Just Mercy, Chapter 7, Justice Denied. I filed a lengthy brief about the McMillan case to the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals documenting the following. Lack of evidence, unreliable testimonies, prosecutorial misconduct, racially discriminatory jury selection, an improper change of venue.
I even challenged Judge Robert E. Lee Keyes Jr.'s override of the jury's life sentence. Though really, reducing an innocent man's death sentence to life imprisonment would still have been a failure of justice. Walter's appeal was denied.
The court rejected all of my arguments, affirming his conviction and death sentence in a 70-page opinion. It was devastating. I didn't think it would turn out this way. At the oral arguments months earlier, i had been hopeful as i walked into the imposing alabama judicial building and stood in the grand appellate court room it stood across the street from the historic dexter avenue baptist church where dr martin luther king jr had pastored during the montgomery bus boycott it was also a block away from the state capitol which was adorned with the battle flag of the confederacy the chief judge of the court was former governor john patterson who had made national news in the nineteen sixties as a fierce opponent of civil rights and racial integration with the backing of the Ku Klux Klan.
When he was attorney general before becoming governor, Patterson banned the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, NAACP, from operating in Alabama and blocked civil rights boycotts and protests. As governor, he withheld law enforcement protection for the Freedom Riders. The black and white college students and activists who traveled south in the early 1960s to desegregate public facilities in recognition of new federal laws.
When the Freedom Riders bus traveled through Alabama, they were abandoned by the police. Alone and unprotected, they were beaten violently, and their bus was bombed. In spite of that history, I forced myself to be hopeful.
That was all long ago. During my argument, the court's five judges looked at me with curiosity, but asked few questions. I chose to interpret their silence as agreement. I drove to the prison to deliver the update. Walter didn't say anything as I explained the situation, but he had a despairing look on his face.
I had tried to prepare him for the possibility that it could take years to get his conviction overturned, but he had gotten his hopes up. They aren't ever going to admit they made a mistake, he said glumly. They know I didn't do this.
They just can't admit to being wrong, to looking bad. We're just getting started, Walter, I told him. They don't know what we know now about your innocence.
As soon as we present the new evidence to them, they'll think differently. My hopefulness was genuine, in spite of everything that had already happened. For one thing, after filing the appeal brief, I had continued investigating the case intensively. I'd finally been able to hire some additional lawyers for EJI, which gave me more time to uncover each other. even more evidence of Walter's innocence.
One new hire was Michael O'Connor, whose passion for helping people in trouble had been kindled by his own struggles with drug addiction earlier in life. The son of Irish immigrants, Michael had grown up outside of Philadelphia in a tough, working-class neighborhood. Throughout his struggle overcoming addiction, his family had never abandoned him.
His academic credentials got him into Yale Law School, but his heart was still connected to all the brokenness. His years on the street had shown him. He was a perfect hire for EJI. Without hesitation, he jumped into the Macmillan case with me.
We spent days tracking leads, interviewing dozens of people, following wild rumors, investigating different theories. Michael's help was vital, and I was grateful finally to have someone around to share the insanity of the case with, just as I was discovering that it was even crazier than I thought. After a few months of investigation, We discovered that not only had Bill Hooks been lying, he had been paid $5,000 by Sheriff Tate to testify against Walter. We also found out that Hooks had been released from jail immediately after giving the police his statement that he'd seen Walter's lowrider truck at the cleaners on the day of the murder.
Court records revealed that the DA and the sheriff, who are county officials, had somehow gotten city charges and fines against Hooks dismissed. even though they had no authority in city courts under a u s supreme court precedent the state was legally obliged to reveal all of this to walters counsel before the trial But, of course, they hadn't. We also found the white man who was running the store on the day that Ralph Myers came in for the purpose of giving a note to Walter.
The store owner recounted his memory of that day. Myers had to ask the store owner which of the several black men in the store was Walter McMillan. The store owner was adamant that Myers had never seen Walter McMillan before.
In a church basement, Walter's sister found flyers advertising the fish fry held at Walter's house. They confirmed that the event had taken place on the same day as the Morrison murder. We even tracked down Clay Cast, the white mechanic who had modified Walter's truck and converted it to a lowrider. He confirmed that the work had been done more than six months after Rhonda Morrison was murdered.
This proved that Walter McMillan's truck had had no modifications. or special features, and therefore could not have been the truck described by Myers and Hooks at the trial. I was feeling very good about the progress we were making when I got a call that would become the most significant break in the case.
The voice said, Mr. Stevenson, this is Ralph Myers. Before I could compose myself, he spoke again. I think you need to come and see me. I have something I need to tell you. Michael and I had started running a few miles at night after work to help us wind down from the increasingly long work days.
That evening, we spent our run discussing Myers. Why would Myers call now? Michael asked. Can you imagine just going into a courtroom and straight up making up a story that puts an innocent man on death row? I'm not sure we can trust anything he says.
Well, you may be right, I replied, but he had a lot of help putting it in together. He had a lot of help in putting together that testimony. Remember, they also put Myers on death row to coerce some of those statements. Who knows? He may be in touch with the state now, and this is some kind of setup where they are trying to mislead us.
I hadn't seriously considered that possibility until our run that night. I thought again about how sleazy Myers had been during the trial. We agreed that depending on what he had to say, Myers could change everything for us.
His bizarre accusations and testimony were the core of the state's entire case. Having read Myers'testimony and reviewed the records that were available about him, I knew that he had a tragic background and a complex personality. Walter and his family had described Myers as pure evil for the lies he had told during the trial.
The experience of being so coldly lied about at trial by someone you don't even know was one of the most disturbing parts of the trial for Walter. I told him we'd heard from Myers and that we would see what he had to say. Walter warned me. He's a snake. Be careful.
Three days later, Michael and I drove two hours to the Maximum Security State Prison in Springville, where Myers was imprisoned. We were admitted through secure metal doors into the large visitation area. There were vending machines along the wall and small rectangular tables.
where inmates could meet with family members. Michael and I put down our notepads and pens and paced around the room, waiting. When Myers walked in, I was surprised at how old he seemed.
His hair was gray, which made him seem frail and vulnerable. He was also shorter than I was expecting. His testimony had caused so much anguish for Walter and his family that I had created a larger-than-life image of him. He walked toward us but stopped short. when he saw Michael and nervously blurted out, who is he?
You didn't tell me you were bringing anybody with you. Myers had a thick southern accent. Up close, his scars made him appear more sympathetic than menacing or villainous. This is Michael O'Connor.
He is a lawyer at my office working with me on the case. Well, people told me I could trust you. I don't know anything about him. Promise?
He's fine. I glanced over at Michael, who was trying his best to look trustworthy. Please have a seat. He looked at Michael skeptically and then slowly sat down.
My plan was to try to ease him into the conversation by letting him know that we just wanted the truth. But before I could say anything, Myers blurted out, I lied. Everything I said at McMillan's trial was a lie. I have lost a lot of sleep and I have been in a lot of pain over this. I can't be quiet any longer.
The testimony you gave at trial against Walter McMillan was a lie? I asked cautiously. My heart was pounding.
but i tried to stay as steady as i could i was afraid that if i seemed too eager or too surprised or too anything he might retreat it was all a lie what i'm going to tell you is going to blow your mind mr stevenson mr myers you know i'm not going to want you to not only tell me the truth but also tell the court the truth are you willing to do that i was nervous to push so quickly but i needed to be clear I didn't want a private performance. That's why I called you. He sounded surprised that there could be any question about his intentions. I've been in a group therapy class here.
You're supposed to be real honest. We've been talking about honesty for nearly three months. Last week, people were talking about all the bad crap that happened to them when they were kids and all the bad things they'd done.
Myers was picking up steam as he spoke. I finally told the group, well, I can top all you. I done put a damn man on death row by lying in a damn court.
He paused dramatically. After I told all them what I'd done, everybody said I needed to make it right. That's what I'm trying to do. He paused again to let me take it all in.
Hey, y'all gonna buy me a soda? Or am I just gonna sit here all day looking at them vending machines and pouring my heart out? He smiled for the first time since we'd been together. Michael jumped up and walked over to buy him a drink. Son kissed orange if they got it.
For more than two hours, Ralph answered our questions. By the end, he did, in fact, blow my mind. He told us that the sheriff and the ABI had threatened him with the death penalty if he didn't testify against Walter McMillan.
He made accusations of official corruption. talked about his involvement in the Vicki Pittman murder and revealed his earlier attempts to recant, retract his testimony about Walter. He ultimately admitted that he had never known anything about the Rhonda Morrison murder.
He had no clue what had happened to her or anything else at all about the crime. He said that he had told lots of people from the DA on down that he had been coerced to testify falsely against Walter. if even half of what he said was true there were a lot of people involved in this case who knew straight from the mouth of his accuser that walter macmillan had had nothing to do with the murder of ronda morrison ralph was on his third sun-kissed orange when he stopped his stream of confessions leaned forward and beckoned us closer he spoke in a whisper to michael and me you know they'll try to kill you if you actually get to the bottom of everything We will learn that Ralph could never let a meeting end without dropping some final dramatic insight, observation, or prediction. I reassured him that we would be careful. On the drive back to Montgomery, Michael and I debated how much we could trust Myers.
His story at the trial was so ridiculous that it was easy to believe that he had been pressured to lie. But the corruption he had just exposed was harder to assess. Myers now claimed to have committed the Vicki Pittman murder under the direction of another local sheriff.
He laid out to us a widespread conspiracy involving police, drug dealing, and money laundering. It was quite a tale. We spent weeks following up on the leads that Myers had provided.
He admitted to us that he had never met Walter and only knew of him through Karen Kelly. So we decided to confirm the story with Kelly herself. now a prisoner at the Tutwiler Prison for Women, where she was serving a 10-year sentence for the Pittman murder. We were told to wait for Karen Kelly in a very small room that was empty except for a square table. Kelly was a slender white woman in her mid-30s who walked into the room wearing no restraints or handcuffs.
She seemed surprisingly comfortable, shaking my hand confidently before nodding at Michael. She sat down and announced that Walter had been framed and that she was grateful finally to be able to tell someone. When we began with our questions, she quickly confirmed that Myers had not known Walter before the Morrison murder.
Ralph is a fool. He thought he could trust those crooked cops and he let them talk him into saying he was involved with enforcement. They complained that the prosecutor had disrespected and ignored them.
They treated us like we were low-class white trash. They could not have cared less about us. Moselle looked furious as she spoke. I thought they treated victims better.
I thought we had some say. By the 1980s, a new movement had emerged in the criminal justice system, and there seemed to be an attitude that was more responsive to the perspective of crime victims and their families. The problem was that not all crime victims received the same treatment or respect. As Moselle and Ansel discovered, focusing on the social status of a crime Social status of the victim became one more way for the criminal justice system to favor some people and disfavor others, specifically poor and minority victims of crime.
Consider the Supreme Court case of McCleskey v. Kemp, which presented convincing empirical evidence that the race of the victim is the greatest predictor of who gets the death penalty in the United States. The study conducted for that case revealed that offenders in Georgia were 11 times more likely to get the death penalty if the victim was white than if the victim was black. These findings were identical in every other state where studies about race and the death penalty took place. In Alabama, even though 65% of all homicide victims were black, nearly 80% of the people on death row were there for crimes against victims who were white. Black defendant and white victim pairings increased the likelihood of a death sentence even more.
Many poor and minority victims, or victims who had family members who were incarcerated, noted that they were not getting calls or support from local police and prosecutors. If your family had lost a loved one to murder or had to suffer the anguish of rape or assault, your victimization might be ignored or taken less seriously. The expansion of victims'rights ultimately made formal what had always been true. Some victims are more protected and valued than others. More than anything else, it was the lack of concern and responsiveness by police, prosecutors, and victim services providers that devastated Moselle and Ansel.
You're the first two people to come to our house and spend time with us talking about Vicky, Ansel told us. After nearly three hours of hearing their heartbreaking reflections, we promised to do what we could to find out who else was involved in their niece Vicki's death. We were getting to the point where, without access to police records and files, we wouldn't be able to make more progress. Because the case was now pending on direct appeal to the Alabama Supreme Court, the state had no obligation to let us see. those records and files.
So we decided to file what is known as a Rule 32 petition, which would put us back in a trial court with the opportunity to present new evidence and obtain discovery, including access to the state files. Rule 32 petitions are required to include claims that were not raised at trial or on appeal and that could have not have been raised at trial or on appeal. They are the vehicle to challenge a conviction based on ineffective counsel.
The state's failure to disclose evidence, and most important, new evidence of innocence. Michael and I put a petition together that asserted all of these claims, including police and prosecutorial misconduct, and filed it in the Monroe County Circuit Court. The document alleged that Walter McMillan was unfairly tried, wrongly convicted, and illegally sentenced.
and it drew a lot of attention in Monroeville. Three years had passed since the trial. Most people assumed that Walter's guilt was a fact, and that all there was left to do was wait for an execution date. Surprisingly, the Alabama Supreme Court agreed to stay, or pause, our direct appeal process so that we could go ahead with the Rule 32 petition. This signaled that the court saw there was something unusual about Walter's case that warranted further review in the lower courts.
The Baldwin County Circuit Court judge was now obligated to review our case and could be forced to grant our discovery motions, which would require disclosure of all police and prosecutorial files. This was a very positive development. We needed to have another meeting with the DA, Tommy Chapman, and this time we'd be armed with a court order to turn over all files. We would also finally meet, in the flesh, the law enforcement officers involved in Walter's prosecution, the DA's investigator, Larry Ichner, ABI agent, Simon Benson, and Sheriff Tom Tate.
When we arrived at Chapman's office in the Monroe County Courthouse, the men were already there. Tate was a tall, heavyset white man who had come to the meeting in boots, jeans, and a light shirt. Ichner was another white man in his mid-40s wearing the same outfit.
Neither of them smiled much. The men knew that we were accusing them of misconduct. How much is Johnny D.
paying y'all? Tate asked, using Walter's nickname. We work for a non-profit. We don't charge the people we represent anything.
I said as blandly and politely as I could. Well, you're getting money from somewhere to do what you do. I decided to let that pass and move things forward.
I thought that it might be a good idea to sign something that verifies these are all the files you all have on this case. I said after they handed over the files. I wanted to be certain they gave us everything.
We don't need to do anything that formal, Brian. These men are officers of the court, just like you and I. You should just take the files. Chapman said, apparently sensing that this suggestion had provoked Tate and Ichner. Well, there could be files that have inadvertently been missed or documents that dropped out.
I'm just trying to document that. What we received is what you give us. Same number of pages, same file folder headings, etc.
I'm not questioning anyone's integrity. The hell you ain't. Tate was direct. He looked at Chapman.
We can sign something confirming what we give him. I think we may need a record of that more than he does. Chapman nodded. We got the files and left Monroeville with a lot of excitement about what we would find in the hundreds of pages of records we received. Back in Montgomery, we eagerly started reviewing.
The files were astonishing. We got records from Taylor Hardin, the mental health facility where Myers was sent after he first refused to testify. We got the ABI file from Simon Benson, the only Black ABI agent in South Alabama, as he had proudly told us. We got Monroeville City Police Department records and other city files.
We even got Escambia County records on the Vicki Pittman murder. Inspired by the elaborate conspiracies that Ralph Myers had described, we soon started asking questions about some of the law enforcement officers whose names kept coming up around the Pittman murder. We even decided to talk to the FBI about some of what we had learned.
It wasn't long after that when the bomb threats started. And that's the end of chapter... 7