‘This is just the beginning’: Toforest Johnson’s daughter to keep fighting after sentence commuted
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. —
Akeriya Terry was teaching her middle school students when she got the news her family had waited for years—her father would no longer face execution.
Terry said she stepped out of her classroom and cried tears of joy after learning Gov. Kay Ivey had commuted Toforest Johnson’s death sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Johnson was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of Jefferson County Sheriff’s Deputy William Hardy. His case has made national headlines and inspired podcasts, protests and calls for his conviction to be reexamined. In recent years, the Jefferson County District Attorney’s Office and others have raised serious questions about the evidence used to convict Johnson.
Ivey said concerns about the evidence played a role in her decision to commute Johnson’s sentence. However, she stressed that the commutation was not a declaration of innocence. Johnson’s family and legal team maintain that he did not commit the crime. They say 10 witnesses placed him across town when Hardy was killed. They have also questioned the testimony of a key witness who said she overheard Johnson confess during a phone call and later got a $5,000 payment.
While the commutation removes the threat of execution, Johnson will stay in prison without the possibility of parole. Terry said her family sees the decision as a major victory, but not the end of their effort to prove his innocence.
“I know that having him sit there for a crime he didn’t commit is still not fair,” Terry said, “and so I would just really hope that the worst-case scenario doesn’t happen. You’re just wasting someone’s life and wasting someone’s time and wasting their time away from their family—because my kids haven’t got to see him in-person. My sister, my brother’s kids—we don’t get to see him in-person. I just feel like it’s not fair to our family, and it’s not fair to him as well to just sit there for nothing.”
Terry said she had not yet heard from the family’s attorney but expected to talk to the legal team that evening. She was also looking forward to hearing from her father. Although she expected them to discuss the commutation, Terry said she was eager to catch him up on the latest gossip.
