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b"One July night in 1995, Deputy Sheriff William G. Hardy was shot behind the Crown Sterling Suites hotel in Birmingham, Alabama. At the same time as the murder, at least ten people saw Toforest Johnson four miles away, at a popular nightclub called Tee's Place. But detectives zeroed in on him as a main suspect in Deputy Hardy\\u2019s murder anyway, ultimately resulting in Toforest being tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. For over a quarter century, Toforest has been confined to a 5\\u2019 by 8\\u2019 cell on Alabama\\u2019s death row. In 2019, investigative journalist Beth Shelburne began covering the case, going down a disturbing rabbit hole revealing many unsettling facts that cast grave doubts about Toforest\\u2019s guilt. The facts she found tear at the very foundation of the American criminal justice system: No eyewitnesses or physical evidence tied Toforest to the murder; the state tried to convict a different man for the same crime; and perhaps most disturbing of all, Toforest\\u2019s conviction relied on an \\u2018earwitness\\u2019 \\u2013 a woman who claimed to have eavesdropped on an incriminating phone call, a woman whom prosecutors paid for her testimony, in secret. That payment was not disclosed to the jury, Toforest, or his lawyers until after he had been on death row for 17 years. From the team behind the award-winning hit podcast Bone Valley, Lava for Good\\u2019s Earwitness is an 8-episode docuseries that asks the question, \\u201cHow did an innocent man end up on death row \\u2014 and why is the state still trying to execute him over the objection of the prosecutor who put him there?\\u201d Shelburne\\u2019s unprecedented access to key players\\u2014the lead detective, lead prosecutor, witnesses, jurors, and the earwitness herself\\u2014 illuminate a story filled with disturbing twists, frustrating ambiguities, and shocking admissions. The story of Toforest Johnson and the state's enthusiasm for the death penalty in the face of such troubling evidentiary flaws brings to light the failings of a criminal justice system run amok. Earwitness is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1."