Chapter Eleven

I’ll Fly Away

It was the third bomb threat in two months. As we quickly cleared the office and waited for the police to arrive, the entire staff was nervous. We now had five attorneys, an investigator, and three administrative staff members. Law students had started arriving for short-term internships, which provided us with additional legal assistance and critically needed investigative help. But none of them had signed on for bomb threats. It was tempting to ignore them, but two years earlier an African American civil rights lawyer in Savannah, Georgia, named Robert “Robbie” Robinson was murdered when a bomb sent to his law office exploded. Around the same time, a federal appeals court judge, Robert Vance, was killed in Birmingham by a mail bomb. Days later a third bomb was sent to a civil rights office in Florida and a fourth to a courthouse in Atlanta. The bomber seemed to be attacking legal professionals connected to civil rights. We were warned that we could be targets, and for weeks we carefully hauled our mail packages to the federal courthouse for X-ray screenings before opening them. After that, bomb threats were no joke.

Everyone fled the building while we discussed the likelihood of an actual bombing. The caller had described our building precisely when making his threat. Sharon, our receptionist, had scolded the caller. She was a young mother of two small children and had grown up in a poor, rural white family. She spoke to people plainly and directly.

“Why are you doing this? You’re scaring us! ”

She said the man had sounded middle-aged and Southern, but she couldn’t give any more of a description. “I’m doing you a favor, ” he said threateningly. “I want y’all to stop doing what you’re doing. My first option is not to kill everybody, so you better get out of there now! Next time there won’t be a warning. ”

It had been a month since the McMillian hearing. The first time the office was threatened the caller had made racist remarks about the need to teach us a lesson. Around the same time I got threatening calls at home. One typical caller said, “If you think we’re going to let you help that nigger get away with killing that girl, you’ve got another thing coming. You’re both going to be dead niggers! ”

Although I was handling other cases, I was certain the calls were in response to the McMillian case. Leading up to the hearing, Michael and I had been followed several times while doing investigative work in Monroe County. A scary man had called me late one night to tell me that someone had offered him a lot of money to kill me, but he said he wasn’t going to do it because he respected what we did. I expressed my appreciation for his support and politely thanked him. It was hard to know how seriously to take any of it, but it was definitely unnerving.

After we cleared the building, the police went through the office with dogs. No bomb was found, and when the building didn’t blow up after an hour and a half, we all filed back inside. We had work to do.

A few days later, I received a different kind of bombshell, this time a call from the clerk’s office in Baldwin County. The clerk was calling to let me know that Judge Norton had ruled in the McMillian case—she needed my fax number to send me a copy of the ruling. I gave it to her and sat nervously by the fax machine. When only three sheets of paper came through the machine I was concerned.

The pages contained a tersely worded order from Judge Norton denying us relief. I was more disappointed than devastated. I had suspected that this would be Judge Norton’s response. For all his interest at the hearing, he had never seemed particularly engaged over the basic question of whether Walter was guilty or innocent. He was locked into a maintenance role: He was a custodian for the system who was unlikely to overturn the previous judgment, even if there was compelling evidence of innocence.

What was surprising, however, was how superficial, insubstantial, and uninterested the court’s two-and-a-half-page order read. The judge addressed only the testimony of Ralph Myers and none of the legal claims we’d presented or any of the testimonies of the other dozen-plus witnesses. In fact, there was no case law cited in the entire order:

Ralph Meyers took the stand before this Court, swore to tell the truth and proceeded to recant most, if not all, of the relevant portions of his testimony at trial. Clearly, Ralph Meyers has either perjured himself at trial or has perjured himself in front of this Court.

The following areas of concern were considered in reaching this decision: The demeanor of the witness; the opportunity of the witness to have knowledge of the facts which he testified to at trial; the rationale, as stated by the witness for his testimony at the first trial; the rationale, as stated by the defendant, for his recantation; the evidence of external pressures brought to bear on the witness prior to and after both trial and recantation; the actions of the witness that lend credence to his trial testimony and the actions of the witness that lend credence to his recantation; evidence adduced at trial in contradiction of the witness’ testimony on details, and due to the nature of this case, any evidence from any source concerning the inability of the witness to have known the facts to which he testified to at trial.

Since the trial of this matter was conducted before the Honorable R. E. L. Key, Circuit Judge, Retired, this court did not have the opportunity to compare the demeanor of the witness during trial testimony and his recantation testimony.

A review of the other factors set out above does not provide conclusive evidence that the witness, Ralph Meyers, perjured himself at the original trial. There is ample evidence that pressure has been brought to bear on Ralph Meyers since his trial testimony which could tend to discredit his recantation. There is absolutely no evidence in the trial record or the recantation testimony that places Ralph Meyers somewhere other than the scene of the crime at the time it was committed.

This cause having been remanded to the Court for a determination of whether there is evidence to support the theory that Ralph Meyers perjured himself at the original trial and this court having determined that there is insufficient evidence to support that theory, it is therefore ORDERED, ADJUDGED and DECREED that the trial testimony of Ralph Myers is not found to have been perjured testimony.

Done this 19th day of May, 1992.

THOMAS B. NORTON, JR.

Circuit Judge

While Chapman had suggested that Myers must have been pressured to recant, the district attorney presented no actual evidence to support that claim, which made the judge’s ruling hard to understand. I had advised Walter and his family that we would likely need to go to an appellate court for any real chance of relief, despite how positive everyone thought the hearing had been.

I was optimistic about what our evidence might accomplish in the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals. We were now regularly arguing cases in front of that court. Following my first McMillian argument, we had filed almost two dozen death penalty appeals, and the court was starting to respond to our advocacy. We had won four reversals in death penalty cases in 1990, four more in 1991, and by the end of 1992, we’d won relief for another eight death row prisoners. The court frequently complained about being forced to order new trials or grant relief, but nonetheless ruled in our favor. In a few years, some of the appellate court judges would be attacked and replaced in partisan judicial elections by candidates who complained about the court’s rulings in death penalty cases. But we persisted and continued raising reversible errors in capital cases. We were pushing the court to enforce the law in these cases, and when they refused, we were having success getting the Alabama Supreme Court and federal courts to grant relief.

Based on this recent experience, I thought we could win relief for McMillian on appeal. Even if the court was unwilling to rule that Walter was innocent and should be released, the withholding of exculpatory evidence was extreme enough that the court would have a hard time avoiding the case law requiring a new trial. Nothing could be assured, but I explained to Walter that we were only just now getting to a court where our claims would be seriously considered.

Michael had stayed long past the two years he had committed to us, but he was now scheduled to move to San Diego to start a job as a federal public defender. He agonized about leaving our office, although he was less conflicted about leaving Alabama.

I assigned one of our new attorneys, Bernard Harcourt, to replace Michael on Walter’s case. Bernard was a lot like Michael in that he was smart, determined, and extremely hardworking. He had first worked with me when he was a law student at Harvard Law School. He became so engaged in the work that he asked the federal judge he was clerking for after law school if he could cut short his two-year clerkship to join us in Alabama. The judge agreed, and Bernard arrived shortly before Michael left. Raised in New York City by French parents, he had attended the Lycé e Franç ais de New York in Manhattan, a high school that was unapologetic about its European perspective on education. After graduating from Princeton, Bernard worked in banking before pursuing his law degree. He had been preparing for a traditional legal career until he came down to work with us one summer and became fascinated by the issues that death penalty cases presented. He and his girlfriend, Mia, moved to Montgomery and were intrigued by life in Alabama. Bernard’s quick immersion in the McMillian case intensified his cultural adventure more than he could have ever imagined.

The community’s presence at the hearing got people talking about what we had presented in court, and that encouraged more people to come forward with helpful information. All sorts of people were contacting us with wide-ranging claims of corruption and misconduct. Only a few things here and there were useful to us in our efforts to free Walter, but all of it was interesting. Bernard and I continued to track leads and interview people who had insights to share about life in Monroe County.

The threats we received made me worry about the hostility that Walter would face if he was ever released. I wondered how safely he could live in the community if everyone was persuaded that he was a dangerous murderer. We began discussing the idea of reaching out to a few people who might help us publicly dramatize the injustice of Mr. McMillian’s wrongful conviction as a way of setting the stage for his possible release. If the public could only know what we knew, it might ease his re-entry into freedom. We wanted people to understand this simple fact: Walter did not commit that murder. His freedom wouldn’t be based on some tricky legal loophole or the exploitation of a technicality. It would be based on simple justice—he was an innocent man.

On the other hand, I didn’t think media attention would help win the case now pending in the Court of Criminal Appeals. In fact, the chief judge on the court, John Patterson, had famously sued The New York Times over their coverage of the Civil Rights Movement when he was Alabama’s governor. It was a common tactic used by Southern politicians during civil rights protests: Sue national media outlets for defamation if they provide sympathetic coverage of activists or if they characterize Southern politicians and law enforcement officers unfavorably. Southern state court judges and all-white juries were all too willing to rule in favor of “defamed” local officials, and state authorities had won millions of dollars in judgments this way. More important, the defamation lawsuits chilled sympathetic coverage of civil rights activism.

In 1960, The New York Times printed an advertisement titled “Heed Their Rising Voices” that attempted to raise money to defend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. against perjury charges in Alabama. Southern officials responded by going on the offensive and suing the newspaper. Public Safety Commissioner L. B. Sullivan and Governor Patterson claimed defamation. A local jury awarded them half a million dollars, and the case was appealed to the U. S. Supreme Court.

In a landmark ruling, New York Times v. Sullivan changed the standard for defamation and libel by requiring plaintiffs to prove malice—that is, evidence of actual knowledge on the part of the publisher that a statement is false. The ruling marked a significant victory for freedom of the press, and it liberated media outlets and publishers to talk more honestly about civil rights protests and activism. But in the South it generated even more contempt for the national press, and that animosity has lingered beyond the Civil Rights Era. I had no doubt that national press coverage of Walter’s case would not help our cause at the Court of Criminal Appeals.

But I did think getting a more informed view of Walter’s conviction and the murder would make his life after release less dangerous—assuming we could ever get his conviction overturned. We felt that we had to take our chances and get the story out. I was concerned about the inability of people in the local community to get a fair picture of what was going on. Aside from the hostility we feared he would face if Walter was released, we were worried about what would happen if a new trial was ordered. All of the prejudicial media coverage would make a fair trial nearly impossible. The local press in Monroe County and Mobile had demonized Walter and had defiantly maintained that his conviction was reliable and his execution necessary.

Local papers had painted Walter as a dangerous drug dealer who had possibly murdered several innocent teenagers. Monroeville and Mobile newspapers freely printed assertions that Walter was a “drug kingpin, ” a “sexual predator, ” and a “gang leader. ” When he was first arrested, local headlines emphasized the absurd sexual misconduct charges involving Ralph Myers. “McMillian Charged with Sodomy” was a common headline. In covering the hearings, the Monroe Journal focused on the danger Walter posed: “Those entering the courtroom had to pass through a metal detector, as has been the case throughout the court proceedings against McMillian, and officers were stationed throughout the courtroom. ” Despite all of the evidence presented at our hearing showing that Walter had nothing to do with the Pittman murder, the local press invoked the case to scare up more fear about Walter. “Convicted Slayer Wanted in East Brewton Murder” was an early headline in the Brewton paper. “Ronda Wasn’t the Only Girl Killed” was the headline in the Mobile Press Register after our hearing. The Mobile paper reported after the hearing: “Myers and McMillian were part of a burglary, theft, forgery and drug smuggling ring that operated in several counties in South Alabama, according to law enforcement officers. McMillian was the leader of the operation. ” From its focus on his pretrial placement on death row to the extra security surrounding his court appearances, the narrative in the press was clear: This man was extremely dangerous.

At this point, people seemed uninterested in the truth surrounding the crime. During the most recent hearing in Baldwin County, the State’s local supporters walked out of the courtroom rather than hear the evidence that supported Walter’s innocence. It was risky, but we hoped that national press coverage of our side of the story would change the narrative.

A Washington Post journalist, Walt Harrington, had come to Alabama to do a piece on our work a year earlier and had heard me describe the McMillian case. He passed that information to a journalist friend of his, Pete Earley, who contacted me and became immediately interested. After reading the transcripts and files we provided him, he jumped into the case, spent time with several of the players, and quickly came to share our astonishment that Walter had been convicted on such unreliable evidence.

I’d given a speech at Yale Law School earlier in the year that was attended by a producer from the popular CBS investigative program 60 Minutes, and he also called me. We’d gotten calls from various news magazine programs over the previous few years that expressed interest in covering our work, but I was wary. My general attitude was that press coverage rarely helped our clients. Beyond the general anti-media sentiments in the South, the death penalty was particularly polarizing. It’s such a politically charged topic that even sympathetic pieces about people on death row usually triggered a local backlash that created more problems for the client and the case. Even though the clients sometimes wanted press attention, I was extremely resistant to media interviews about pending cases. I knew of too many cases where a favorable profile in the media had provoked an expedited execution date or retaliatory mistreatment that made things much worse.

We filed our appeal in the Court of Criminal Appeals that summer. With no small amount of lingering uncertainty, I decided to move forward with the 60 Minutes piece. Veteran reporter Ed Bradley and his producer David Gelber came down from New York City to Monroeville on a 100-degree day in July and interviewed many of the people whose testimony we’d presented at our hearing. They spoke with Walter, Ralph Myers, Karen Kelly, Darnell Houston, Clay Kast, Jimmy Williams, Walter’s family, and Woodrow Ikner. They confronted Bill Hooks at his job and conducted an extensive interview with Tommy Chapman. Word got around quickly that news celebrity Ed Bradley was in town, upsetting local officials. The Monroe Journal wrote:

Too many of these [out-of-town] writers express open scorn for the people and institutions they encounter here, making no more than a superficial effort to gather facts. Worse, a few have been demonstrably inaccurate. We could do without any more news coverage of the “big-time reporter comes to hick town” genre.

Even before the piece was broadcast, the local media seemed to be urging the community to distrust anything they heard reported about the case. In “CBS Examines Murder Case, ” a local reporter for the Monroe Journal wrote, “Monroe County District Attorney Tommy Chapman said he believes researchers for the CBS television newsmagazine program 60 Minutes had their minds made up before ever coming here. ” Chapman had taken to using a photo of Walter obtained at the time of his arrest that showed him with long bushy hair and a beard, which Chapman thought made it clear that he was a dangerous criminal. “The person they interviewed at Holman prison is not the same person arrested by Sheriff Tate for this murder, ” Chapman explained. The Journal added that Chapman offered CBS the photograph of the “real” McMillian taken at the time of his arrest, but they were “not interested. ” Prisoners in Alabama are required to remain clean-shaven, so of course Walter looked different when interviewed on camera.

When the 60 Minutes piece aired months later, local officials were quick to discredit it. The Mobile Press Register headline was “DA: TV Account of McMillian’s Conviction a ‘Disgrace’ ”; the article quoted Chapman: “For them to hold themselves up as a reputable news show is beyond belief, and irresponsible. ” The publicity was characterized as further injuring Ronda Morrison’s parents. The local writers complained that the Morrisons had to worry and deal with the stress that new publicity “could lead many people to think McMillian is innocent. ”

The local media were eager to join the prosecutors in criticizing the 60 Minutes piece because it implicated their coverage, which had largely presented only the prosecution’s theory and characterization of Walter and the crime. But people in the community watched 60 Minutes all the time and generally trusted it. Despite the local media reaction, the CBS coverage gave the community a summary of the evidence we’d presented in court and created questions and doubts about Walter’s guilt. Some influential community leaders also thought it made Monroeville look backward and possibly racist in a way that was not good for the community’s image or efforts at recruiting business, and business leaders started asking tough questions of Chapman and law enforcement about what was going on in the case.

People in the black community were thrilled to see honest coverage of the case. They had been whispering about Walter’s wrongful conviction for years. The case had so traumatized the black community that many had become preoccupied with each court development and ruling. We frequently got calls from people simply seeking an update. Some callers sought clarification of a particular point in the case that had been the subject of serious debate in a barbershop or at a social gathering. For many black people in the region, watching the evidence that we had presented in court now laid out on national television was therapeutic.

In the 60 Minutes interview with Chapman, he dismissed as silly the suggestion of any racial bias in Walter McMillian’s prosecution. He calmly professed his complete confidence and certainty that McMillian was guilty and that he should be executed as soon as possible. He expressed contempt for Walter’s attorneys and “people who try to second-guess juries. ”

We later found out that privately, despite the confidence expressed in his statements to local media and to 60 Minutes, Chapman had begun to worry about the reliability of the evidence against Walter. He couldn’t ignore the problems in the case that had been exposed at the hearing. Given our success in other death penalty cases, he must have feared the very real possibility of the appellate court’s overturning Walter’s conviction. Chapman had become the public face defending the conviction, and he realized that he’d put his own credibility on the line by relying on the work of local investigators—work that was now revealed as almost farcically flawed.

Chapman called Tate, Ikner, and Benson together shortly after the hearing and expressed his concerns. When he asked the local investigators to explain the contradictory evidence we had presented, he wasn’t impressed with what he heard. Not long after that, he formally asked ABI officials in Montgomery to conduct another investigation into the murder to confirm Mr. McMillian’s guilt.

Chapman never informed us directly about the new investigation, even though for over two years we’d sought just such a re-examination of the evidence. When the new ABI investigators, Tom Taylor and Greg Cole, called me, I eagerly agreed to share case files and information. After meeting with them, I was even more hopeful about what might come out of the investigation. They both seemed like no-nonsense, experienced investigators who were interested in doing credible and reliable work.

Within a few weeks, Taylor and Cole seemed to doubt that McMillian was guilty. They were not connected to any of the players in South Alabama. We gave them files, memoranda, and even some original evidence because we had nothing to hide. I was nervous that if we won a reversal and had to retry the case, we might be disadvantaged by disclosing so much information to state investigators—who would then be better prepared to smear or undermine our evidence—but I was still confident that any reasonable, honest investigation would reveal the absurdity of the charges against Walter.

By January, six months had passed since we had filed our appeal at the Court of Criminal Appeals, and a ruling was due any week. That’s when Tom Taylor called and said that he and Cole wanted to meet with us again. We’d talked a few times during their investigation, but this time we’d be discussing their findings. When they arrived, Bernard and I sat down with them in my office and they wasted no time.

“There is no way Walter McMillian killed Ronda Morrison. ” Tom Taylor spoke plainly and directly. “We’re going to report to the attorney general, the district attorney, and anyone who asks that McMillian had nothing to do with either of these murders and is completely innocent. ”

I tried not to look as thrilled as I felt. I didn’t want to scare away this good news. “That’s terrific, ” I said, trying to sound unsurprised. “I’m pleased to hear that and I have to say I’m extremely grateful that you’ve looked at the evidence in this case thoroughly and honestly. ”

“Well, confirming that McMillian had nothing to do with this wasn’t that hard, ” Taylor replied. “Why would a drug kingpin live in the conditions he was living in and work fifteen hours a day cutting timber on difficult terrain? What we were told by local law enforcement about McMillian didn’t make much sense, and the story Myers told at trial definitely made no sense. I still can’t believe a jury ever convicted him. ”

Cole spoke up. “You’ll be very interested to know that both Hooks and Hightower have admitted that their trial testimony was false. ”

“Really? ” I couldn’t hide my surprise at this.

“Yes. When we were asked to investigate this case, we were told that you should be investigated because Hooks had said that you had offered him money and a condo in Mexico if he changed his testimony. ” Taylor was dead serious.

“A condo in Mexico? ”

“On a beach, I think, ” Cole added nonchalantly.

“Wait, me? I was going to give Bill Hooks a beach condo in Mexico if he changed his testimony against Walter? ” It was difficult to contain my shock.

“Well, I know it must sound crazy to you, but believe me there were people down there who were raring to get you indicted. But when we talked to Hooks, it didn’t take very long before he not only acknowledged that he’d never spoken to you and that you had never bribed him, but he also admitted that his trial testimony against McMillian was completely made up. ”

“Well, we’ve never had any doubts that Hooks was lying. ”

Cole chuckled. “We started polygraphing people, and things fell apart pretty quickly. ”

Bernard asked the obvious question, “Well, what happens now? ”

Taylor looked over at his partner and then at us. “Well, we’re not completely done. We’d like to solve this crime, and we have a suspect. I’m wondering if you might be willing to help us. I know you’re not trying to get anybody on death row, but we thought you might at least consider providing some help to identify the real killer. People will be a lot more accepting of Mr. McMillian’s innocence if they know who really committed this crime. ”

While it was ridiculous to think that Walter’s freedom depended on the arrest of someone else, I had imagined that a successful investigation might get to this—and I couldn’t dispute that even if an ABI investigation cleared Walter, people would still think he’d gotten away with murder until the actual killer was identified. We had long ago concluded that finding the real murderer might be the most effective way to free Walter, but without the power and authority of law enforcement officers, we were limited in what we could discover.

We did have a strong theory. Several witnesses had told us that around the time of the crime, a white man had been seen leaving the cleaners. We had learned that before her death, Ronda Morrison had been receiving menacing calls and that there was a man who had been avidly and inappropriately pursuing her—stopping by unannounced at the cleaners, maybe even stalking her. We had not initially been able to identify this strange man.

But we did have our suspicions. We had been contacted by a white man who seemed intensely interested in the case. He would call wanting to talk at length about what we were investigating. He would hint at having information that could help us, but he was coy and slow to share anything concrete. He repeatedly told us that he knew that McMillian was innocent and he would help us prove it. Eventually, after several calls and hours of conversation, he claimed to know where the murder weapon, which had never been recovered, might be located.

We tried to get as much information out of him as we could. We also checked his background. He told us that he’d had some conflicts with another man in town and that the more he talked the more he blamed this other man for the shooting death of Morrison. When we investigated this theory, we weren’t impressed. The other man didn’t match the eyewitness descriptions of the person seen leaving the cleaners, and he didn’t have our caller’s history of stalking, violence against women, and preoccupation with the Morrison murder. We began to think that our caller could be the person who had murdered Ronda Morrison. We had dozens of phone conversations with him and even met him a couple of times. We were less and less convinced that the man he was accusing of committing the crime was involved. At some point we asked him some direct questions about where he was on the day of the murder, which must have alarmed him because we heard from him less often after that.

Before I could tell any of this to the ABI investigators, Taylor said, “We think you may have interviewed our suspect and may have collected a good bit of information from this guy. We were hoping you might allow us to have access to that information and those interviews. ” He named our suspect.

I told them we would give them access to the information we had collected. None of it was protected by attorney-client privilege; we had never represented this man or obtained anything confidentially. I told Taylor and Cole to give us a few days to organize the information, and then we would turn it over.

“We want to get Walter out of prison as soon as possible, ” I insisted.

“Well, I think the attorney general and the lawyers would like to maintain the status quo for a few more months, until we can make an arrest of the actual killer. ”

“Right, but you do understand that the status quo is a problem for us? Walter has been on death row for nearly six years for a crime he didn’t commit. ”

Taylor and Cole looked at each other uncomfortably. Taylor responded, “We’re not lawyers so I can’t really understand where they’re coming from. If I was in prison for something I didn’t do and you were my lawyer, I hope to hell you’d get me out as soon as you could. ”

When they left, Bernard and I were very excited, but we remained troubled by this plan to “maintain the status quo. ” I decided I would call the attorney general’s office and see if they would concede legal error in the pending appeal, which would ensure relief at the appellate court and perhaps expedite Walter’s release.

Another lawyer from the attorney general’s office named Ken Nunnelly had taken over the appeal. I had dealt with Nunnelly in several other death penalty cases. I told him that I’d met with the ABI investigators and that I understood there were some case developments that favored Mr. McMillian. It became clear that the state lawyers had been discussing this case quite a bit.

“Bryan, it’s all going to work out, but you’ll need to wait a few more months. He’s been on the row for years, so a few more months are not going to make that much of a difference. ”

“Ken, every day makes a difference when you’re locked down on death row, and you’ve been wrongly convicted. ” I tried to get a commitment but he offered nothing. I asked to meet with the attorney general or whatever official had final decision-making authority, and he said that he would see what he could do. Within a few days the State submitted a peculiar pleading to the Court of Criminal Appeals. The attorney general’s motion asked the court to stay the litigation and not issue a ruling because they “may have uncovered exculpatory evidence favorable to Mr. McMillian that could entitle him to a new trial, ” but they needed more time to complete their investigation.

I was furious that the State would try to prolong any order granting relief to Walter. It was consistent with everything that had happened over the last six years, but it was still maddening. We quickly filed a response opposing the State’s motion. We told the court that there was overwhelming evidence that Mr. McMillian’s rights had been violated, and that he was entitled to immediate relief. Delaying relief would add further injury to a man who had been wrongfully convicted and condemned to death row for a crime he did not commit. We urged the court to deny the State’s request and rule quickly.

I was talking to Minnie and the family every week now, keeping everyone updated about the new state investigation.

“I feel like something good is about to happen, Bryan, ” Minnie said to me. “They’ve kept him for years. Now it’s time they let him go. They have to let him go. ”

I appreciated her optimism, but I worried, too. We’d been disappointed so often before. “We have to remain hopeful, Minnie. ”

“I’ve always told people ‘no lie can live forever, ’ and this has always been one big lie. ”

I wasn’t exactly sure how to manage the family’s expectations. I felt I was supposed to be the cautionary voice that prepared family members for the worst even while I urged them to hope for the best. It was a task that was growing in complexity as I handled more cases and saw the myriad ways that things could go wrong. But I was developing a maturing recognition of the importance of hopefulness in creating justice.

I’d started addressing the subject of hopefulness in talks to small groups. I’d grown fond of quoting Vá clav Havel, the great Czech leader who had said that “hope” was the one thing that people struggling in Eastern Europe needed during the era of Soviet domination.

Havel had said that people struggling for independence wanted money and recognition from other countries; they wanted more criticism of the Soviet empire from the West and more diplomatic pressure. But Havel had said that these were things they wanted; the only thing they needed was hope. Not that pie in the sky stuff, not a preference for optimism over pessimism, but rather “an orientation of the spirit. ” The kind of hope that creates a willingness to position oneself in a hopeless place and be a witness, that allows one to believe in a better future, even in the face of abusive power. That kind of hope makes one strong.

Havel prescribed exactly what our work seemed to require. Walter’s case had needed it more than most. So I didn’t discourage Minnie. Together, we hoped.

On February 23, nearly six weeks after getting the ABI’s report, I received a call from the clerk of the court informing us that the Court of Criminal Appeals had ruled in the McMillian case and that we could pick up the opinion.

“You’re going to like this, ” she said cryptically.

I ran over to the courthouse and was out of breath by the time I sat down to read the thirty-five-page ruling. The clerk was right. The ruling invalidated Walter’s conviction and death sentence. The court didn’t conclude that he was innocent and must be released, but it ruled in our favor on every other claim and ordered a new trial. I didn’t realize how much I had feared that we would lose until we finally won.

I jumped into the car and raced down to death row to tell Walter in person. I watched him take it all in. He leaned back and gave me a familiar chuckle.

“Well, ” he said slowly, “you know, that’s good. That’s good. ”

“Good? It’s great! ”

“Yeah, it is great. ” He was grinning now with a freedom I hadn’t seen before. “Whew, man, I can’t believe it, I can’t believe it. … Whew! ”

His smile started to fade, and he began slowly shaking his head.

“Six years, six years gone. ” He looked away with a pained expression. “These six years feel like fifty. Six years, just gone. I’ve been so worried they were going to kill me, I haven’t even thought about the time I’ve lost. ”

His troubled look sobered me, too. “I know, Walter, and we’re not clear yet, ” I said. “The ruling only gives you a new trial. Given what the ABI has said, I can’t believe they would try to prosecute you again, but with this crowd reasonable conduct is never guaranteed. I’m going to try and get you home as soon as humanly possible. ”

With thoughts of home, his mood lightened and we started talking about things we’d been to afraid to discuss since we’d met. He said, “I want to meet everybody who has helped me in Montgomery. And I want to go around with you and tell the world what they did to me. There are other people here who are as innocent as I am. ” He paused and started smiling again. “Man, I want some good food, too. I ain’t had no real good food in so long that I can’t even remember what it tastes like. ”

“Whatever you want, it will be my treat, ” I said proudly.

“From what I hear, you might not be able to afford the kind of meal I want, ” he teased. “I want steak, chicken, pork, maybe some good cooked coon. ”

“Coon? ”

“Oh, don’t pretend. You know you like grilled raccoon. Please don’t sit there and tell me you ain’t never had no good coon when I know you grew up in the country just like I did. There has been many a time when me and my cousin would be driving, and a coon would run cross the road and he’d say, ‘Stop the car, stop the car! ’ And I’d stop the car and he’d jump out and go running into the woods and come back minutes later with a raccoon he done caught. We would take it home, skin it, and fry or barbecue that meat. Maaaan … what you talking about? That would be some good eatin’. ”

“You’ve got to be joking. I grew up in the country, but I never chased any kind of wild animal into the woods to take home and eat. ”

We relaxed and laughed a lot. We had laughed before today—Walter’s sense of humor hadn’t failed him despite his six years on death row. And this case had given him lots of fodder. We would often talk about situations and people connected to the case that, for all the damage they had caused, had still made us laugh at their absurdity. But the laughter today felt very different. It was the laughter of liberation.

I drove back to Montgomery and thought about how to expedite Walter’s release. I called Tommy Chapman and told him that I intended to file a motion to dismiss all charges against Walter in light of the appellate court’s ruling, and I hoped he would consider joining the motion or at least not oppose it. He sighed. “We should talk when this is all over. Once you file your motion, I’ll get back to you about whether I’ll join it. We certainly won’t oppose it. ”

A hearing on the motion was set. The State did, in fact, join our motion to dismiss the charges, and I didn’t expect the final hearing to last more than a few minutes. The night before, I’d driven down to Minnie’s to get a suit for Walter to wear at the hearing, since he would finally be able to walk out of court a free man. When I arrived at her house, she gave me a long hug. It looked like she had been crying and hadn’t slept. We sat down, and she told me again how happy she was that they were letting him out. But she looked troubled. Finally, she turned to me.

“Bryan, I think you need to tell him that maybe he shouldn’t come back here. It’s just all been too much. The stress, the gossip, the lies, everything. He doesn’t deserve what they put him through, and it will hurt me to my heart the rest of my life what they did to him, and the rest of us. But I don’t think I can go back to the way things were. ”

“Well, you all should talk when he gets home. ”

“We want to have everybody over when he gets out. We want to cook some good food, and everybody will want to celebrate. But after that, maybe he should go to Montgomery with you. ”

I had already talked with Walter about not staying his first few nights in Monroeville, for security reasons. We had talked about him spending time with family members in Florida while we monitored the local reaction to his release. But I hadn’t discussed his future with Minnie.

I kept urging Minnie to talk with Walter when he got home, but it was clear she didn’t have the heart for that. I drove back to Montgomery, sadly realizing that even as we stood on the brink of victory and what should have been a glorious release for Walter and his family, this nightmare would likely never be completely over for him. For the first time I fully reckoned with the truth that the conviction, the death sentence, and the heartbreak and devastation of this miscarriage of justice had created permanent injuries.

State, local, and national media outlets were crowded outside the courthouse when I arrived the next morning. Dozens of Walter’s family members and friends from the community were there to greet him when he came out. They had made signs and banners, which surprised me. They were such simple gestures, but I found myself deeply moved. The signs gave a silent voice to the crowd: “Welcome Home, Johnny D, ” “God Never Fails, ” “Free at Last, Thank God Almighty, We Are Free at Last. ”

I went down to the jail and brought Walter his suit. I told him that a celebration was planned at his house after the hearing. The prison had not allowed Walter to bring his possessions to the courthouse, refusing to acknowledge that he might be released, so we would have to go back to Holman Prison to get his things before the homecoming at his house. I also told him that I’d reserved a hotel room for him in Montgomery and that it would probably be safest to spend the next few nights there.

I reluctantly talked to him about my conversation with Minnie. He seemed surprised and hurt but didn’t linger on it.

“This is a really happy day for me. Nothing can really spoil getting your freedom back. ”

“Well, y’all should talk at some point, ” I urged.

I went upstairs to find Tommy Chapman waiting for me in the courtroom. “After we’re done, I’d like to shake his hand, ” he told me. “Would that be all right? ”

“I think he’d appreciate that. ”

“This case has taught me things I didn’t even know I had to learn. ”

“We’ve all learned a lot, Tommy. ”

There were deputy sheriffs everywhere. When Bernard arrived, we consulted briefly at the counsel table before a bailiff asked us to go back to the judge’s chambers. Judge Norton had retired weeks before the ruling from the Court of Criminal Appeals. The new judge, Pamela Baschab, greeted me warmly. We made small talk and then discussed what would happen during the hearing. Everyone was strangely pleasant.

“Mr. Stevenson, if you’ll just present the motion and provide a brief summary, I don’t need any arguments or statements, I intend to grant the motion immediately so you all can get home. We can get this done quickly. ” We went into the courtroom. There seemed to be more black deputies in the courtroom for this hearing than I’d ever seen in my appearances in that courthouse. There was no metal detector, no menacing dog. The courtroom was packed with Walter’s family members and supporters. There were more cheering black folks outside the courthouse who couldn’t get in. A horde of television cameras and journalists spilled out of the crowded courtroom.

They finally brought Walter into the courtroom wearing the black suit and white shirt I’d brought him. He looked handsome and fit, like a different man. The deputies didn’t handcuff Walter or shackle him, so he walked into court waving to family and friends. His family had not seen him dressed in anything but his white prison uniform since the trial six years earlier, and many in the crowd gasped when he walked into the courtroom in a suit. For years Walter’s family members and supporters had been confronted with menacing stares and threats of expulsion whenever they expressed some spontaneous opinion during court proceedings, but today the deputies accepted their expressive cheerfulness in silence.

The judge took the bench, and I stepped forward to speak. I gave a brief history of the case and informed the court that both the defendant and the State were moving the court to dismiss all charges. The judge quickly granted the motion and asked if there was anything further. All of sudden, I felt strangely agitated. I’d expected to be exuberant. Everyone was in such a good mood. The judge and the prosecutor were suddenly generous and accommodating. It was as if everyone wanted to be sure there were no hard feelings or grudges.

Walter was rightfully ecstatic, but I was confused by my suddenly simmering anger. We were about to leave court for the last time, and I started thinking about how much pain and suffering had been inflicted on Walter and his family, the entire community. I thought about how if Judge Robert E. Lee Key hadn’t overridden the jury’s verdict of life imprisonment without parole and imposed the death penalty, which brought the case to our attention, Walter likely would have spent the rest of his life incarcerated and died in a prison cell. I thought about how certain it was that hundreds, maybe thousands of other people were just as innocent as Walter but would never get the help they need. I knew this wasn’t the place or time to make a speech or complain, but I couldn’t stop myself from making one final comment.

“Your Honor, I just want to say this before we adjourn. It was far too easy to convict this wrongly accused man for murder and send him to death row for something he didn’t do and much too hard to win his freedom after proving his innocence. We have serious problems and important work that must be done in this state. ”

I sat down and the judge pronounced Walter free to go. Just like that he was a free man.

Walter hugged me tightly, and I gave him a handkerchief to wipe the tears from his eyes. I led him over to Chapman, and they shook hands. The black deputies who had hovered nearby ushered us toward a back door that led downstairs, where a throng of reporters waited. One of the deputies patted me on the back, declaring, “That’s awesome, man. That’s awesome. ” I asked Bernard to tell the family and supporters that we would meet them out front.

Walter stood very close to me as we answered questions from the press. I could tell he was feeling overwhelmed, so I cut off the questions after a few minutes, and we walked to the front door of the courthouse. TV camera crews followed us. As we walked outside, dozens of people cheered and waved their signs. Walter’s relatives ran up to him to hug him, and they hugged me, too. Walter’s grandchildren grabbed his hands. Older people I hadn’t previously met came up to hug him. Walter couldn’t believe how many people were there for him. He hugged everyone. Even when some of the men came up to shake his hand, he gave them a hug. I told everyone that Bernard and I had to take Walter to the prison and that we would come to the house directly from there. It took nearly an hour to get through the crowd and into the car.

On the drive to the prison, Walter told me that the men on death row had held a special service for him on his last night. They had come to pray for him and give him their final hugs. Walter said he felt guilty leaving them behind. I told him not to—they were all thrilled to know he was going home. His freedom was, in a small way, a sign of hope in a hopeless place.

Despite my assurances that we’d be at the house shortly, everyone followed us to the prison. The press, the local TV crews, the family, everyone. When we got to Holman, a caravan of media and well-wishers trailed behind us. I parked and walked to the front gate to explain to the guard in the tower that I didn’t have anything to do with all of the people—I knew that the warden had strict policies about the presence of people who didn’t have business at the prison. But the guard waved us inside. No one tried to get the crowd to leave.

We went to the prison office to collect Walter’s possessions: his legal materials and correspondence with me, letters from family and supporters, a Bible, the Timex watch he was wearing when he was arrested, and the wallet he had had with him back in June 1987 when his nightmare began. The wallet still had $23 in it. Walter had given to other death row prisoners his fan, a dictionary, and the food items he had in his cell. I saw the warden peering at us from his office as we collected Walter’s things, but he didn’t come out.

A few guards watched as we walked out the front gate of the prison. Lots of people were still gathered outside. I saw Mrs. Williams. Walter went up to her and gave her a hug. When their embrace released, she looked over and winked at me. I couldn’t help but laugh.

Men in their cells could see the crowd outside and started shouting encouragement to Walter as he walked away. We couldn’t see them from outside the prison, but their voices rang out just the same—the voices were haunting because they were disembodied, but they were full of excitement and hopefulness. One of the last voices we heard was a man shouting, “Stay strong, man. Stay strong! ”

Walter shouted back, “All right! ”

As he walked to the car, Walter raised his arms and gently moved them up and down as if he meant to take flight. He looked at me and said, “I feel like a bird, I feel like a bird. ”

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