 Threatened with violence, Johnson's two African-American lawyers had to leave the state, never to return.Ninety-four years after the lynching, in February 2000, Hamilton County Criminal Judge Doug Meyer overturned Johnson's conviction after hearing arguments that Johnson did not receive a fair trial because of the all-white jury and the judge's refusal to move the trial from Chattanooga, where there was much publicity about the case.On April 15, 2016, the Tennessee General Assembly passed a resolution, commending the valor of Johnson's legal defense and the federal intervention by President Theodore Roosevelt, the Justice Department and the Supreme Court and deploring the actions of Shipp and the lynch mob which he abetted in the "untimely lynching of Mr. Ed Johnson."