Ty Alper

That was when we knew, okay, she did know about this reward.

She was motivated by the reward when she testified.

And the judge knew about it in an order that was not included in the court file.

We knew when we got the judge's order that he had authorized the payment, and then she told us that she got paid.

So we knew it all.

When you take a step back, he's on death row because the jury believed a woman who they didn't know was being paid for her testimony.

And that should cause real concerns and questions about the validity of the conviction.

You have to turn over everything, everything that you have that concerns a reward payment, you have to turn it over to Mr. Johnson's lawyers.

I think it was eight or nine banker's boxes of documents, and we went through every single page looking for any mention of a reward payment about Ellison, and there was nothing in there.

So she told us that if we were only looking in the case file, we weren't looking everywhere that the documentation might be because they also had a reward file that they kept separate from the case files that would include paperwork and documentation of witnesses who had sought rewards and or been paid rewards.

We got an email that said we found these documents.

They had been misfiled.

And here they are.

Really what she was doing was validating the credibility of Violet Ellison, saying, I didn't know that there was even a reward offered in the case, which...

is impossible to believe.

And then validating her testimony that three years after the trial, not having known that there was even a reward offered in the case, the DA's office, out of the blue, called her up one day and said, hey, remember that case you testified in?

We have $5,000 of the state's money that we'd like to give you for that.

Do you want to come down and get it?

And she said, sure, and came down and got it, which is also impossible to believe.