his life, and dating a lot of different women.
He was a ladies man, sothat was really, you know,
the thing that was going on inhis life more than anything. It wasn't

(11:09):
you know, anything any kind ofbig drug conspiracy or anything violent. So
did this history, this past,did it play into the DA's willingness to
charge him or was it a situationof Yolanda had an ax to grind against
him? How how did he getto be the one that Yolanda fingered for

(11:31):
having, you know, initially testifyingagainst him. Yeah, it's a good
question. Yolanda Chambers was essentially arunaway. She was on the street at
the time and she and one ofher friends were going to nightclubs and they
met to Forrest Johnson and ardreguts Fordat a different nightclub than the one to

(11:56):
Forrest and ardre Gets went to thenight of the murder, but they ended
up picking up Yolanda and a friendof hers after they left the nightclub,
and they were all together that night. They were looking for a hotel room,
you know, they were out partyingand they ended up getting stopped by

(12:16):
police at the Super eight motel inHomewood because police were pulling over cars in
the vicinity of the crime scene,and the cops told them they were investigating
the murder of a deputy. Theypadded down to Forrest and Ardregus. They
looked in the car, they decidedthat there wasn't anything suspicious, so they

(12:39):
let them all go to Forrest.Actually had an outstanding warrant for driving without
a license, a misdemeanor, andthey took him to the city jail that
night and then he was released afew hours later. But when Yolanda Chambers
talked to her mother the next day, her mom told her about the murder
and they knew Pete Bill Hardy.He was a family friend. And when

(13:03):
Yolanda's mother told her Bill was killedat the Crown Sterling Suites last night.
He was moonlighting as a security guardand somebody shot him, Yolanda said to
her mother, oh, I mightknow something about that. So her mother
then contacted police and said, mydaughter has information about the crime. Police

(13:24):
brought Yolanda in without her mother,without a lawyer. There was no social
worker there. It was just thisfifteen year old girl and police, and
that's kind of how it went.So initially Yolanda told police, no,
I don't know anything about it.Then she said some people in Bessemer committed
the murder. Then she said,in the third interview, Okay, these

(13:48):
guys that I was with that nighttalked about smoking a cop, and she
claimed that she overheard them talking aboutthe murder. Then her story changed again
and she said, oh, shewas actually there and she witnessed it,
and so on and so forth.It just changed and evolved every time she

(14:09):
was brought into the interrogation room withpolice, and that's how to forrest was
initially implicated. Yolanda Chambers, bythe way, eventually recanted her entire story
under oath in a court hearing thatwe'd bring to life in the podcast,
and she said she made the wholething up because she was scared police were

(14:31):
threatening to put her in jail,and she recanted everything, but the judge
still allowed the case to go forwarddespite her recantation. In addition to was
there anything other than her testimony whichimplicated to force was their circumstantial evidence,
were their secondary witnesses or said Isaw a guy who met the description anything

(14:54):
like that, or was it justbased on Yolanda's testimony. Yolanda's testimony was
the only thing that led to thearrest of the initial four suspects, including
to Forrest Johnson. There was noforensic evidence connecting them to the crime,

(15:16):
no physical evidence, no other eyewitnesses, no other person on the planet put
them at the scene other than YolandaChambers. What we unpack in the podcast
is she eventually falls apart as awitness, and so in the case against
to Forrest Johnson, the state endsup going with another witness who is the

(15:41):
so called ear witness that becomes thekey testimony in the case against to Forrest
Johnson. But no, these caseswere built exclusively on the circumstantial evidence of
two different witnesses making these claims,and these two witnesses were also pursuing the

(16:03):
twenty thousand dollars in reward money.This is dew Point, Alabama on the
Alabama Radio Network. My name isJohn Mounts, and I'm talking with Beth
Shelbourne. She is a I guess, the host of the podcast Earwitness.
You mentioned the word ear witness there, So why do you call this thing
earwitness? What is an ear witness? Exactly? Yeah, an ear witness

(16:26):
is like an eyewitness, except thatsomeone who hears something. This case is
all about alternative worlds that are inconflict with each other. And in conflict
with truth and in conflict with whatour justice system stands for. We had
a week case. It's based ontest twenty and one witness. The only

(16:48):
evidence supposedly they had against was thisear witness who had never heard him speak
before, who had no idea whohe was. So in the case of
the Forrest Johnson, the state's starwitness is this ear witness. Once Yolanda
Chambers began to fall apart as awitness, the state ended up going with

(17:11):
the testimony of another person who hadcome forward in the weeks after the murder,
and it was a woman named VioletEllison who claimed she eaves dropped on
a three way song call and overheardto Force Johnson talking about the murder of
Bill Hardy. So that's what anear witness is. And we called the

(17:33):
series Ear Witness because this ear witnesstestimony is the only thing connecting to force
Johnson to this murder. And we'realso asking listeners to be an ear witness,
to really sit back and listen andlisten substantively to what we found as
we unpack this terrible case of injustice. When you mentioned sheaves on the phone

(18:00):
call, was that she was listening. She happened to me in the same
room listening, or she actually hadlike a connection into the phone glass.
You heard both sides of the conversation. Yeah, the choreography on these earwitness
phone calls is a little tricky,but it went like this. Violet Ellison
was a fifty three year old womanwho lived in Birmingham and she had a

(18:22):
sixteen year old daughter at the timenamed Katrina. Katrina Ellison had a friend
who was in the Jefferson County jail, and at the time, the jail
didn't have a sophisticated phone system likethey have now, where inmates have to
have an account with money on itand the phone is digitized and recorded.

(18:47):
At the time, it was literallya payphone, and jail inmates could keep
quarters on them and that's how theywould make calls out from the jail.
Well, three way calling had justbecome a thing on landlines in nineteen ninety
five, and so this friend ofKatrina Ellison's realized he could call her and

(19:07):
use one quarter and then she coulddial other people on three way and he
wouldn't have to keep feeding quarters intothe pay phone. So Katrina was doing
a favor for her friend in thejail, just making three way calls for
him. She was like, shewas like the operator. She was kind
of like a switchboard operator for him. Yeah, and some guys in the

(19:30):
jail heard about it, and somore people started calling her and asking her
to make three way calls. Andthat is how her mother, Violet Ellison
came to pick up the phone andeavesdrop on this phone call involving to Forrest
Johnson and a young woman named DaisyWilliams, who was a younger sister of

(19:55):
some of his friends. And thatwas the incriminating call that Violet Ellison claimed
to overhear him say make incriminating statementsabout the murder. It was to a
young woman named Daisy. It's interestingViolet Ellison testified that she could hear Daisy's

(20:17):
voice, but she didn't listen towhat she was saying, because she said
she was only interested in hearing whatto Forrest Johnson said. So one thing
that his attorneys at trial reiterated tothe jury is this was really a misunderstanding.
She was listening to one side ofa conversation in which to Forrest wasn't

(20:38):
talking about what he did. Hewas telling Daisy what he was accused of
doing. She asked him why hewas in the jail, and he told
her, I've been accused of shootingthe sheriff's deputy. This is what they're
saying I did. And so,you know, you really kind of see
through looking at these different claims,through different witnesses, how these things can

(21:03):
so easily get turned around and bemade into something that they're not the best
thing that a person probably can dofor them says that's suspected over crame is
do not talk to the bouties period. Now that's really interesting coming from a
retired detective, but that's the truth. It's like when it's like that game
of telephone, you know you usedto play when you're kids. You know,

(21:26):
I think I heard this person.You say something to somebody to somebody,
and eventually the message completely changes.It's what the original message was after
it's passed between person and person andperson. It's absolutely like that, except
you know, the telephone exchange isreally just Violet Ellison herself reviewing over and

(21:47):
over again what she claimed she overheard, and what we're able to unpack is
how her statements changed over time.We got access to I mentioned the investigative
file with the interrogation tapes and interviewsof witnesses, over fifty hours of police

(22:07):
interviews, and in Violet Ellison's originalstatement to police she said one thing.
Two years later, when she tookthe stand as the key witness, she
said something completely different and extremely inflammatory. So we're able to show how these
statements really evolved and changed and becamesomething extremely damaging to Forest in the jury's

(22:37):
mind. But we're not what VioletEllison originally claimed to overhear, Beth,
you hear stories all the time.People on death row and Alabama who have
been there for a very long timelike to force and usually they get appeal
after peal after appeal. I gatherhe's appealed a few times, right,

(22:57):
Yes, he has. He hasa very competent legal team right now.
But you know, it's interesting.I think there's this myth where people assume
folks on death row have all theseresources and they get all these chances to
appeal. And you know, there'sbeen a movement to sort of speed up

(23:18):
executions because people think folks on deathrow have too many opportunities to appeal.
When to forrest first was sent todeath row the attorney. First of all,
he's never been able to afford topay for an attorney. He had
appointed attorneys at the time of trialthat were paid twenty dollars an hour for
out of court work with a thousanddollars cap So obviously you know you're going

(23:44):
to get what you pay for.Their attorneys can't work for free, and
when they're paid such a low amount, that's going to really, you know,
not help them do a thorough jobin defending him. But once he
got sent to death row, hewas appointed another attorney to help him post
conviction, and that attorney was disbarred. At one point he was on death

(24:08):
row with no legal representation and severalkey dates were missed. Then there's an
organization called the Southern Center for HumanRights and they heard about his case and
were able to place some attorneys withhim who are still with him today and
had been litigating his case for him. And he's lucky in that regard that

(24:32):
he has a very capable legal team. Because the majority of people on death
row are poor. Almost everyone ondeath row had appointed attorney. There's very
few that had hired their own legalteam that end up on death row.
But the problem is when you areconvicted, the burden is really placed on

(24:56):
you to prove your innocence after that, and you can't claim an innocence as
a legal claim. That's literally nota valid legal claim. You have to
litigate all these sometimes granular issues ofyour case. And that's where he still
is trying to overturn his case onsome of these specific issues, like the
earwitness who was paid an undisclosed rewardthat the jury never knew about. Interesting,

(25:23):
now, let's go back briefly toDeputy Sheriff Warren G. Hardy,
because he regardless, we know forsure somebody killed the guy, so has
there been any I guess once theyconvicted to first, they didn't look any
further into what else might have whatdid lead to his death. Well,
it's interesting to Forrest and his codefendant, ardregus Ford, were both charged,

(25:47):
and they were the two people thatthe state ended up putting on trial.
They tried them separately. The firsttwo trials ended in mistrials. The
juries were not able to reach aunit on this verdict, so then the
state tried to Forrest a second time, got a conviction and death sentence,
and one of the most appalling thingsabout this case is after the state secured

(26:12):
the conviction against to Forrest and senthim to death row, eight months later,
they tried his co defendant again,arguing a completely separate theory about who
pulled the trigger and fired the fatalshots. And the jury in that case
deliberated less than an hour and dregusFord was acquitted. But that's one of

(26:36):
the things that we see in thiscase is the state has this ability to
pursue different theories about what happened infront of different juries, as if they're
staging a Broadway play. And Ithink that most people that listen to this
will be shocked to know that thestate can do that and does do it,

(26:59):
and they did it in this case. To your question about were any
other leads pursued, I think theanswer is no. Once detectives charged these
four young men with capital murder,that became the case, and any other
leads that existed at the time fellaway and were not pursued. Because it

(27:22):
does seem Beth that there's essentially twothings of miss justice here to force a
conviction, I suppose, but alsothe death of Deputy Hardy because he died
and they never found I guess theyreally didn't find as killer if it wasn't
to force. So there's some guysstill out there or woman still out there
who's responsible for that. At thispoint to Forrest is still on death row.

(27:45):
Hey, he hasn't. Has heran out of I know they always
talked about you've ran out of appeals? Is he quote out of appeals or
are they still working on the caseactively? Oh? No, they're still
working on the case. The SupremeCourt decide today to not review his case,
which you know, is not goodnews when you've got somebody who's so

(28:07):
clearly innocent, who the current discattorney and the original prosecutor both have said
publicly deserves a new trial, andthe United States Supreme Court refuses to hear
the case. It's disheartening. Buthis legal team is still pursuing other appeals
in state and federal court, andso this isn't the end of the road.

(28:30):
I think they're going to keep fightingas hard as they possibly can to
set him free, and so Iguess to find it. So the bottom
line is the story is not overyet. For people who want to find
out all the details about this hearmore about it. You have that podcast
out there, Earwitnesses, available onthe iHeartRadio app in other platforms as well.
Right, it's available wherever you hearpodcasts. Even my eighty year old

(28:53):
mother was able to find it andlisten, and she's been into it.
We've released three episodes so far.Episode four is coming out tomorrow, and
there's eight episodes total, and wehope there'll be a future one where we
get to sit sound with to Forestafter the state does the right thing and

(29:15):
grant him a new trial and he'sfound not guilty. Best job, we're
the I keep saying author, butit's not author. I guess you're the
host of the podcast, Your Witness. Thank you so much for joining us
this week on Viewpoint Alabama. Thankyou John for having me. I appreciate
it very much. You've been listeningto Viewpoint Alabama, a public affairs program
from the Alabama Radio Network. Theopinions expressed on Viewpoint Alabama are not necessarily

(29:38):
those of the staff, management,or advertisers of this station.