 The only time reporter Beth Shelburne saw Taforis Johnson in person was in a courtroom in 2019. Beth was covering a hearing in his case for Birmingham, Alabama's TV news station WBRC. At that point, he had been on death row for 20 years. Back then, she didn't know much about the case, mainly that Taforis had been convicted of murdering a deputy sheriff named Bill Hardy and that he'd always maintained his innocence.