The Críp Carr: Jefferson County DA Files Brief To Free Death Row Cop Kíller Secretly Affiliated with Old Ensley Gáng
Compromised and Corrupt
![The Críp Carr: Jefferson County DA Files Brief To Free Death Row Cop Kíller Secretly Affiliated with Old Ensley Gáng](https://thechronicle.cc/uploads/images/202406/image_750x_66678008f0f2a.jpg)
{TheChronicle.cc} –There's a saying in African culture that "the tribe never dies.' Apparently a saying that Danny Carr fully takes to heart, both secretly and publicly, if one simply looks at the many photos he post throwing up gáng signs (some now suspiciously deleted).
After filing an amicus brief in county court as early in his tenure as head DA in 2020 suggesting that an Alabama death row inmate should be freed or, if all else fails, granted a new trial (a move he initially made in secret until surprisingly asked about it by our docile local media after a dutiful sheriff's deputy leaked the information), Carr is again attempting to throw his considerable weight around.
Jefferson County's top cop is again quietly pushing to help free an old neighborhood homeboy convicted of kîllîng a Jefferson County sheriff’s deputy in 1998.
Ya see, Toforest Johnson is more than just any "homeboy" in the eyes of many late baby boomers and gen x'ers from the city's westside. Convicted of capital murder in 1998 for the 1995 slaying of decorated Jefferson County Deputy William Hardy, who was shot to death while working a second, part-time security job for a Birmingham hotel, Johnson is a Westside Birmingham Neighborhood Rollin' 60s Crîp. He's what many affiliated black males from throwback '90s would call an OG, or original gangsta.
Toforest Johnson is absolutely nothing special really, at nearly 50 years of age and with literally no accomplishments except for a few babymamas who bore kids now attempting to follow in his footsteps, but he is a Westside Crîp, and to guys like Carr and others native to westside, that means something, whether they admit it or not.
After all, Nathaniel Woods was from the heart of Ensley, everyone involved in his case admitted he wasn't a killer and/or had never killed, only he was not a Crîp but a junkie, and DA Carr's office fought any and every out for Woods til through his execution.
In his amicus brief filed Friday in Jefferson County Circuit Court, Carr said Johnson deserves a new trial because of “a couple of factors” including because Johnson’s conviction was largely secured after a woman testified at Johnson’s trial in that she had listened in on a three-way phone call and heard Johnson confess to the crime and that it was never disclosed to the jury that she received a $5,000 reward in 2001 for her help with the case. Carr said jurors also did not hear from several other Crîps, um, sorry, I mean potential witnesses who could have perhaps provided an alibi for Johnson at the time of Hardy’s murder.
Who murdered Deputy Hardy? Johnson did, likely. More than likely, infact, if the evidence and his codefendants statements and testimonies are to be believed. But who knows, I wasn't there, and neither was DA Carr.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the point. Johnson has a huge family, with a son and an uncle heavily involved in some not so legal yet financially lucrative activities, and all the Ensley sages are saying that the Crîp family's using both the carrot and the stick on Carr, in the form of money and the withholding of votes.
In a more recent push, Carr said that the lead prosecutor on Johnson’s case “expressed concerns” about "everything" and also supports a new trial for Johnson. “It is the district attorney’s position that in the interest of justice, Mr. Johnson, who has spent more than two decades on death row, be granted a new trial,” the DA wrote in the brief.
So the prosecutor that fought tooth and nail to put away a man who he in his closing statements called "one of the most coldest criminals in the city" is now a few decades and bad peer reviews later not disagreeing with his new boss?
I smell a rat. A fat corrupt one. But that's just me.