defense. end quote. no experience. no training. no time to investigate. a trifecta of trial disaster. when the court later agreed to give him a private investigator, they only provided funds for someone, well, someone no one would want. johnson s current lawyers describe this p i. as quote a brain-damaged alcoholic racist suicidal homeless man who had already been fired from at leaf one capital case for incompetence, had been operating without a business license for at least five years, and could barely manage his own day to day affairs. end quote. the guy for the job. now that all of this information about this botched case has come to light, numerous people want justice for toforest. and aforementioned former chief justice of the alabama supreme court, he s come out against the case. he asks, quote, why is toforest johnson still on alabama s death row? over time, the state s case has fallen apart and there s now
piece of this whole thing. but for m johnson, it is a complete setback. what is his best chance for getting justice when so many little things went wrong to get him the death penalty? this is one of the huge problems with our system. so once a jury returns a guilty verdict in the case, the system switches from representation of innocent, a presumption of nns to prioritizing and preserving the finality of the verdict and the idea is he want to preserve jury verdict, particularly guilty verdicts because if we start overturning them left and right at the first sign of a bad trial, an unfair trial, that it will sort of erode the integrity of the system, and as i wrote in the column that s an illusion of integrity. that s not actual integrity. right? actual integrity is addressing mistakes and fixing mistakes and fixing the injustices and the courts make it extremely difficult for people who are
claiming they had proof beyond a reasonable doubt that, i don t know, both of them did it? either of them did it? one of them did it? they didn t know. so they let the jurors decide. that happened based on the word of one unreliable witness, yolanda chambers and even the prosecutors admitted in the case that since the 1995 murder, chambers had told more than 300 lies about who was involved, and what she knew. that is the person who is the primary witness in the case against toforest johnson s friend and named johnson as the man who pulled the trigger and she came forward as a potential witness and only after the governor s office announced a $10,000 reward for anyone who gave information leading to an arrest. her mother told police she had information about the murder but she did not. at that point, she was in a position of either providing
explain. it the alabama attorney general and the alabama govern deer have those excuses, they could end this case tomorrow, they could free this guy, mr. johnson and end this injustice tomorrow and they haven t, even before my article posted about this case, why it has been three years, there is no sense of urgency and i think that s what is unforgivable here. they got the same evidence that you know about, thank you very much for reporting on this case and keeping it in the front, forefront for us, criminal justice columnist for the washington post, we appreciate you making time to be with us tonight. thanks. my pleasure. the last story just ahead tonight. stay with us. pleasure. the last story just ahead tonight. stay with us
it seems to me that this is a big deal for a lot of different reasons. first off, this isn t an investigation. nobody knows where it is headed and whether or not there is intentional criminal misconduct but one possibility is that the former president could be involved in something that is criminal here, and so this investigation, we should read as a signal from merrick garland, probably an unintentional one, but a signal nonetheless, that he is willing to pursue criminal cases that may involve the former president of the united states. for people who thought that that was not an option for this justice department, i think this case gives them reason to reconsider those opinions. you know, it is also a very serious matter just on its own, they need to figure out what was in the 15 boxes of documents, was this some sort of a leak, was this classified information distributed in an improper way and if so, who was responsibility, and the statute makes it a crime, and simply removing clas