Celisia Stanton (34:04)
Both DeForest and Ardregas were charged with capital murder. To me, it was an odd choice. Yes. The evidence against them was extremely scant. But investigators had also come across a variety of evidence that seemed to point to Hardragus and DeForest's innocence. Not only had the cops interviewed a series of alibi witnesses who saw the pair at T's place during the time of Hardy's murder. But there were also two folks at the Crown Suites who'd seen something important. Both witnesses had looked out a window of the hotel immediately after they'd heard gunshots and shared two extremely similar accounts. A man quickly slinking through the inky darkness, opening the driver's side door of a light colored sedan and driving off silently. If this man was the perpetrator, he couldn't have been Ardregas or Taforest. Ardregas drove a two door black Monte Carlo, customized with Flowmaster mufflers, An addition that made the vehicle extremely loud. What's more, Rodriguez's driver's side door was broken. It didn't even open. Whoever the witness saw that night, one thing was certain. It wasn't DeForest and it wasn't our Dragis. But despite these leads, by this point, investigators had tunnel vision. Their entire case hanging on Yolanda's testimony. But with her story changing so many times, defense lawyers asked for a pretrial hearing to determine whether Yolanda's testimony should even be heard in court. During the hearing, Yolanda took the stand. It was there that things took a shocking turn. When she's asked by Rodriguez's attorney about whether she was at the Crown Sterling that night, she said she wasn't. That her previous stories, they were lies. When asked why she told investigators something entirely different, she replied, because the pressure they were telling me, don't you know you can go to jail for this? And that's all I was thinking. That's all I had in my mind. Jail. I don't want to go. They were telling me, we know you was there. We can find out evidence that you were there. So after they put all the pressure on me, I went on and said I was there. I said, maybe if I go on and say I was there, maybe all the threats and everything will end about me going to jail as a juvenile. Yet another reminder that Yolanda was a teenager, A kid alone with detectives. Faced with what she saw as a really scary choice, say that she was at the hotel that night or faced jail time. During this hearing, Yolanda also emphasized that she was questioned without her mom or her attorney present, and that she felt pressured to tell the cops whatever they wanted to hear. As I imagined Yolanda in this situation, her choice to lie seemed almost reasonable. But when the hearing ended, the judge chose not to accept Yolanda's recantation and denied the defense's motion to dismiss the charges. By this point, two years had passed since the night of Deputy Hardy's murder, and Rodriguez and Taforis were both facing the possibility of the death penalty. But as Yolanda seemed to be faltering, the prosecution had another secret witness waiting in the wings. They'd come forward shortly after the reward for information was increased to $20,000. This witness, 53 year old Violet Ellison, claimed that she overheard DeForest admit to killing Officer Hardy. Wild. Right. And I'm sure you're wondering how that could be, so I'm gonna get into it. But also, I have to be honest. Violet's story is a little complicated, but it is worth hearing. So bear with me. What you need to know is this. Violet had a 16 year old daughter named Katrina. And Katrina regularly kept in contact with a few men in jail. They would call her to catch up, and sometimes they'd even ask Katrina to start three way calls for them. It was a way to save money. With a three way call, they'd only have to pay for the one call to Katrina instead of multiple calls to lots of different people. And so one day, Katrina got a call from one of these men, a guy named Fred, and he asked Katrina to start a three way call with a woman named Daisy so that a friend of his could speak with her. And that friend who wanted to speak with Daisy, that was Taforest. He was currently in jail awaiting trial. So Katrina did it. She phoned Daisy. And when Daisy picked up, she set down the receiver and walked away with Katrina now in the other room. Violet, remember, that's Katrina's mom. Picked up the phone, started listening in silently. Later, Violet would claim to investigators that she heard DeForest tell Daisy on that call that he had planned to rob someone outside of the Crown Sterling Suites Hotel. And when he was caught by Deputy Hardy, he shot and killed him. According to the podcast Ear Witness, Violet's original interview with investigators included many details that were already public information, things news outlets had reported about the investigation. And some of the things she shared just didn't match up to the specifics of the crime scene. Violet wasn't a perfect witness, but nothing investigators had was. So they kept her in their back pocket just in case they needed her. But they planned to try Hardragus first. And for his case, Violet wouldn't be helpful. This message comes from Greenlight. Ready to start talking to your kids about financial literacy? Meet Greenlight, the debit card and money app that teaches kids and teens how to earn, save, spend wisely, and invest. With your guardrails in place, with Greenlight, you can send money to kids quickly Set up chores, automate allowance and keep an eye on your kids spending with real time notifications. Join millions of parents and kids building healthy financial habits together on Greenlight get started risk free@greenlight.com Spotify as his trial loomed, our Draggas hoped for the best. His family had rallied around him and scraped together enough money to hire an experienced defense attorney, a decision that would cost them tens of thousands of dollars. In contrast, Taforis prepared for trial with a team of public defenders. His family had met with a lawyer who promised he had the skills to gain an acquittal. But those talents would come with a a $10,000 retainer to start. Esther's cousin told journalist Beth Shelburne it was an amount his family just couldn't afford. They considered taking out a loan, but Taforis told them not to. He assured his cousin that he'd be alright. He'd done nothing wrong and believed he could prove that in court. So instead he was given two court appointed attorneys. And while this decision saved his family from the strain of hiring a private lawyer, it also came with severe drawbacks. According to the podcast Ear Witness, at the time, Alabama paid defense attorneys only $20 an hour for work completed outside the courtroom, and even that was capped at $1,000 per case unless an attorney was willing to work for free. This restriction severely limited the amount of time that could be spent preparing for trial. But ready or not, the trials would commence kicking off in November of 1997, was up first. And Yolanda, who'd previously tried to recant her version of events, had changed her story once again. This time she told jurors that she'd seen Andregas shoot Deputy Hardy. The county's chief medical examiner, also testified. He claimed that the bullet wounds in Hardy's head were at an upward angle, an angle consistent with the bullet trajectory you might expect if the perpetrator was sitting in a wheelchair. The defense argued that this didn't even matter. If Hardragas had shot Hardy, there were a lot of logistics that weren't accounted for in the prosecution's story. The whole process would have taken a while, increasing the chances of someone seeing Ardregas at the crime scene. And yet no one had seen a man in a wheelchair fleeing the hotel. The defense also called alibi witnesses, folks who'd seen Andregas at T's place. It was their word against Yolanda's. But when the jury left to deliberate, coming to a unanimous decision proved difficult. They were gridlocked. Eventually, the judge declared a mistrial, but none of it would stop the state from pursuing the same charges. And they set plans to try Rodriguez for a second time. But before they could do that, In December of 1997, Tafores trial began. In the two and a half weeks since our Dragis trial, the prosecution strategy had changed. Now they were saying that DeForest, not Ardragas, was the shooter. Their theory broke down like this. On the evening of the murder, DeForest planned to rob a few prominent hotel guests at the Crown Suites Hotel. But things had gone awry when it was all interrupted by Deputy Hardy. It was then that DeForest shot and killed him. But it wasn't just the general arc of the prosecutor's story that changed. Evidence that two weeks ago clearly pointed to Rodriguez was suddenly less clear. Remember the upward bullet trajectory that prosecutors said pointed towards a seated perpetrator? Well, this go around, they claim that the bullet trajectory couldn't definitively pinpoint the position of the shooter. And hearing all this, it really bothered me. Taforist and Rodriguez were both tried by the same prosecutor. Back to back, no less. It was literally impossible for prosecutors to genuinely believe both versions of the story they told jurors. It meant they had to know that at least one of these men was innocent. For me, it raised a lot of questions. Was this legal? Was this common? Could prosecutors really present two entirely different and mutually exclusive theories about the same crime? Well, turns out they can and they do. It's a practice I'll refer to as oppositional theories. And according to ProPublica, in the last 55 years, at least 29 men have been sentenced to death in cases where prosecutors were accused of doing this exact thing. I found that hard to square. I mean, that data was for capital cases alone, cases where the stakes were literally life and death. Yet somehow, for prosecutors, this seemed more like a game. One where the truth didn't matter as much as persuasion. Was that really legal? ProPublica reports that while the Supreme Court has never ruled specifically on the use of oppositional theories as a legitimate prosecutorial tactic, the lower courts are mixed. There are some cases where judges have overturned a conviction because they found the use of oppositional theories to be a violation of due process rights. But in many more instances, the courts have turned a blind eye, allowing these convictions to stand while simultaneously vocalizing their distaste for the strategy, A consequence that barely amounts to a slap on the wrist for prosecutors. For these judges, overturning the conviction would be a bridge too far. Prosecutors are technically still playing by the rules. And when it comes to the law, that's what matters most. And so there was nothing to stop them from doing the same thing to Taforest and Rodriguez. As the Washington Post writes, prosecutor Jeff Wallace was arguing in front of two entirely different juries. There was nothing to stop him from selling two versions of the truth. The product doesn't have to be good if the salesman is. Since there was no hard evidence to back up this newly presented theory about deforest, and because Yolanda was now saying that our Dragis had committed the murder, prosecutors relied instead on the testimony of Violet Ellison, the same witness prosecutor prosecutors had been holding onto in case they ever needed her. Now they decided they did. While on the stand, she forwarded the same theory she'd told the cops that she overheard Tafores confess to the crime while he was on a call with a woman named Daisy. She did provide a few new colorful details, though. She quoted Tafores as saying, I shot the fucker in the head, and I saw his head go back and he fell. He shouldn't have gotten my business messing up my shit. It was a comment she never made in her initial recorded statement. The quote, she said, was pulled from the notes she claimed to have taken in real time while she listened in on the call. But that story seems questionable for several reasons. Chief among them was the fact that Violet said DeForest had only identified himself on the call by his first name. And yet in her notes, she repeatedly refers to him by his last name, Johnson. Taforis legal team argued that what Violet heard on that call wasn't a confession. Yes, they said Tafores had talked with a woman named Daisy on the phone, but what he'd shared was just an answer to a question Daisy had asked about why he was in jail. Daisy herself was called to the stand, and she backed up the defense's argument, wholly swearing that Tafores had never confessed to her. Not then, not ever. The defense would also rebut prosecutors with a counter story, that DeForest couldn't have committed the murders because he'd been at T's place when it happened. Three alibi witnesses backed that up on the stand. They'd also forward the testimony of the Crown Suite's guest, who looked out his window immediately after the gunshots. He was one of the witnesses who saw the potential perpetrator walk to a car, slide into the driver's seat, and quietly drive off. And as the defense presented, this couldn't have been the car DeForest was in that night. If you remember, the driver, side door of that vehicle. Didn't open, and the added Flowmaster mufflers made the car extremely loud. All of this, the defense argued, meant the only evidence prosecutors had to link DeForest to the murder was Violet Ellison's testimony. But once the jury was in deliberations, they found themselves hitting deadlock after deadlock. They just couldn't agree. And in a replay of what had transpired just a few weeks earlier, the judge declared a mistrial. A Birmingham News article published shortly after read, taforis Johnson might have been found guilty Tuesday of gunning down a Jefferson county sheriff's deputy, except for three jurors who apparently refused to convict him. It was a weird way, I thought, to open an article about a man who had yet to be proven guilty. But if there were folks intent on seeing him convicted, they'd have their second chance. Just eight months later, in August of 1998, Taforis Re entered the courtroom. Violet once again testified for the prosecution, with Daisy countering her story for the defense. But this time, the prosecution had a new witness they'd bring to the stand. Latonya Henderson, Yolanda's friend who'd been with DeForest and Rodriguez the night of Hardy's murder. As you might remember, she had spent the last five months in jail under charges of hindering prosecution, charges that had come forward after she stuck to her story that she knew nothing about Deputy Hardy's murder. But now the state told the judge that they would be dropping their charges in exchange for latanya's testimony when she took the stand. Her story didn't stray that far from what she'd originally told investigators. She hadn't witnessed Hardy's murder. But what latonya did say was that she and Tafores both had guns that night, that they later both hid these guns. And while police never found these firearms, Latonya's testimony connected Taforis to a potential murder weapon. If the jury believed Taforis had a gun that night, they might also believe he used it to shoot Hardy. But if the prosecution had strengthened their case in the eight months since DeForest's first trial, the defense seemed to have weakened theirs. First, they chose not to call the same alibi witnesses from the original trial. Instead, they called a few others, who journalist Beth Shelburne reported seemed ill prepared and flustered. During their testimony. The defense also chose not to call the witness from the hotel, the one who'd seen a man get into the driver's side of a light colored car. Instead, the defense called a new witness, Yolanda Chambers. Yep, you heard that right. The same Yolanda Chambers whose changing stories had helped put DeForest on trial in the first place. But now Yolanda seemed to be sticking to her story that Hardregas was the real killer. And the defense saw an opportunity to shift the blame away from Tiforest. She told the jury she'd seen Andreagas shoot and kill Deputy Hardy. Only problem, she said she'd been at the crime scene with Latonya and DeForest. And if that was true, to force alibi of being at T's place suddenly unravels. The defense had directly contradicted itself. Without one unified story, their whole case began to falter. The jury left to deliberate and returned. After two and a half hours, they had their verdict. Guilty. Convicted of capital murder, Tafores now faced one of two futures. Either life in prison without parole or the death penalty. At a sentencing hearing, members of Taforist's family took the stand. According to ear witness, Taforest's mother, Donna, sobbed so hard she struggled to hold her head up, crying out, just don't give my baby no electric chair. The sentencing hearing that would determine whether Taforest would live or die was over in just 80 minutes. When the jury returned with their decision, it was decisive. A 102 recommendation that DeForest be put to death. According to Bess Shelburne, a newspaper described DeForest sitting motionless, appearing stunned at the decision. His mom yelled out, no, no, no. One of Taforis kids, Shanae, was six years old. Sitting in the courtroom, she told ear witness what she remembers from that day.
