One day Alabama will conduct its final execution.
The witnesses present won’t know that, of course. If capital punishment disappears, it will be by law or ruling that comes after these men and women gather in the small, tomb-like room at Atmore Correctional Facility.
Toforest Johnson should not be on death row.
I’m not the first person to think that. I doubt I’ll be the last.
A jury convicted Johnson in 1998 of the murder of William Hardy, an off-duty Jefferson County sheriff’s deputy shot and killed in a parking lot on the morning of July 19, 1995. Police arrested Johnson a few hours later.
