Alabama Governor Commutes Death Sentence of Man Convicted in 1995 Deputy Killing

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey commuted the death sentence of Toforest Johnson on Tuesday, changing his punishment to life in prison without the possibility of parole, nearly 28 years after a jury condemned him to die for the 1995 killing of an off-duty Jefferson County sheriff's deputy. The decision does not overturn Johnson's conviction, grant him a new trial, or free him from prison.

Johnson, now in his mid-50s, was convicted in 1998 of murdering Deputy Sheriff William Hardy, who was shot twice in the head while working off-duty security at a Birmingham-area hotel. No physical evidence ever tied Johnson to the shooting. His conviction rested almost entirely on the testimony of a woman, Violet Ellison, who said she overheard a man identify himself as "Toforest" during an eavesdropped three-way phone call and believed he was confessing. She had never met Johnson or heard his voice before that call.

A Case Built on One Witness

Records that surfaced after trial showed Ellison was paid $5,000 for her testimony, a reward the defense says was never disclosed to the jury. At least ten witnesses testified that Johnson was roughly four miles from the hotel at a nightclub when Hardy was killed. Those alibi accounts and the questions around Ellison's payment became the foundation of a post-conviction fight that stretched across three decades, drew the attention of national death-penalty researchers, and was eventually chronicled in a podcast examining the case.

The reversal that made Tuesday's commutation possible began inside the prosecutor's own office. Jefferson County District Attorney Danny Carr, who took office in 2018 and did not try the original case, filed court papers in 2024 concluding that "a thorough review and investigation of the entire case leaves no confidence in the integrity of Johnson's conviction." Carr wrote that the evidence against Johnson had "unraveled over 20 years" and said credible alibi witnesses placed him elsewhere when Hardy was shot.

Decades of Appeals

Johnson's case moved through Alabama's courts and the federal judiciary for most of his adult imprisonment. The U.S. Supreme Court docket from 2017 shows the justices granted his petition, vacated the lower court's judgment and sent the case back for further review — over a dissent from Chief Justice John Roberts, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch. The Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals ultimately ruled against him again in 2022 on a narrow question tied to the undisclosed reward payment, and the Supreme Court denied certiorari in October 2023, closing off that avenue of appeal. A related application tied to the same case shows how far the litigation reached before Carr's 2024 filing reopened the question at the state level.

By 2025, the push for a new trial had become bipartisan and drew figures well outside the usual circle of defense advocates: former Alabama Attorney General Bill Baxley and two former chief justices of the Alabama Supreme Court, Sonny Hornsby and Drayton Nabers, all filed briefs or statements backing Carr's position. The Innocence Project, which has represented Johnson alongside University of California, Berkeley law professor Ty Alper, said Alabama continued to defend the conviction in court even as the elected prosecutor sought to undo it.

'Not a Determination of Innocence'

In a statement explaining her decision, Ivey said she was not ruling on Johnson's guilt or innocence but concluded the case did not meet the threshold required for execution. She said she had "concerns there was not enough direct evidence to carry out the most serious punishment, death," and that capital punishment remains "too important of a tool for Alabama to not approach it carefully and seriously." She said Johnson "will serve the remainder of his life behind bars for the senseless murder of Deputy Sheriff William Hardy," and that she notified Attorney General Steve Marshall and a representative of Hardy's family, Beverly Hardy, before announcing the decision, as state process requires.

"Toforest Johnson is innocent. We will keep fighting until he is home with his family," said Ty Alper, one of Johnson's attorneys, who thanked Ivey for taking action to spare what he called "an innocent man from execution."

Carr's office has not withdrawn its support for a new trial, and his 2024 filing remains part of the pending record in Jefferson County Circuit Court. Neither Marshall's office nor representatives for the Hardy family issued public statements following Tuesday's announcement.

What's Next

The commutation is Ivey's third of a death sentence during her time as governor; she has also overseen 27 executions in that span, including a commutation last year for Robin "Rocky" Myers that similarly cited insufficient evidence rather than a finding of innocence. For Johnson, the practical effect is immediate: he moves off Alabama's death row and into the general population of inmates serving life without parole, ending any possibility of an execution date being set.

His legal team, however, says the fight is not over. Alper and the Innocence Project intend to continue pursuing exoneration through the courts, arguing that only a new trial — or a reversal of the conviction itself — can resolve the underlying dispute over Ellison's testimony and the undisclosed reward. That litigation remains pending before Jefferson County courts, where Carr's successor-backed motion for relief has yet to be finally resolved. For Hardy's family, Tuesday's decision closes one chapter of a case that has outlived the original trial prosecutors, several governors and multiple rounds of appellate review, while leaving open whether the conviction that sent Johnson to death row will ultimately stand.