Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 2: my name is Nolan.
Speaker 3: They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our
Speaker 3: super producer Paul Michigan. Troll decands most importantly, you are here.
Speaker 3: That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. Tonight, folks,
Speaker 3: we are so glad you are joining us for an
Speaker 3: incredibly important and disturbing story. Long story short, pretty much
Speaker 3: everyone in the United States can agree there are serious
Speaker 3: problems with the US justice system. Problems not limited to
Speaker 3: overworked officials draconian mandates for punishment. There are also clear
Speaker 3: cases of and indeed conspiracy. Weirdly enough, there are surreal
Speaker 3: cases wherein pretty much everyone, including former prosecutors, will agree
Speaker 3: a person convicted of a crime is probably or actually innocent,
Speaker 3: Yet the system still insists upon moving forward, even toward executions,
Speaker 3: and tonight we're exploring a particularly disturbing example of this,
Speaker 3: the case of a Birmingham native named to Forest Johnson,
Speaker 3: who is convicted of homicide with scant or no evidence
Speaker 3: in nineteen ninety five and remains on death row as
Speaker 3: we record today. We are immensely fortunate to be joined
Speaker 3: with the creator of the ear Witness podcast, award winning
Speaker 3: journalist anchor writer, Beth Shelburn. Thanks so much for joining us, Beth.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much for having me. I so appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Well, Hey, I know we're jumping right into the story, guys,
Speaker 2: but do you mind really quickly. I just want to
Speaker 2: know a little bit more about Beth, because Beth, if
Speaker 2: you don't mind either, we just learned about how how
Speaker 2: much time you spent at WBRCTV Fox six. I guess
Speaker 2: it is there in Birmingham, and I'd just love to
Speaker 2: know what it was like to be in that position
Speaker 2: as an anchor and reporter, like digging into those stories
Speaker 2: but also being the face the person that's telling those stories.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I worked for WBrC Fox six for the last
Speaker 4: nine years of my TV news career, but I was
Speaker 4: working for local TV stations around the country for twenty years,
Speaker 4: so that was the last stop, and Birmingham happens to
Speaker 4: be my hometown. I didn't I was sort of a
Speaker 4: traditional news reporter. I wasn't particularly bent on justice issues.
Speaker 4: I was covering all the normal general assignment TV news
Speaker 4: stories that are typical and local markets, like building is
Speaker 4: on fire, Go there, somebody just shot and killed someone,
Speaker 4: Go there. You know, it's really run and gun journalism.
Speaker 4: And that's what I was doing for probably the first
Speaker 4: ten years of my career. Then I started getting into
Speaker 4: investigative or more long form stories where you can really
Speaker 4: take your time, and TV news a long story is
Speaker 4: like three to four minutes as opposed to one minute
Speaker 4: and fifteen seconds, which is what the general TV news
Speaker 4: story is. When I moved back to Birmingham. I came
Speaker 4: back here in twenty ten and started covering the crisis
Speaker 4: that's been unfolding in Alabama prisons in twenty twelve. And
Speaker 4: I think the prison system in Georgia has many of
Speaker 4: the same kind of problems of overcrowding, violence, corruption, drugs
Speaker 4: inside the system. It's really, you know, like the seventh
Speaker 4: layer of hell in our prison system, and we're sending
Speaker 4: all these people there who have problems with addiction or
Speaker 4: mental health and they're getting exponentially worse. So I started
Speaker 4: writing about what was going on in the prisons and
Speaker 4: why the prisons were so bad, and that kind of
Speaker 4: dovetailed into my interest in sentencing policy and why we're
Speaker 4: sending people to prison for decades and decades for crimes
Speaker 4: sometimes that didn't even result in a physical injury to
Speaker 4: a victim. And just in my course of kind of
Speaker 4: developing that as a beat, I came to know to
Speaker 4: Forrest Johnson's case, and that's how I started covering it.
Speaker 4: But you know, when you're the face of TV news,
Speaker 4: I was always an anchor and a reporter, you're sort
Speaker 4: of kind of like a homecoming queen type persona for
Speaker 4: the community that you're working in. And so it started
Speaker 4: to become kind of a hard balance for me to
Speaker 4: strike when I was asking some really difficult questions about
Speaker 4: accountability and who's responsible for these human rights disasters and
Speaker 4: our jails and prisons, and then you know, getting on
Speaker 4: the news and talking about the weather and sports. It
Speaker 4: was starting to feel like it wasn't a good fit
Speaker 4: for me anymore, because my heart was really with asking
Speaker 4: some of these serious questions and spending more than a
Speaker 4: minute and fifteen seconds on a story, and certainly getting
Speaker 4: into crime reporting in a more complete and nuanced way
Speaker 4: other than just showing somebody's mugshot and telling folks what
Speaker 4: they're alleged to have done.
Speaker 3: And the hard truth is that often, given the format
Speaker 3: of news reporting, we don't have the space for the nuance,
Speaker 3: right for the substantive examination. And just so everyone knows,
Speaker 3: in case you're unfamiliar, Beth, when you returned to Birmingham,
Speaker 3: you were not returning empty handed. You had also won
Speaker 3: an Emmy Award for breaking news coverage during the fires
Speaker 3: in California, and two thousand and three your the recipient
Speaker 3: of Edward R. Muaw Award for a series in Manhattan
Speaker 3: shortly after the terrorist attacks of September eleventh, and there
Speaker 3: was another Edward R. Mureau Award You've won for the
Speaker 3: twenty twelve series Chasing the Dragon on Heroin Addiction.
Speaker 2: And so please stop, come on, we got to let
Speaker 2: other people have awards too, for us news on the running.
Speaker 4: In the TV news world, that's like not that highly decorated.
Speaker 4: So I covet my little three awards that I got
Speaker 4: very much.
Speaker 5: I appreciate it, and is as far as we're concerned,
Speaker 5: in the podcast world that would be considered very highly
Speaker 5: tech career.
Speaker 2: Yeah, especially because the three of us as well as
Speaker 2: super Producer, we all work on these long form you know,
Speaker 2: shows like this where we try and tell these stories.
Speaker 2: So it just means a lot to us that that
Speaker 2: people have recognized the work that you've already done in
Speaker 2: the past, right, and now you've got this show that
Speaker 2: we're about to really dig into that feels extremely meaningful
Speaker 2: and important.
Speaker 3: And to dovetail on that this is a story that
Speaker 3: may not have gone very far beyond Birmingham were it
Speaker 3: not for the work that you and your team and
Speaker 3: Lava for Good have done. I think, you know, I
Speaker 3: think something that might chock a lot of people is
Speaker 3: to learn that even in Atlanta, just a few hours away,
Speaker 3: as you said, many people are not familiar with the
Speaker 3: story of the forest.
Speaker 5: Johnson, Well, I mean, you know, we're in the Lava
Speaker 5: for Good folks, and we do this stuff as sort
Speaker 5: of a beat of our own in terms of just
Speaker 5: being aware of these kinds of stories.
Speaker 6: And I think all of us we're hearing about this
Speaker 6: stuff for the first.
Speaker 5: Time, and I think that speaks volumes to the fact
Speaker 5: that it's a lot more common than you might think,
Speaker 5: and that these stories aren't always instantly remarkable, and it
Speaker 5: takes somebody with your experience to really kind of figure
Speaker 5: out that this is the kind of thing that needs
Speaker 5: to be given a closer look, because a lot of
Speaker 5: times these stories fall through the cracks. And so that's
Speaker 5: why I think we're grateful to folks like LoVa for
Speaker 5: Good and yourself for digging into these cases of wrongful conviction.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I think that that was one thing we
Speaker 4: were cognizant of when we were putting this podcast together,
Speaker 4: as it is the story of what happened to to
Speaker 4: Forrest Johnson, which continues to be an injustice because he's
Speaker 4: still on death row and he's still at risk of
Speaker 4: being executed for a crime that he did not commit.
Speaker 4: But I think the system that allowed this to happen
Speaker 4: is what we really wanted to amplify and show people
Speaker 4: that this isn't really a one off. This is reflective
Speaker 4: of a system that is full of problems, issues that
Speaker 4: don't just affect to Forest Johnson or other people who
Speaker 4: might be wrongfully convicted, but tens of thousands of people
Speaker 4: who are churned through our criminal justice system every day.
Speaker 3: One hundred percent agreed, and let's scope in on this case.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's get started by giving everybody a picture of
Speaker 2: what occurred, right, just like you do in the show,
Speaker 2: and kind of tell him a bit of the story
Speaker 2: as we go here. So, what happened to Jefferson County
Speaker 2: Sheriff's Deputy William Jerome Hardy on the night of Tuesday,
Speaker 2: July eighteenth, nineteen ninety five.
Speaker 4: So Bill Hardy had been a deputy with Jefferson County
Speaker 4: for twenty three years, and he was working at a
Speaker 4: hotel right off the Red Mountain Expressway. If people know Birmingham,
Speaker 4: it's now an embassyc Suites. At the time it was
Speaker 4: called the Crown Sterling Suites. He was moonlighting as a
Speaker 4: security guard at the hotel, and it was a pretty
Speaker 4: easy gig. It's a kind of a business class hotel
Speaker 4: in a quiet area on the outskirts of Homewood, the
Speaker 4: suburb that I grew up in, So this is not
Speaker 4: a shoot him up kind of neighborhood. But Hardy would
Speaker 4: walk the floor, you know, check the exterior of the
Speaker 4: building in his patrol car, and mostly sit in the
Speaker 4: atrium of the hotel's lobby, smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee
Speaker 4: on the overnight shift to make extra money. So he
Speaker 4: was there the night of July eighteenth, nineteen ninety five,
Speaker 4: the last time he was seen alive. He was sitting
Speaker 4: in the atrium smoking more brand Mental cigarettes and drinking coffee,
Speaker 4: and there were only a couple of people that worked
Speaker 4: at the hotel around. There was a night desk clerk,
Speaker 4: there was a houseman who you know, would buff the floors,
Speaker 4: and there was Deputy Hardy. And so, for some reason
Speaker 4: that has never been clear to this day, he got
Speaker 4: up from where he was sitting, walked down a back hallway,
Speaker 4: out a pair of glass double doors into the back
Speaker 4: parking lot, and was shot twice in the head, right
Speaker 4: behind the hotel. It was about twelve forty five twelve fifty,
Speaker 4: ten minutes before one am, so almost everyone in the
Speaker 4: hotel was asleep. No one actually saw the crime happen.
Speaker 4: A few people heard the gunshots, but that's what happened.
Speaker 4: It was a real who done it, because this was
Speaker 4: a man who had no known enemies. He was a
Speaker 4: very easy going guy, very chill, very friendly, and no
Speaker 4: one really knew why he went behind the hotel or
Speaker 4: who would kill him in.
Speaker 3: This way, right, no discernible motive, no obvious. It appears
Speaker 3: link to link to suspects in the beginning, And could
Speaker 3: you tell us a little bit maybe just to continue
Speaker 3: painting the picture here, a little bit of the socioeconomic
Speaker 3: status of this Crown Sterling Suites, like the neighborhood at
Speaker 3: the time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so it's Homewood is the first suburb south of Birmingham,
Speaker 4: and the Red Mountain Expressway is the freeway that cuts
Speaker 4: from the downtown city center into the suburbs that have
Speaker 4: been built out south of the city. The Crown Sterling
Speaker 4: Suites now Embassy Suites is right on the line between
Speaker 4: Homewood and Birmingham, and it's in this kind of weird
Speaker 4: area right off the interstate where there's like a couple
Speaker 4: of office park type buildings and there's a bank, and
Speaker 4: there's like, you know, these sort of nondescript mirrored buildings
Speaker 4: and you're always like, what's going on in that you know,
Speaker 4: building with no sign on it? Is there like an
Speaker 4: Al Qaeda cellating out of that building?
Speaker 2: You know that's going there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that kind of area, but kind of plopped in
Speaker 4: the middle is the Crown Sterling Suites are now Embassy Suites,
Speaker 4: which you know is sort of your standard mid range
Speaker 4: business hotels that's right off the interstate. Homewood is known
Speaker 4: now to be kind of an upper income area. At
Speaker 4: the time, it was sort of middle class, but it's
Speaker 4: gotten very fancy and gentrified. But it's never been a
Speaker 4: real high crime area. It's high density, there's a lot
Speaker 4: of people in Homewood, but it's generally considered a safe
Speaker 4: place to live where the main crimes are property crimes.
Speaker 4: There's not a lot of violent crime there.
Speaker 5: I actually spent a couple of years living in Birmingham
Speaker 5: in my high school days, and I remember in the
Speaker 5: two thousands, Like I graduated in two thousand and two,
Speaker 5: so this would have been like in ninety nine, two
Speaker 5: thousand and I remember Homewood as being kind of a
Speaker 5: hippish area, Like there were some cool record stores there
Speaker 5: and like it had interesting kind of pop culture type stuff,
Speaker 5: and I just I remember going there sometimes.
Speaker 6: There were a couple of neat shops that I would
Speaker 6: go to with friends there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's still got a downtown commerce area. It's become
Speaker 4: really fancy, but there's this very strange locally owned pet
Speaker 4: store called Ed's Pet World that has stuck it out
Speaker 4: and it's down there. The weirdness of Ed's Pet World
Speaker 4: is surrounded by like high end cupcake places and embroidery shops.
Speaker 4: Hanging on. Ed is hanging on. But man, you walk
Speaker 4: into this place and you're like, for sure going to
Speaker 4: get a spider on you somewhere. It's like a really
Speaker 4: narrow store with a box turtle walking around like free
Speaker 4: range turtles. You got to stop in Ed's Pet World
Speaker 4: if you're in Birmingham.
Speaker 3: I haven't been back in ages, but I would love
Speaker 3: to back in this in this night in July nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety five. You know, we all know that law enforcement
Speaker 3: takes it incredibly seriously when there's an officer attacked, injured,
Speaker 3: or down, so the other authorities show up pretty quickly.
Speaker 3: Is that correct? Could you tell us how many people
Speaker 3: are on the scene after this is first reported.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there were a few people that heard the shots
Speaker 4: and called down to the front desk clerk who quickly
Speaker 4: called nine to one one. And he actually his name's
Speaker 4: Barry Rushikov. He lives in Las Vegas now and we
Speaker 4: actually tracked him down and talked to him, so it
Speaker 4: was cool. We hear him on the original nine one
Speaker 4: one tapes, and then we talked to him present day
Speaker 4: where this has still impacted him because he still works
Speaker 4: in the hospitality industry and to have something like this
Speaker 4: happen is really harrowing.
Speaker 6: But he sounds so scared on the tapes.
Speaker 5: He said, the officers on the phone are asking him
Speaker 5: to kind of observe the body for vital signs, and
Speaker 5: he's like, I'm not going back out there. I don't
Speaker 5: know if these folks are still around.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 6: To hear the shakiness in his voice, I.
Speaker 4: Think it was terrifying because it came out of nowhere
Speaker 4: and he wasn't sure what happened, but he knew hotel
Speaker 4: guests heard gunshots and then he saw Hardy lying on
Speaker 4: the pavement dying. So the law enforcement response was almost immediate,
Speaker 4: and there were four different agencies that descended on the
Speaker 4: hotel and it became a very active scene really quickly.
Speaker 4: I don't know how many police were there, but I
Speaker 4: would say dozens. I know that the district attorney at
Speaker 4: the time, the elected district attorney, like the head guy,
Speaker 4: showed up at the scene. The sheriff was called out
Speaker 4: to the scene. You know, four different agencies and all
Speaker 4: of their captains were trying to figure out who's going
Speaker 4: to have jurisdiction on this one. So yeah, it was
Speaker 4: it was big.
Speaker 2: Well, let's talk about the physical evidence that was recovered
Speaker 2: at the scene.
Speaker 6: What was there?
Speaker 4: Very very little. There were two shellcasings that the crime
Speaker 4: scene texts collected from the scene, and other than that,
Speaker 4: there were people that heard the shots and saw some
Speaker 4: kind of car drive away. But other than the shellcasings,
Speaker 4: was literally no physical evidence. There was the stuff that
Speaker 4: was on Hardy's body, which was belongings of his his cigarettes.
Speaker 4: And you know, he had even left his two way
Speaker 4: radio on the table inside the hotel, which has always
Speaker 4: been a strange detail for me because there was a
Speaker 4: theory that police had, well, he must have heard something
Speaker 4: and went out the back door to investigate a strange
Speaker 4: noise or something that alarmed him. But it seems very
Speaker 4: out of character for him to leave his two way
Speaker 4: radio on the table and his cigarette was still burning
Speaker 4: in an ash tray.
Speaker 5: And just to ask the question that I think maybe
Speaker 5: is on people's minds, were those shellcasings dusted for prints?
Speaker 6: Like again, know, maybe I've.
Speaker 5: Watched too many cop shows that seems like that's the
Speaker 5: first thing, you do, you.
Speaker 4: Know, I know that they dusted for prints on the
Speaker 4: outside of the glass double doors and they were not
Speaker 4: able to get any usable prints. I'm assuming they dusted
Speaker 4: the shellcasings for prints, but that I don't know for sure.
Speaker 4: A lot of the information I gleaned about those shellcasings
Speaker 4: came from the trial transcripts because the crime scene tech
Speaker 4: testified at the trials. But there were no usable prints
Speaker 4: from the scene.
Speaker 3: That's that's the takeaway for so And at this point, Beth,
Speaker 3: we've got, if we assume the perspective of Birmingham law enforcement,
Speaker 3: we have one of the absolute most terrific situations possible.
Speaker 3: One of our own has been murdered, shot twice in
Speaker 3: the head, and we have bupkis to go on. So
Speaker 3: could you walk us through the process us that law
Speaker 3: enforcement takes to start gathering what they can at least
Speaker 3: say is evidence with a straight face, and maybe walk
Speaker 3: us up to how they eventually zoom in on four suspects.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they were really spinning in circles from the very
Speaker 4: beginning because they realized, oh, no one actually saw this.
Speaker 4: We don't have anything here at the scene. There were
Speaker 4: just a couple of guests inside the hotel that heard something.
Speaker 4: They parked a bunch of detectives at the hotel to
Speaker 4: talk to the witnesses there, and then officers fanned out
Speaker 4: all around the hotel in the hours following the shooting,
Speaker 4: really pulling over everyone. They had be on the lookouts
Speaker 4: for six different possible vehicles that were seen leaving the scene,
Speaker 4: so not a lot of specifics, and it seems like
Speaker 4: looking at the investigative file, they were just pulling everybody
Speaker 4: over within the vicinity of the crime scene, particularly young
Speaker 4: black men, some of whom they pulled in for questioning
Speaker 4: who clearly had absolutely nothing to do with what happened,
Speaker 4: but were questioned for hours and hours until they were
Speaker 4: eventually released. What ended up happening that allowed them to
Speaker 4: zero in on the four suspects that were ultimately charged
Speaker 4: with capital murder was a reward was offered for information
Speaker 4: in the case that actually was announced in the hours
Speaker 4: following the murder and the very first media reports that
Speaker 4: came out that police were offering a cash reward for information.
Speaker 4: That reward eventually grew to twenty thousand dollars, which is
Speaker 4: a lot of money in a.
Speaker 2: Reward, especially in the mid nineties, right.
Speaker 6: Isn't that tainted things just a little bit.
Speaker 5: I know it's important, they're scrambling to get people to
Speaker 5: come forward, but we seem to have some sketchy sources
Speaker 5: and other you know, of course people calling in with
Speaker 5: absolutely unverifiable sketchy stories. I'm sure, but that's just aggressively
Speaker 5: large again, worthy of the right information, but it seems
Speaker 5: to when you're in hustle mode, to really kind of
Speaker 5: give you this massive, like shotgun blast of potential bad information.
Speaker 4: And I think it did. We have seen the investigative file,
Speaker 4: and they ended up setting up a tip line because
Speaker 4: the phones were ringing so much after they announced this reward,
Speaker 4: and a lot of it is, you know, people just
Speaker 4: clearly fishing for information or after the reward money or
Speaker 4: kind of giving very vague I heard my cousin say
Speaker 4: that you know, so and so heard that this guy
Speaker 4: might have had something to do with it, those kinds
Speaker 4: of tips. During that whole milieu of all these people
Speaker 4: calling into this tip line after the reward has been announced,
Speaker 4: a woman contacted police and said, my fifteen year old
Speaker 4: daughter has information about the murder. That's right, Yolanda Chambers
Speaker 4: Yolanda Chambers became one of the most important witnesses in
Speaker 4: this case, and we really unpack her ordeal, her life,
Speaker 4: what happened to her in this series. She was brought
Speaker 4: in for questioning reluctantly. She did not want to talk
Speaker 4: to police at first. She was brought in without her
Speaker 4: mother and without an attorney present. Anne was questioned for hours,
Speaker 4: sometimes on tape, sometimes not on tape. But Yolanda eventually
Speaker 4: is who police relied on. And the four people that
Speaker 4: were arrested and charged with capital murder they were charged
Speaker 4: based on the tip from Yolanda Chambers that they had
Speaker 4: something to do with the crime, and she, during the
Speaker 4: course of at least twenty five interviews with police, she
Speaker 4: implicated six different people in the murder. So she changed
Speaker 4: her story over and over and over again.
Speaker 5: She just sounds like she's talking until she gets an
Speaker 5: idea on those tapes.
Speaker 6: I'm sorry, it's just that's just how it feels like
Speaker 6: a cold psychle I don't.
Speaker 3: The name started with a smirch.
Speaker 6: This person's reputation.
Speaker 3: And there's confusion about the names even right.
Speaker 6: It's weird.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just have to be when you put your
Speaker 2: mind there a fifteen year old girl who was in
Speaker 2: that position, right, being we have no idea what happened
Speaker 2: between her and those officers when that tape recording stopped, right,
Speaker 2: which is I think one of the biggest pieces for
Speaker 2: me in listening to the first couple of episodes of
Speaker 2: your witness like in my mind reels imagining what's being said. Right,
Speaker 2: what do you think was Do you have any ideas
Speaker 2: of what was happening or it's all speculation?
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, that's one of the main questions that we
Speaker 4: had because we got access to the investigative file, and
Speaker 4: that included more than fifty hours of taped police interviews,
Speaker 4: many of them with Yolanda Chambers. I think there were
Speaker 4: eight recorded interviews with Yolanda Chambers. In some individual interviews,
Speaker 4: they would stop and then restart the tape multiple times.
Speaker 4: Sometimes the transcript of the interview will list how long
Speaker 4: the tape was off. It was off sometimes thirty minutes
Speaker 4: at a time, and we have no way of knowing
Speaker 4: what was happening. Then we interviewed the lead homicide investigator,
Speaker 4: Tony Richardson, who was in charge of these interrogations, and
Speaker 4: we asked him about stopping and starting the tape and
Speaker 4: on the record interviews, and he admitted that it's against
Speaker 4: best practices to do that, but he wasn't able to
Speaker 4: tell us why he did that while he was interviewing Yolanda,
Speaker 4: what happened when the tape was off, But he was
Speaker 4: insistent that nothing sinister occurred.
Speaker 6: That's the word, yeah, sinister, And he.
Speaker 4: Said that over and over again. The thing that I
Speaker 4: think is really interesting for listeners of the podcast to
Speaker 4: hear is how Yolanda Chambers story evolves and changes. Every
Speaker 4: time police turn off the tape and then come back,
Speaker 4: some key detail has changed dramatically with no explanation as
Speaker 4: to why it changed. And so when you look at
Speaker 4: the totality of what they got from Yolanda, which the
Speaker 4: first time they talked to her was I don't know
Speaker 4: anything about this murder and I don't know what happened
Speaker 4: to Okay, I might know who did it to. Well,
Speaker 4: I was with these two guys and they talked about
Speaker 4: doing it to Oh. I was actually there and I
Speaker 4: witnessed it happening. It just changed over and over and
Speaker 4: over again. You really have to ask yourself, how did
Speaker 4: they even get these guys indicted on the word of
Speaker 4: this fifteen year old witness. But we obtained the transcript
Speaker 4: from the grand jury proceedings, which are supposed to be secret,
Speaker 4: and those transcripts are not ever supposed to get out,
Speaker 4: but I had a source share it with me. And
Speaker 4: you know, Detective Tony Richardson told the grand jury under
Speaker 4: oath that he had no doubt in his mind that
Speaker 4: Yolanda Chambers was telling the truth. Of course, the grand
Speaker 4: jury didn't know that she changed that truth over and
Speaker 4: over and over again, and that it had, you know,
Speaker 4: changed over time, and she had even changed who she
Speaker 4: said the shooters were. They didn't know that. They just
Speaker 4: knew who he was claiming was responsible there at that hearing.
Speaker 3: And we'll pause here for a word from our sponsor
Speaker 3: before returning with more from Beth Shelter.
Speaker 6: Okay, we're back.
Speaker 3: So we've got the six initial named, four of which
Speaker 3: do get the indictments right. And there's something very strange
Speaker 3: about that part, Beth, when they begin proceedings for these
Speaker 3: four suspects, and they do almost like a Marvel movie
Speaker 3: multiverse approach to the explanations or to the allegations. And
Speaker 3: it seems that as we run through the four initial people.
Speaker 3: I think it's important to have you confirm was the
Speaker 3: state giving contradictory or indeed mutually exclusive theories or charges
Speaker 3: and if so, how why is that even legal? I
Speaker 3: was confused.
Speaker 4: Yes it is legal, and yes, the state did give
Speaker 4: contradictory mutually exclusive theories about how the crime was committed
Speaker 4: and who committed the crime at different proceedings. We've gone
Speaker 4: through everything and we counted five different theories of the
Speaker 4: crime that were presented by the state. It's important for
Speaker 4: listeners to know that as Yolanda Chambers changed her story
Speaker 4: over and over and over again, and four people were
Speaker 4: arrested and charged with this murder, to Forrest Johnson being
Speaker 4: one of them, at some point she told investigators that
Speaker 4: two of the men, whose names are Omar Berry and
Speaker 4: Quintez Wilson, she told them, you know what, they didn't
Speaker 4: have anything to do with it, and I completely made
Speaker 4: up that they were involved, and so their charges were
Speaker 4: dropped and they were released eighteen months into the investigation.
Speaker 4: Shortly after that, there was a competency hearing called by
Speaker 4: one of the defense attorneys for the remaining two suspects,
Speaker 4: where he wanted the judge to determine whether or not
Speaker 4: Yolanda Chambers was a competent enough witness for these other
Speaker 4: two capital murder cases to move forward, because she was
Speaker 4: changing her story, including, you know, recanting on two of
Speaker 4: the suspects. So during this competency hearing, which we got
Speaker 4: a transcript from and we actually re enacted with an
Speaker 4: actress playing Yolanda Chambers and the attorneys and the judge,
Speaker 4: she ended up recanting everything on the stand, not just
Speaker 4: that the two suspects that had already been released had
Speaker 4: nothing to do with it, but also that to Forrest
Speaker 4: Johnson and his co defendant had nothing to do with it.
Speaker 4: And she told the judge, I made all of this
Speaker 4: up because I was scared because police threatened to put
Speaker 4: me in jail if I did not give them information
Speaker 4: that was helpful, and the judge allowed the case to
Speaker 4: go forward.
Speaker 6: I want to apologize earlier.
Speaker 5: I think I maybe was mistaking in my head two different,
Speaker 5: very important players in this part of the story. There's
Speaker 5: Yolanda Chambers and then there's also Violet Ellison. And I
Speaker 5: said something to the effect of they sound like they're
Speaker 5: talking till they get an idea, and that's just there's
Speaker 5: something that did not ring true to me to my
Speaker 5: initial again, cold listen, can you tell us a bit
Speaker 5: about how things kind of pivoted to Violet Ellison and
Speaker 5: why I might felt that way or I don't know
Speaker 5: what you thought.
Speaker 4: Well, I think that that's part of the reason, Noah,
Speaker 4: why I wanted to do a narrative series podcast on
Speaker 4: this case, Because there's so many twists and turns, it's
Speaker 4: really hard to keep it all straight. So we really
Speaker 4: wanted to unpack it step by step by painful, horrific
Speaker 4: step and sort of lay it all out, lay bare
Speaker 4: this thing that happened to this man. You are correct
Speaker 4: in that the state completely pivoted away from Yolanda Chambers
Speaker 4: after this recantation, even though the judge allowed the case
Speaker 4: to go forward. They realized, we've got to figure something
Speaker 4: else out because we can't rely on Yolanda Chambers as
Speaker 4: the sole evidence in this case. And so they went
Speaker 4: back through their file and they remembered that they had
Speaker 4: spoken to a woman three weeks after the murder. That
Speaker 4: woman's name is Violet Ellison, and she also contacted detectives
Speaker 4: once the reward was offered, claimed that she had information
Speaker 4: relative to the investigation came in and talked to detectives
Speaker 4: and said that she overheard to Forest Johnson talking about
Speaker 4: the murder on a jailhouse phone call that she evesdropped on,
Speaker 4: and so she gave a very convoluted statement to detectives
Speaker 4: that we got the recording of. It's about seven minutes long,
Speaker 4: and they sat on it for two years. She was
Speaker 4: never mentioned again at any of the preliminary hearings to
Speaker 4: the grand jury, nothing until to Forst Johnson was put
Speaker 4: on trial, and then she was called to the stand
Speaker 4: as their star witness, and ultimately was how the state
Speaker 4: convicted someone of this murder was putting this ear witness
Speaker 4: on the stand who claimed that she overheard to Forst
Speaker 4: Johnson talk about the murder, and that is the key evidence,
Speaker 4: some would argue, the only evidence that the state used
Speaker 4: to convict him.
Speaker 3: Oh and Beth, let's that's we said. The we said
Speaker 3: one of the primary words here. So for anyone who
Speaker 3: is unfamiliar, I think has been colleagues mentioned. A lot
Speaker 3: of people learn about law enforcement and prosecution through you know, copaganda,
Speaker 3: through true crime shows like Law and Order, whatever. So
Speaker 3: we know about eyewitnesses. What is an ear witness and
Speaker 3: why is that so pivotal to stories like this?
Speaker 4: An ear witness is like an eyewitness, except an ear
Speaker 4: witness heard something, and so a lot of studies have
Speaker 4: been done on how unreliable eyewitnesses are and ear witnesses
Speaker 4: are even more so. Unfortunately, there's been less study on
Speaker 4: the reliability of ear witnesses because they're used less. But
Speaker 4: one of the most common questions we got while reporting
Speaker 4: on this story from people into forest community and his
Speaker 4: family even is how was the state allowed to present
Speaker 4: hearsay as evidence? Like why is Violet ellison statement not
Speaker 4: considered hearsay?
Speaker 6: That's literally what that is, right, And it's a.
Speaker 4: Great question, But here's why. And this is like at
Speaker 4: the crux of what we're trying to get at is
Speaker 4: these double standards. It's in our criminal justice system, normally
Speaker 4: a person testifying about hearing somebody else say something is
Speaker 4: considered hearsay. But there's an exception to the hearsay rule,
Speaker 4: and it's if the witness claims to have heard a
Speaker 4: confession to a crime, well then it's not hearsay. That's
Speaker 4: the exception. So it's like it's hearsay unless it's extremely
Speaker 4: valuable to the state and an exception.
Speaker 3: That's right, hearsay, unless it helps.
Speaker 4: Us, that's right.
Speaker 6: I'm really quickly. I'm not gonna lie.
Speaker 5: I thought air Witness was just a very clever name
Speaker 5: for your podcast. I was not a familiar with this
Speaker 5: concept at all, because to me, it just sounds bonkers
Speaker 5: to hear you describe it. And that's probably why people
Speaker 5: don't know about it, because you said it's not used much,
Speaker 5: but it seems like it's the perfect thing to use
Speaker 5: when you need a piece, you know, to it is
Speaker 5: story over the finish line.
Speaker 4: You're so right. It is totally bonkers, and it's That's
Speaker 4: probably the best way that I can explain why I
Speaker 4: wanted to do a project like this, because when I
Speaker 4: first learned about to Forrest's case and his attorneys, his family,
Speaker 4: the people that were telling me about it were telling me, yeah,
Speaker 4: he's on death row. Because one woman claimed that she
Speaker 4: overheard him talking about the crime on a phone call
Speaker 4: that she evesdropped on. I thought, No, there's no way
Speaker 4: that's it.
Speaker 6: That can't be it, that can't.
Speaker 4: Be it, that cannot be it, and that's it. That
Speaker 4: is it.
Speaker 3: Let me throw a let me throw a kind of
Speaker 3: a softball underheaded toss of a question here, Beth, Well,
Speaker 3: surely it wouldn't necessarily be here saved because jails are
Speaker 3: supposed to record phone calls, So surely someone could go
Speaker 3: back into the records and maybe see if that conversation existed, right,
Speaker 3: I think yes.
Speaker 4: But unfortunately, the supervisor of the Jefferson County Jail where
Speaker 4: this phone call originated took the stand and said that
Speaker 4: the jail was not equipped to record phone calls in
Speaker 4: nineteen ninety five, So there's no recording I'm going.
Speaker 5: To ask too in nineteen ninety five, even if they
Speaker 5: did have the tape, digital technology and analysis wasn't where
Speaker 5: it is today in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 6: I mean, there might have.
Speaker 5: Maybe there was a way you could prove beyond a
Speaker 5: shadow of it, now this is this person's voice on
Speaker 5: this tape, but probably not with the same degree of
Speaker 5: certainty that you could today.
Speaker 2: Well, mate, with the tape.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we we actually found a voice exemplar tape in
Speaker 4: the investigative file. We did not find any evidence that
Speaker 4: they ever played it for Violet Ellison, and we asked
Speaker 4: the detectives, the prosecutor, and Violet Ellison, and nobody could
Speaker 4: really remember, but they prepared. It's called a voice exemplar tape.
Speaker 4: You know, where you hear several Yeah, you hear several
Speaker 4: different people's voices, including to Forest Johnson's. You know, but
Speaker 4: I guess I don't know. Yeah, it's like a voice lineup. Yeah.
Speaker 4: I don't know that they ever played it for her.
Speaker 4: I know that when I have spoken to her directly
Speaker 4: and I asked her, how do you know that this
Speaker 4: was him? She had never heard him speak before, she
Speaker 4: did not know him personally, and she told me, I
Speaker 4: don't know that it was him. I just know that
Speaker 4: it was the same voice that I overheard. She listened
Speaker 4: in on several different phone calls. The first one is
Speaker 4: the only one that contained allegedly these incriminating statements that
Speaker 4: she testified to. But you know, most of the people
Speaker 4: into Forest community that I talked to, this is it's
Speaker 4: really a terrifying idea that anybody can go to police
Speaker 4: and just claim that they overheard you say something, and
Speaker 4: that can send you all the way to death row,
Speaker 4: where he's been for twenty five years. That is really frightening.
Speaker 2: I want to talk about one of the at least
Speaker 2: it's one of the first times I think the listener
Speaker 2: gets to hear to Forrest Johnson's voice, But I want
Speaker 2: to know about the first time you heard a particular tape,
Speaker 2: which is when you hear him being interrogated by law
Speaker 2: enforcement around the same time when I think it's when
Speaker 2: Yolanda's allegations are coming forward and then they're trying to
Speaker 2: get information from to Forest. Just that back and forth
Speaker 2: hearing somebody saying over and over again, I can't prove
Speaker 2: a negative. I don't have information for you, and then
Speaker 2: it never stopping, this deluge of you're guilty and you're
Speaker 2: not telling me things. What was that like for you
Speaker 2: at like as you're diving into this.
Speaker 4: It is some of the worst tape I've ever listened to,
Speaker 4: And of course everything is edited and condensed in the
Speaker 4: podcast series, so we actually had to curate to Forest
Speaker 4: interrogation from close to two hours of tape that police
Speaker 4: recorded in conducting interviews with him. Yeah, it is like
Speaker 4: the most extreme form of gaslighting you can ever imagine.
Speaker 4: When you're stuck in a chair and cops insist for
Speaker 4: hours and hours and hours that you did something that
Speaker 4: you didn't do, and not only did you not do it,
Speaker 4: you don't know anything about it because you were somewhere
Speaker 4: else when it happened, and it just it's really sickening
Speaker 4: to listen to it in its entirety. I think for me,
Speaker 4: it also really made me aware of my own privilege,
Speaker 4: that this is not the kind of interaction that my self,
Speaker 4: is a middle aged white woman, has ever had with
Speaker 4: police or likely would. I think that, especially in this
Speaker 4: time period in the mid nineties, cops were really running
Speaker 4: the show, and it was tough on crime, and they
Speaker 4: wanted convictions, and you know, frankly, a lot of civil
Speaker 4: rights and human rights were thrown out the window. So
Speaker 4: in those recordings, we hear to Forrest repeatedly ask for
Speaker 4: an attorney, and they just keep on going, you know,
Speaker 4: like he didn't even say it. They make him cry
Speaker 4: at one point, and you can hear the exhaustion in
Speaker 4: his voice at the end and him kind of understanding
Speaker 4: what's happening that he says over and over again. I
Speaker 4: can tell I'm getting fire. I am getting because they're
Speaker 4: not believing him, and there's nothing else that he can
Speaker 4: say and they're still not believing him. So it's it's
Speaker 4: an awful listen.
Speaker 3: They decided they wanted someone and they needed someone, right,
Speaker 3: So there's I think it makes me go back to
Speaker 3: the the excellent points you made at the very top
Speaker 3: of our conversation, Beth, which is the system, right, the
Speaker 3: enormity of this thing that at some point becomes a
Speaker 3: feedback loop, it's self propelled. And we so we we
Speaker 3: talked about the two two of the four who are
Speaker 3: indicted are the charges are dismissed more than a year later,
Speaker 3: and uh, there is the third person who I believe
Speaker 3: makes it a trial but is acquitted, leaving only to
Speaker 3: Forrest Johnson. And you know, as Matt said, as you
Speaker 3: said that that tape especially is is harrowing. How does
Speaker 3: the how does the prosecution proceed now that Chambers has
Speaker 3: Chambers has had her credibility, you know, cast out. They've
Speaker 3: pivoted to Violet Ellison remembered this conversation way later. Uh
Speaker 3: what do they what do they do? What? What does
Speaker 3: the prosecutor do in this situation?
Speaker 4: Well, that's one of the things that makes this whole
Speaker 4: story so astonishing, is we mentioned that they presented multiple
Speaker 4: theories for the same crime. Our dregas Ford was to
Speaker 4: Forrest Johnson's co defendant, and they were tried separately. They
Speaker 4: were actually each tried twice for the crime. So there's
Speaker 4: four trials total, and this is laid out in episode five,
Speaker 4: so this is a little bit of a spoiler alert
Speaker 4: if folks haven't gotten that far in the series. So
Speaker 4: the order of trials was our dregas Ford was tried first.
Speaker 4: The jury couldn't reach a verdict, so it was a
Speaker 4: hung jery. To Forest Johnson was tried second, jury couldn't
Speaker 4: reach a verdict hung jury. To Forest Johnson is tried
Speaker 4: a second time for Trial three, using Violet Ellison. They
Speaker 4: get a verdict and a death sentence. He's sent to
Speaker 4: death row. And then, incredibly, eight months after they sent
Speaker 4: to Forest Johnson to death row, the state tries ar
Speaker 4: dregis Ford a second time, not using Violet Ellison and
Speaker 4: her theory about what happened, but calling Y'll landa Chambers
Speaker 4: to the stand and rehashing you'll landa double jeopardy.
Speaker 5: It's not like, how isn't it being tried twice for
Speaker 5: the same thing, or is it is? The allegations were
Speaker 5: specific to each one, so therefore it stood on its
Speaker 5: own merits, as it says, as another case sometimes that's.
Speaker 4: A fantastic question. And I've had several people ask me
Speaker 4: that that have been listening, like how are they at
Speaker 4: allowed to keep trying people? I think when there's a
Speaker 4: hung jury, it's declared a mistrial, so that's not the
Speaker 4: same thing as being.
Speaker 5: But still, if it was a hung jury, it means
Speaker 5: there wasn't enough information to do the thing.
Speaker 6: Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 4: And I think that's one takeaway, kind of a meta
Speaker 4: takeaway that a lot of people are walking away with,
Speaker 4: is like, you know, the state should not be allowed
Speaker 4: to just keep trying people over and over again until
Speaker 4: they get a guilty verdict.
Speaker 6: You know, try try again, right exactly help.
Speaker 4: Succeed, but you know they I interviewed the lead prosecutor
Speaker 4: in this case, who's a really interesting he takes some
Speaker 4: really interesting positions in this case. His name is Jeff Wallace,
Speaker 4: and I was actually really surprised that he agreed to
Speaker 4: talk to me, and that Detective Tony Richardson agreed to
Speaker 4: talk to me, because usually these kinds of podcasts, the
Speaker 4: folks that were responsible for the wrongful conviction are running away.
Speaker 4: But I've talked to both of them for hours. Jeff
Speaker 4: Wallace explained to me that the state, and it's true
Speaker 4: other prosecutors have told me the state is allowed to
Speaker 4: present conflicting theories for the same crime. The rules of
Speaker 4: the court allow that. What you have to do is,
Speaker 4: you know, use the evidence that you're presenting to that
Speaker 4: particular jury. You don't have to lay out everything. The
Speaker 4: burden is beyond a reasonable doubt. You don't have to
Speaker 4: hand them a one hundred percent scientific proof of everything
Speaker 4: that happened from start to finish. And so that's the
Speaker 4: way they kind of, I think, justify in their minds that, well,
Speaker 4: the law allows this, and so we just look at
Speaker 4: the evidence that we have the cognitive dissonance though in
Speaker 4: trying two separate people for a crime that we know
Speaker 4: only had one gunman involved, because those two shellcasings from
Speaker 4: the two bullets that went into Deputy Harty's head came
Speaker 4: from one gun, which indicates one gunman only. So at
Speaker 4: each of these trials they argued the defendant on trial
Speaker 4: was the shooter and described a different scenario. And these
Speaker 4: scenarios cannot all be true together. And so I really
Speaker 4: wanted somebody to answer for how did you work that
Speaker 4: out in your own mind? Like ethically, morally, how can
Speaker 4: you get up there in the courtroom and do this?
Speaker 4: And the answer was always, well, court rules allow us
Speaker 4: to do this or to employ this strategy. I could
Speaker 4: never really get an answer. It was always veered into
Speaker 4: very highly technical legal jargon. But I myself personally have
Speaker 4: a real problem with it, and I think a lot
Speaker 4: of listeners.
Speaker 3: Do too, agree agreed unanimously. There was also there was
Speaker 3: this one line that stuck out to me speaking with
Speaker 3: the former prosecutor, where he says, you know, he had
Speaker 3: a reputation as a hard prosecutor, which I think most
Speaker 3: prosecutors will say that about themselves, and then he said,
Speaker 3: maybe I had a reputation of being a bit too
Speaker 3: hard of a prosecutor. If I had a case, I
Speaker 3: would take it to the fullest extent possible, or something
Speaker 3: like that, which does seem to be in my mind,
Speaker 3: it does seem to be a confirmation of exactly what
Speaker 3: you're saying, this idea that actual justice the way civilians
Speaker 3: might think of it can be put in the back
Speaker 3: seat in favor of legalistic mechanisms, right to up your
Speaker 3: score in the courtroom.
Speaker 2: Well, but they're also trying to find someone who murdered
Speaker 2: one of their own. Right, well, so that pressure is
Speaker 2: on top of everything you're talking about then, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely, I think they all felt a personal responsibility
Speaker 4: and incredible pressure to get some kind of resolution. I
Speaker 4: think that you know, what our job is is to ask, like,
Speaker 4: what does a resolution look like? And is it just
Speaker 4: getting a conviction? Because what if it's not the right person?
Speaker 4: You know, And that's kind of like where we are
Speaker 4: right now, and also looking at the very narrow ways
Speaker 4: that you can attack a case post conviction.
Speaker 5: Hey, let's pause here really quickly on the conversation for
Speaker 5: a word from our sponsors, and then we'll be right
Speaker 5: back with more from Beth.
Speaker 2: Okay, and we've returned with more with Beth Chilburn.
Speaker 3: There are other things. There are multiple things I don't
Speaker 3: want to spoil them all that really stick out about
Speaker 3: the justice system in general in the United States, the
Speaker 3: justice system in particular in Alabama and indeed in the South,
Speaker 3: theast overall. One of the things that we keep going
Speaker 3: back to to your your point about the narrow scope
Speaker 3: of what we would we would call appeals or saying
Speaker 3: that you know our weight, but what about this kind
Speaker 3: of moments It seems that for a time there was
Speaker 3: a bit of light possible here because I believe it
Speaker 3: was twenty seventeen, Johnson's case reached the higher courts, reach
Speaker 3: the Supreme Court. Could you tell us a little bit
Speaker 3: about that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So he has a really great post conviction legal team.
Speaker 4: The reason that he's on death row is not because
Speaker 4: he doesn't have good representation now, it's just that you know,
Speaker 4: they have these very narrow pathways that they can attack
Speaker 4: his case. You literally cannot argue that someone is innocent
Speaker 4: post conviction if they're on death row. Innocence is not
Speaker 4: a legal argument, which is just kind of mind blowing
Speaker 4: if you really think about it. The Supreme happen, Supreme
Speaker 4: Court has actually said innocence is not enough to overturn
Speaker 4: a death row conviction. But anyway, one of the most
Speaker 4: egregious things about to Forest's conviction is something that happened
Speaker 4: after he was sent to death row, and it's the
Speaker 4: key witness in the case, Violet Ellison, the ear witness,
Speaker 4: was paid a reward behind closed doors, off the record,
Speaker 4: and the jury did not know that she was going
Speaker 4: to be paid for her testimony, and so that has
Speaker 4: been one of the main issues that has been litigated
Speaker 4: now for almost twenty years, and the courts have repeatedly said,
Speaker 4: this is not prosecutorial misconduct. Nobody did anything wrong here,
Speaker 4: and to Forrest's conviction can stand. Even though the state
Speaker 4: paid the star witness five thousand dollars off the record,
Speaker 4: it was not entered into the official court record. To
Speaker 4: Forrest Johnson and his attorneys were not told about the payment,
Speaker 4: and the jury did not know that this reward was
Speaker 4: even on the table.
Speaker 5: And this was an addition to the original reward for
Speaker 5: the information or for actionable information.
Speaker 4: It was part of the original reward. And since she
Speaker 4: from what I understand looking at the reward documents that
Speaker 4: the state finally turned over after denying that they existed
Speaker 4: for seventeen years, from what I can tell, she was
Speaker 4: paid five thousand dollars because she wasn't part of Forrest's arrest.
Speaker 4: Her testimony just led to his conviction. But they even
Speaker 4: like lowballed her. You know, it's like she only got
Speaker 4: five thousand dollars. Her story about the reward and the
Speaker 4: state's story don't match up. And the state's story has
Speaker 4: changed since I've been covering this issue, since I started
Speaker 4: covering it in twenty nineteen, and they've completely changed their
Speaker 4: story about what happened with this reward.
Speaker 3: Chambers, they sure did.
Speaker 4: Yeah, except there you know, this is the long arm
Speaker 4: of the law that has the power to kill to
Speaker 4: Forrest Johnson, which is what is so scary. It's not
Speaker 4: just sloppy, it's incredibly suspicious. When this issue is being
Speaker 4: litigated and the state keeps changing what they're actually filing
Speaker 4: in court documents. It's not like just they might misrepresent
Speaker 4: a word or two in an interview with me. I'm
Speaker 4: talking like the whole narrative about how the reward was triggered,
Speaker 4: who called who, how it came, about why people didn't
Speaker 4: know about it, All of that has changed.
Speaker 5: You start the podcast off with forgive me if you've
Speaker 5: already said this person's name. But there's a lot of
Speaker 5: characters in the story, with some from a clearly very
Speaker 5: experienced lawyer or prosecutor perhaps who's a big fan of
Speaker 5: the death penalty, and you know, speaks to that effect
Speaker 5: that there are certain crimes that there's.
Speaker 6: No other way. He believes in it.
Speaker 5: He's always hearing these social justice warriors whining about, you know,
Speaker 5: somebody being wrongfully accused or whatever. And then he turns
Speaker 5: where his son I think he was a lawyer as well,
Speaker 5: turns him onto this story and he's like, and none
Speaker 5: of that made any sense, That all was absurd, And
Speaker 5: I'm the one who kind of would be more in
Speaker 5: that corner, probably from hearing a story like that, but
Speaker 5: immediately he was skeptical.
Speaker 6: Can you tell us who that was? And a little
Speaker 6: bit about.
Speaker 5: That kind of frame story of the podcast, I think
Speaker 5: is a really cool way to start it off.
Speaker 4: Yeah. His name is Bill Baxley, and in Alabama he's
Speaker 4: kind of legendary. He was I think the youngest elected
Speaker 4: attorney general the state has ever had. He was elected
Speaker 4: at age twenty eight, and he was in Alabama politics
Speaker 4: for decades. He was lieutenant governor for a time, he
Speaker 4: ran for governor. He's just been around forever and he
Speaker 4: is staunchly pro death penalty. He was actually the attorney
Speaker 4: general when the Supreme Court outlawed capital punishment. There was
Speaker 4: a time in the early seventies, I think, for four
Speaker 4: or five years where there were no death sentences and
Speaker 4: they declared it to be unconstitutional. Bill Baxley was instrumental
Speaker 4: in bringing executions back to Alabama during that time period.
Speaker 4: So he's a true believer. In his career, which is
Speaker 4: now more than sixty years in running, he's still practicing law.
Speaker 4: He's looked at so many cases post conviction, hundreds and
Speaker 4: hundreds of cases, maybe thousands, and he has only agreed
Speaker 4: that somebody was likely innocent in two cases. One of
Speaker 4: them was the Scottsboro Boys, and that is an infamous
Speaker 4: case at the turn of the century where a group
Speaker 4: of young black boys were convicted of raping to white
Speaker 4: women and they were all sentenced to death. All of
Speaker 4: their cases fell apart over a long period of time
Speaker 4: and they've all been pardoned posthumously by the state. It
Speaker 4: was a wrongful conviction, so probably one of the most
Speaker 4: infamous injustices in the history of Alabama. Bill Baxley says, yes,
Speaker 4: they were innocent, and to Forrest Johnson, and that's the
Speaker 4: only other case that he's looked at in detail and said,
Speaker 4: there's no way this guy did this, and it's really
Speaker 4: out of character, and he's stepping way out of something
Speaker 4: that he would normally do to advocate for someone who's
Speaker 4: on death row.
Speaker 3: And Baxley is I think that that speaks to the
Speaker 3: enormity of the miscarriage of justice. Baxley is joined also
Speaker 3: by a cavalcade of other supporters who are experts. I
Speaker 3: was looking at the the Chief Justice, former Chief Justice,
Speaker 3: neighbors Drayton, neighbors of other former US attorneys, other former judges,
Speaker 3: three former jurors, and it seems that this leads me
Speaker 3: to one of the biggest questions I want to ask,
Speaker 3: And I know that a lot of us listening long
Speaker 3: tonight are thinking the same thing with this, With this
Speaker 3: high amount, this high density of heavy hitters who are saying, no,
Speaker 3: something wrong happens here, why won't the state re examine this?
Speaker 3: Is there some concern on their side about perhaps setting
Speaker 3: a precedent and triggering like a new era of reinvestigation
Speaker 3: or reopening of cases or what gives? Because it seems
Speaker 3: it seems as though, you know, it's not not to
Speaker 3: sound cold, but it is not as though it is
Speaker 3: simply the family of before Johnson saying he didn't do
Speaker 3: it. It's not just his friends or aquaintances in Birmingham. It's
Speaker 3: top legal minds, right.
Speaker 4: I wish I could speak to why the state is
Speaker 4: continuing to seek his execution and why they're continuing to
Speaker 4: fight his appeals despite the calls for a new trial.
Speaker 4: The current elected district attorney in Jefferson County has a
Speaker 4: conviction integrity unit. He spent nine months reviewing this case
Speaker 4: and concluded that there were multiple problems with the process
Speaker 4: and that to Forest Johnson at the very least should
Speaker 4: get a new trial. He filed a petition in court
Speaker 4: asking for a new trial to be granted. He was
Speaker 4: joined by Jeff Wallace, the original prosecutor, who argued that
Speaker 4: to Forest Johnson deserved to die. That literally never happens.
Speaker 4: I mean I called innocence projects. I talked to people
Speaker 4: all over the country. I could not find another case
Speaker 4: in any state where the original trial prosecutor supports a
Speaker 4: new trial for a defendant on death row. The Alabama
Speaker 4: Attorney General's office handles all death row cases post conviction
Speaker 4: and their full steam ahead. And I wish I could
Speaker 4: tell you why. All I can do is look at
Speaker 4: what they're filing in court. I've asked them to talk
Speaker 4: with me for the podcast. I sent them lists of
Speaker 4: questions which they would not answer. What they have argued.
Speaker 4: This is their filing that I've got in front of
Speaker 4: me that they put in front of the US Supreme
Speaker 4: Court this year to Forest Johnson asked the court to
Speaker 4: again review this secret reward payment and the fact that
Speaker 4: the elected district attorney has now called for a new
Speaker 4: trial after reviewing the case, and the Attorney General's office
Speaker 4: in Alabama says that to Forrest Johnson does not raise
Speaker 4: an issue of extraordinary public importance or any compelling circumstance.
Speaker 5: What does that have to do with anything? What does
Speaker 5: public importance even mean? I'm just that's a that's a new.
Speaker 6: One on me.
Speaker 3: Is that from that that's a good question.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: On December seventh of this year, he will have spent
Speaker 2: twenty five years in prison, and that is just that
Speaker 2: It's just there's such an injustice there. And your work
Speaker 2: on the you know, looking at prisons, specific prisons, right,
Speaker 2: like the I'm imagining your work on the Julia Tutweiler prison,
Speaker 2: right and just looking at the environment that human beings
Speaker 2: have to survive in when they're in you know, each
Speaker 2: one is it's a different ecosystem, but each one has
Speaker 2: kind of the same set of problems. I just wonder,
Speaker 2: what do you think, like just imagining this person who's
Speaker 2: been in jail for twenty five years as of this December.
Speaker 4: To Forrest is really an amazing person, and we didn't
Speaker 4: get to interview him for the podcast because the Alabama
Speaker 4: Department of Corrections has this bullsh rule where people on
Speaker 4: death row aren't allowed to talk to journalists and we
Speaker 4: didn't want to get him in trouble. But to Forrest
Speaker 4: has amazing fortitude. He's a very positive person. I think
Speaker 4: that part of the reason why is because he has
Speaker 4: five children and fifteen grandchildren that he maintains very close
Speaker 4: relationships with. He's also very tight with his mother. Yeah,
Speaker 4: we sit down for a long, expanded conversation with his
Speaker 4: family in the last episode, So I hope people stick
Speaker 4: around for that because it's really beautiful and it's just
Speaker 4: it really shows us that, yes, this is a horrible
Speaker 4: injustice that this one human being has had to suffer,
Speaker 4: but it's really a community trauma and a family trauma
Speaker 4: because it just fans out cross so many different lives
Speaker 4: and the beautiful way he's been able to father his
Speaker 4: children from death row. I have found it just to
Speaker 4: be awe inspiring and there's such a genuine love and
Speaker 4: commitment in this family despite this just horrific thing that's
Speaker 4: always there right in front of them. But they just
Speaker 4: keep going, and they keep loving on each other, and
Speaker 4: they stay hopeful. And it has been something.
Speaker 3: To behold in that case too, that point about intergenerational trauma,
Speaker 3: the ripples and the consequences they continue long after an
Speaker 3: action has been committed. It got me thinking, what about
Speaker 3: the survivors of Deputy Shareff Bill Hardy? Right, clearly they
Speaker 3: would one would assume they would want some closure as well.
Speaker 3: And as we're recording, for anybody who wants to catch
Speaker 3: the news to what you're referring to be I believe
Speaker 3: was early October this month the US Supreme Court declined
Speaker 3: to review the case, and so this has repeatedly come
Speaker 3: into question legally and along the way. Thinks in great
Speaker 3: part to your incredibly thorough reporting here. I think more
Speaker 3: and more people are questioning more and more other cases
Speaker 3: that often slip by the wayside or or don't make
Speaker 3: it past you know, the local Post sentinel or what
Speaker 3: have you. And with this, you know, one of the
Speaker 3: one of the questions that we always end with when
Speaker 3: we have these conversations is what what do you hope
Speaker 3: people can take from this? Case. What what do you
Speaker 3: hope people will walk away with after they have experienced
Speaker 3: this investigation.
Speaker 4: Well, I think that first and four or most, our
Speaker 4: goal was to present the truth that to Forrest Johnson
Speaker 4: has experienced, because that was not presented in the traditional
Speaker 4: media coverage of this murder and these trials and conviction.
Speaker 4: So there is a record of what happened to this man,
Speaker 4: with the hope that it will turn the ship and
Speaker 4: that there will be enough momentum where enough people will
Speaker 4: lean into this and say, no, this cannot be Unfortunately,
Speaker 4: there have been other cases where innocent people have ended
Speaker 4: up on death row and have been executed, and he
Speaker 4: is at risk, and so we know that his attorneys
Speaker 4: know that, and they're continuing to fight the good fight
Speaker 4: in the legal system. But I think what we were
Speaker 4: hoping for, in addition to illuminating this injustice, which, as
Speaker 4: you mentioned, and is hard to imagine being cooped up
Speaker 4: in a cell for twenty five years away from your
Speaker 4: family and community when you're innocent. It's just I don't
Speaker 4: know how he's maintained his sanity. But the other thing
Speaker 4: we were hoping to do is really unpack and unwind
Speaker 4: this case in a way to show some of the
Speaker 4: systemic problems that people run into every day. Even people
Speaker 4: that are charged with misdemeanors run into inadequate defense, you know,
Speaker 4: a bias from jurors or from cops themselves. There's all
Speaker 4: sorts of problems that this case highlights that I think
Speaker 4: for people that are lucky enough to not be justice impacted,
Speaker 4: wouldn't have a way to get proximate to the dynamics
Speaker 4: that play out every day in jails and a courtrooms
Speaker 4: across the United States. And so we really wanted to
Speaker 4: kind of hold their hand and guide them through a
Speaker 4: truly unbelievable and horrific Bonker's story about the links the
Speaker 4: system will go to to get a conviction and what
Speaker 4: that has meant to Forrest Johnson and what it means
Speaker 4: today for the people that were involved that feel like
Speaker 4: the evidence has now changed. So how do we fix that?
Speaker 5: You mentioned what a you know, thoughtful person to Forrest is,
Speaker 5: and I've seen it in other stories involving wrongfully convicted
Speaker 5: death row inmates or at least people that are maybe
Speaker 5: not death or inmates, but just people that have been
Speaker 5: held for that long of their lives, and the case
Speaker 5: of Frank Gable. He was recently released, and that was
Speaker 5: a story that we have reported on and that we
Speaker 5: had a podcast called Murder and Organ that was out
Speaker 5: on our podcast network.
Speaker 6: But he was always very similarly.
Speaker 5: Zen and kind of like thoughtful and you know, drew beautiful,
Speaker 5: you know, drawing and sent them to the brothers who
Speaker 5: are kind of defending his case, who were actually the
Speaker 5: brothers of the man he supposedly killed.
Speaker 6: But it just does go to show.
Speaker 5: This is another thing that the Lava folks are definitely
Speaker 5: cued in on, is that people do get out.
Speaker 6: This does it.
Speaker 5: You know, things are overturned and they are given new
Speaker 5: trials sometimes, but it is an uphill battle every step
Speaker 5: of the way.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and you know, I think that he maintains that
Speaker 4: hope because it truly is reflective of his heart and he,
Speaker 4: like his cousin Antonio Green, who we interview in the podcast,
Speaker 4: told me, he has that kind of zen piece about
Speaker 4: him because he's good with God. He knows he didn't
Speaker 4: do anything, and so he's told his family, you know,
Speaker 4: I'm good. I want to get out for y'all, but
Speaker 4: the things that are most important within me, I'm good.
Speaker 4: I just want the truth out there, and you know,
Speaker 4: he wants justice. I think his family does want some
Speaker 4: account of But yeah, as long as he is alive
Speaker 4: and he wakes up every day, he has hope. And
Speaker 4: I try to maintain that too, that it's not over,
Speaker 4: that the state can still do the right thing. People
Speaker 4: can still do the right thing, and people are doing
Speaker 4: the right thing. You know, having prosecutors get on board
Speaker 4: advocating for someone who's on death row is highly unusual,
Speaker 4: so they've stepped out of their comfort zone. Some of
Speaker 4: these folks like Jeff Wallace and the current district Attorney
Speaker 4: Danny Carr and have you know, had to really dig
Speaker 4: deep and be honest about what happened here and what
Speaker 4: can we do. So we have seen some people do
Speaker 4: the right thing. We just want to keep building on
Speaker 4: that momentum to try and as long as we can
Speaker 4: to get this right, to make us right.
Speaker 3: And if you want to learn more about this, you
Speaker 3: can right now visit to Forrest Johnson dot com. That's
Speaker 3: T O F O R E. S. T. Johnson with
Speaker 3: an h dot com to get more updates to learn
Speaker 3: much much more about the case. And Beth, we want
Speaker 3: to thank you so much for your time with this
Speaker 3: work that continues today. Ear Witness is out now, not
Speaker 3: all of it, and as true story. Off air, we
Speaker 3: were trying to, you know, sweet talk you into giving
Speaker 3: us some preview episodes, but we are listening along with you, folks,
Speaker 3: And thank you not only for your time in this
Speaker 3: interview this evening, but thank you so much for the
Speaker 3: work you're putting in which has brought new visibility, new
Speaker 3: examination to this case. Where can people learn more about
Speaker 3: not just your work on the Forest Johnson case and Earwitness,
Speaker 3: but more of your additional work, like Matt mentioned, the
Speaker 3: deep dives you've done into specific prison systems and criminal
Speaker 3: justice issues.
Speaker 4: Yeah, thank you so much for asking. I'm still on Twitter,
Speaker 4: which I guess is called X now. Yeah, I still
Speaker 4: call it Twitter.
Speaker 3: Yeah, everybody, everybody but Ella Musk still calls it Twitter.
Speaker 4: I know.
Speaker 5: It's like, stop trying to make X happen, Elon Musk,
Speaker 5: It's not gonna happen.
Speaker 4: I have a substack called Moth to Flame where I
Speaker 4: publish a lot of first person writing about justice, reporting
Speaker 4: and other things. And yeah, I'm on Twitter, and I
Speaker 4: publish independently so people can google me and find some
Speaker 4: of the work that I've done, but it's it's mainly
Speaker 4: on my substack and I have a landing page which
Speaker 4: is just Bethshelburne dot com.
Speaker 2: Amazing And when you are ready to listen to ear Witness,
Speaker 2: make sure you head to Lava for Good. That's l
Speaker 2: A V A F O R G O O D
Speaker 2: dot com slash ear Witness because you can find pictures
Speaker 2: of speci places, There's all kinds of amazing resources that
Speaker 2: are on that site. As you're going through and listening
Speaker 2: to the episodes. It's a cool experience and I would
Speaker 2: highly recommend it.
Speaker 4: Thank you. Yeah, we wanted to put source material as
Speaker 4: much of it online as possible, so Lava and the
Speaker 4: folks there have done a great job of laying it
Speaker 4: all out for listeners to look at as they're listening
Speaker 4: to this just absolutely bananas bonkers story.
Speaker 6: And that stuff is great supplementary material.
Speaker 5: But I mean, just to the original point you made,
Speaker 5: like this is the kind of story that, like the
Speaker 5: podcast medium was made for because of the very you know,
Speaker 5: questionable nature of to do our ears deceive us and
Speaker 5: things like that. So it really well done and I
Speaker 5: think we all are very much enjoyed. I mean enjoy
Speaker 5: is a strong word. It's a difficult thing to hear,
Speaker 5: but you really tell the story so compellingly and it
Speaker 5: moves and I think I joked before you even sort
Speaker 5: of that you get just.
Speaker 6: Mad enough where you want to keep going.
Speaker 5: You don't want to throw your phone out the way
Speaker 5: because it's a tough one.
Speaker 6: It's a tough one.
Speaker 4: It is a tough one. But I really appreciate, I
Speaker 4: really appreciate all of you listening and supporting.
Speaker 3: So tune in to your witness, folks, don't delay. It's
Speaker 3: available on your favorite podcast platform of choice to day.
Speaker 3: And with that, folks, we cannot wait to hear your
Speaker 3: thoughts on your witness. Also, we want to hear your
Speaker 3: stories or experiences with similar situations because, as Beth pointed out,
Speaker 3: there are a lot of unfortunate commonalities in a broken
Speaker 3: justice system that sometimes does not seem incentivized to be fixed.
Speaker 3: So we want to be easy to find online. Here's
Speaker 3: how you can get in touch with us.
Speaker 6: That's right.
Speaker 5: You can find out the handle Conspiracy Stuff Show on Twitter.
Speaker 5: It's called Twitter damn it Okay. You might also know
Speaker 5: it as X if you're new to the Internet. We
Speaker 5: are also concer spirasey Stuff on Facebook, and YouTube on
Speaker 5: Instagram and TikTok or Conspiracy Stuff Show.
Speaker 2: If you want to leave us a voicemail, call one
Speaker 2: eight three three STDWYTK. You've got three minutes. Say whatever
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Speaker 2: but you've still got something to say, why not instead
Speaker 2: send us a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 3: We are We are the people who read every email
Speaker 3: we get, and let me point this out because we
Speaker 3: haven't been saying it lately. What we love about the emails.
Speaker 3: You can attach photos, you can send us links. We
Speaker 3: can't wait. Just take us to the edge of the
Speaker 3: rabbit hole. We'll do the rest. Conspiracydiheartradio dot com.
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