Uncover Introduces: Earwitness from Lava for Good

One July night in 1995, Deputy Sheriff William G. Hardy was shot
behind the Crown Sterling Suites hotel in Birmingham, Alabama. At
the same time as the murder, at least ten people saw Toforest
Johnson four miles away, at a popular nightclub called Tee's Place.
But detectives zeroed in on him as a main suspect in Deputy Hardy’s
murder anyway, ultimately resulting in Toforest being tried,
convicted, and sentenced to death. For over a quarter century,
Toforest has been confined to a 5’ by 8’ cell on Alabama’s death
row. In 2019, investigative journalist Beth Shelburne began
covering the case, going down a disturbing rabbit hole revealing
many unsettling facts that cast grave doubts about Toforest’s
guilt. The facts she found tear at the very foundation of the
American criminal justice system: No eyewitnesses or physical
evidence tied Toforest to the murder; the state tried to convict a
different man for the same crime; and perhaps most disturbing of
all, Toforest’s conviction relied on an ‘earwitness’ – a woman who
claimed to have eavesdropped on an incriminating phone call, a
woman whom prosecutors paid for her testimony, in secret. That
payment was not disclosed to the jury, Toforest, or his lawyers
until after he had been on death row for 17 years. From the team
behind the award-winning hit podcast Bone Valley, Lava for Good’s
Earwitness is an 8-episode docuseries that asks the question, “How
did an innocent man end up on death row — and why is the state
still trying to execute him over the objection of the prosecutor
who put him there?” Shelburne’s unprecedented access to key
players—the lead detective, lead prosecutor, witnesses, jurors, and
the earwitness herself— illuminate a story filled with disturbing
twists, frustrating ambiguities, and shocking admissions. The story
of Toforest Johnson and the state's enthusiasm for the death
penalty in the face of such troubling evidentiary flaws brings to
light the failings of a criminal justice system run amok.
Earwitness is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association
with Signal Co. No1.