MONTGOMERY, Ala.—Toforest Johnson, 49, has spent half his life on Alabama’s death row for the murder of a sheriff’s deputy, a killing he says he did not commit.
Johnson’s attorneys asked the Alabama Supreme Court on Friday to “right a grievous wrong” and grant him a new trial. The filing is the latest effort in a case that has seen former judges, prosecutors and the local district attorney join in calls to reexamine the 1998 conviction and death sentence.
Johnson’s attorneys are asking the justices to review a lower court decision denying the new trial request. They argued that the conviction rested on the testimony of a single witness who was paid a reward and that her testimony “was at odds with the physical evidence and directly contradicted by the state’s theory of the case in other proceedings.”…