The case of Toforest Johnson illustrates why prosecutors must visit the past again: OP-Ed of Doug Jones and Bill Baxley

This is a guest opinion column

If the history of civil rights of Birmingham has taught us something, it is this: sometimes true justice avoids us in our first attempt. When that happens, the best opportunity we have in straightening our mistakes is a prosecutor motivated by a permanent sense of justice, one who is willing to take the brave step of visiting a case that others consider established.

That is what Jefferson’s district prosecutor, Alabama district prosecutor Danny Carr, has tried to do in the case of Toforest Johnson, a man who has spent the last 26 years in the Corridor of Alabama’s death. Together with Jeff Wallace, the former assistant district prosecutor who originally prosecuted Johnson in 1998, Carr and his office have concluded that the case against Johnson has “disintegrated” and is trying to revoke his sentence.

We have both had long careers in the Alabama justice system. We have learned, first hand, the importance of allowing prosecutors to run past errors. In different capabilities and at different times, we process the members of Ku Klux Klan responsible for the tragic bombing of the Baptist Church on 16th Street that killed four beautiful young people in Birmingham in 1963. The state and local authorities never investigated the case, and in 1968 J. Edgar Hoover closed FBI’s investigation without presenting any position. The community to which the murdered and wounded had no answers and without closing.

As prosecutors in Alabama years later, each one of us knew that we could not let the men responsible for such a horrible and motivated crime racially remain inexplicable. In the course of the next three decades, our teams managed to bring three men to justice.

In 1970, one of us (Baxley) was elected Attorney General of Alabama and reopened the investigation into the bombing. The intellectual author of the KKK attackers, Robert Chambliss, was accused and taken to trial in 1977. Fourteen years after the bombing, Chambliss, also known as “Dynamite Bob”, was convicted of the first degree murder of Denise McNair, 11 years old, and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Decades later, the federal government reopened the case against the remaining attackers. As the United States Prosecutor for the Northern District of Alabama, the other of the USA (Jones), he obtained convictions for murder of the Klansmen who were still alive, Thomas Edwin Blanton Jr. and Bobby Frank Cherry. Like Chambliss before them, Branton and Cherry were sentenced to life imprisonment.

If we had not been able to visit the mistakes of the past again, the Birmingham community would never have seen justice for the victims of the bombing of the Baptist Church on 16. Prosecutors has to Be able to correct past errors. In the case of the bombing of the Church, the error was not to prosecute. Sometimes, as in the case of Toforest Johnson, the error is in the opposite direction, which leads to the conviction of an innocent person.

Perhaps no case is as full of errors as Johnson’s. He was sentenced to death in 1998 for the murder of the deputy of the Sheriff of the County of Jefferson William Hardy. In 2020, the current district prosecutor Carr spent almost nine months reviewing the facts of Johnson’s case. His investigation revealed serious problems underlying Johnson’s conviction, including that the star witness of the State secretly received $ 5,000 for his testimony and that the witnesses of Credit Alibi placed Johnson in the city at the time of the murder. With the full support of Jeff Wallace, the original prosecutor of the trial, Carr concluded that the case against Johnson was so defective that the interest of justice demanded a new trial.

Prosecutors who are willing to correct past errors must be held. However, the State has taken a total contempt for Carr’s investigation, coming to suggest that it should not be allowed to share the results of its reinvestigation of a case that processed its own office. The State has argued that Carr “acted out of reach of the duties” when carrying out its review.

That suggestion is not only illogical, it is absolutely dangerous. The integrity of our criminal justice system depends on the prosecutors can speak when they believe that a spontaneous abortion of justice has occurred. In any case, public policy must demand that prosecutors in Carr’s position requested speak when they see a case in which there has been an injustice, especially a case that was originally prosecuted for Your own office.

We believe that the evidence in this case raises serious doubts about Johnson’s guilt and we are deeply concerned about the state’s efforts to proceed with its execution. In our criminal justice system, prosecutors exercise immense power. With that power comes the responsibility of ensuring that when mistakes are made, they are remedied. The opinions and recommendations of the Jefferson County District Prosecutor and the original trial prosecutor in this case should import both for the courts and the public.

Doug Jones is a former American senator from Alabama and served as the United States prosecutor for the Northern District of Alabama from 1997 to 2001. Bill Baxley served as Alabama Attorney General from 1971 to 1979 and as a governor of Alabama de Alabama from 1983. Toforest Johnson.