Monique Hicks

About two weeks later, I'm sitting on my sofa and I open up my local news app to just read the headlines.

Tafaris Johnson has been claiming innocence for over 20 years on death row, something to that effect.

And I opened up the article and started reading and I just started sobbing like uncontrollable because I was like, oh my goodness.

We did convict an innocent man, and he's been on death row all these years, and I didn't know it.

You know, the star witness was paid, and the defense didn't know it.

The jurors didn't know it.

So, yeah, I was shocked.

And then I was like, well, how shocked were Tavoris and his family when we accused him of being guilty?

So I just can't imagine what that was like to them.

Another blow.

I definitely believe we would have, as a jury, talked about that.

Like, how credible is this testimony she's being paid for it?

Yes, I do think there would have been conversations about it, and I do believe it could have changed the outcome.

I really felt like the jury was used in this big game of injustice.

We were just like, here's some theories.

We're just going to keep throwing them out until we can get a group of people together to believe it.

And I just feel like we were being used in this game.

They needed a conviction.

It was a high-profile case.

You know, it was a sheriff's deputy.