Toforest Johnson, 49, was sentenced to death in 1998 for the murder of a Jefferson County sheriff s deputy, even though investigators admitted there was no physical or forensic evidence.
states, with the death penalty on the books. here is what happened in alabama in the case of deforest johnson. first, when the police arrested five men suspected of shooting the off-duty police officer, in 1995, ballistics showed that only one gun was used in the shooting, so they could not have all pulled the trigger. the police decided to let three of the five men they arrested go. but they kept deforest johnson and one other suspect, a man named adragus ford, and charged them both for the same murder. now, that happened despite the fact that both men had alibi witnesses who could testify to the fact that they were at a nightclub on the other side of birmingham when the shooting happened. still, both men were charged, and tried separately. prosecution didn t try to argue that the men committed the crime together, they couldn t decide which of the men did it so they tried two different theories of the case in two separate trials