Walter McMillian

Walter "Johnny D." McMillian (October 27, 1941 – September 11, 2013)[1] was an African-American pulpwood worker from Monroeville, Alabama, who was exonerated by the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals in Walter McMillian v. State (1993) with defense attorneys Bryan Stevenson, Michael O'Connor, and Bernard E. Harcourt. From 1990 to 1993, the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals had turned down four appeals. On March 3, 1993 all five judges concurred on the reversal of his conviction.

The Court of Criminal Appeals reversed the lower court decision and ruled that he had been wrongfully convicted. His conviction for capital murder was wrongfully obtained, based on police coercion by Sheriff Tom Tate and others and perjury by witnesses. In the 1988 trial, the judge, Robert E. Lee Key, Jr., overrode the jury's sentence using an unique and controversial Alabama practice called "Judge Override", and had imposed capital punishment. After serving six years on Alabama's death row for a crime he did not commit, the prosecutors dismissed the case for lack of evidence, dropping all charges against him.[2]

The controversial case received national attention beginning in the fall of 1992, when it was featured in the CBS News program 60 Minutes. The story was featured in a 1995 book entitled Circumstantial Evidence: Death, Life, and Justice in a Southern Town by former Washington Post journalist, Pete Earley. Bryan Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative, took on McMillan's case in 1988 and wrote the 2014 book entitled Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption on which the movie starring Michael B. Jordan is based.

Context

Walter McMillian, who was born c.1941, lived in a black settlement near Monroeville and he "grew up picking cotton."[3] Monroe County was described by The Guardian as "a remote, dirt-poor region of pine trees and bean farms".[4] Walter purchased logging and paper mill equipment and became a "moderately successful businessman".[3] He was described by The New Yorker as a black pulpwood worker. He was married to Minnie McMillian for twenty-five years and they had nine children.[5] McMillian held two jobs and "no criminal record other than a misdemeanor charge stemming a barroom fight". He "did not have a history of violence."[5]

He was known in the community because he was having an interracial affair, with a white woman, Karen Kelly and one of his sons had married a white woman.[5][6][7] Both McMillian and the attorney he had in 1987, J. L. Chestnut, "contended that Mr. McMillian's relationships along had made him a suspect."[5] In a prison interview in 1993, McMillian said, "The only reason I'm here is because I had been messing around with a white lady and my son married a white lady."[5]

==The murder of Ronda Morrison==[8] on November 1, 1986 in Monroeville, Alabama.[9] At the time of her murder Walter McMillian was at a church fish fry with dozens of witnesses, one of whom was a police officer.[10][11]

McMillian's arrest by Sheriff Tom Tate

McMillian, who had "no prior felony convictions"[12] was arrested by newly elected Sheriff Tom Tate who was under pressure to find a suspect.[3][12] He was arrested him June 1987. In what the New York Times described as "an extraordinary move", McMillian "was immediately sent to Alabama's Death Row, in Holman State Prison, Atmore, which is usually reserved for convicted murderers awaiting execution."[5] He remained there pretrial for 15 months. McMillian had explained to Sheriff Tate shortly after his arrest that he was at the fish fry on the morning of November 1. Tate replied, "I don't give a damn what you say or what you do. I don't give a damn what your people say either. I'm going to put twelve people on a jury who are going to find your goddamn black ass guilty."[10][11]

On December 11, 1987 Walter McMillian and Ralph Bernard Myers, a career criminal,[13] were jointly indicted.[8] McMillian was charged with a two-count indictment "for the offense of murder made capital because it was committed during a robbery in the first degree."[8] Myers pleaded guilty as a conspirator in the murder and received a 30-year prison term.[6] The jury recommended a life sentence.[6]

The day and a half trial (1988)

The trial began on August 15, 1988. Judge Robert E. Lee Key, Jr., "for two decades the local circuit court judge"[5][Notes 1] "had McMillian await trial on death row, as if a death sentence were a foregone conclusion, and relocated the trial from Monroe County that was forty per cent black to an overwhelmingly white one," Baldwin County where 86 percent of the residents were white, because the case had "generated extraordinary publicity."[9] McMillian was represented by attorney J. L. Chestnut.

The US Supreme Court ruling has made it unconstitutional "to choose a jury on grounds of race". Six years after the original trial, the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals found that prosecutor, District Attorney Theodore Pearson and judge, Robert E. Lee Key "had practiced 'intentional racial discrimination' in jury selection."[Notes 2][4]

The "jury ignored [twelve] alibi defense witnesses, who were black, who testified under oath that he was at a fish fry at the time of the crime."[13][9] There was no physical evidence inculpating McMillian.[9]

The trial lasted only a day and a half. On August 17, 1988, the jury of eleven whites and one African American found McMillian "guilty of the capital offense charged in the indictment"[8] and recommended a life sentence, based on the testimony of four state's informants found by the prosecution: Ralph Myers,[8] a career criminal, Bill Hooks, Jr., Joe Hightower .[8] and one other.[13][9] Two of the witnesses claimed to have seen McMillian's "low-rider" truck outside the dry cleaner's around the time that the crime allegedly occurred.[13][9][Notes 3]

Robert E. Lee Key, Jr. Judge Override

On September 19, 1988, judge Robert E. Lee Key, Jr., overruled the jury's recommendation of a life sentence and imposed the death penalty.[2] Key remarked that "McMillian deserved to be executed for the brutal killing of a young lady in the first full flower of adulthood."[9] This "unique Alabama practice", called "Judge Override", allows "elected trial judges to override jury verdicts of life and impose death sentences." According to the Equal Justice Initiative, "[n]o capital sentencing procedure in the United States has come under more criticism as unreliable, unpredictable, and arbitrary than the "judge override."[14] "Nearly seventy Alabama judges have single-handedly ordered an inmate's execution, and collectively they have done so more than a hundred times. Thirty-six of the nearly two hundred convicts on death row are there because of override."[9]

Because McMillian was on death row, in November 1988, 28-year-old attorney Bryan Stevenson, a Harvard Law School and Harvard School of Government graduate, who was the director of the newly formed Alabama Capital Representation Resource Center in Montgomery,[10][15][Notes 4] visited McMillan in prison.[16] McMillian maintained his innocence. Stevenson was motivated to take McMillian's case because of the use of the judge override. After he had decided to take the appeal, he got a phone call from Judge Robert E. Lee Key introducing himself and discouraging Stevenson from taking the case. In a 2015 NPR interview, Stevenson described how that phone call was a "pretty big turnaround for me". It was "very, very bizarre start to my career and to the work that I was doing in Alabama." Stevenson then visited McMillian's community and "met dozens of African-Americans who were with this condemned man at the time the crime took place 11 miles away who absolutely knew he was innocent."[17]

First appeal (1991)

From 1990 to 1993, the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals turned down four appeals.[5] McMillian's conviction and death sentence were affirmed on appeal in 1991 in McMillian v. State, 594 So. 2d 1253 (Ala.Cr. App.1991).[8]

Petition 1992

Following his own trial and sentencing, the key witness, Ralph Bernard Myers told McMillian's trial counsel that the testimony he gave "against McMillian was false."[8] Myers confessed that "he knew nothing about the crime, that he was not present when the crime was committed, that he had been told what to say by certain law enforcement officers, and that he had testified falsely against McMillian because of pressure from the officers."[8] McMillian's attorneys from the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) in Montgomery, Alabama, filed a petition for a new trial alleging various constitutional violations—Ex parte McMillian, 594 So. 2d 1288 (Ala. 1992) including "that a key state witness had recanted his testimony, that the appellant's conviction had been obtained by perjured testimony, and that the evidence of perjury was newly discovered." The petition also alleged that the state of Alabama "had violated his constitutional rights by withholding exculpatory and impeachment information".[8][Notes 5]

In 1992 the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals in "McMillian v. State" 594 So. 2d 1289 (Ala.Cr.App.1992) denied the claims by McMillian's attorneys.[8]

Walter McMillian v. State February 23, 1993

On February 23, 1993, in Walter McMillian v. State in the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals court all judges concurred that "that the state suppressed exculpatory and impeachment evidence that had been requested by the defense, thus denying the appellant due process of law, requiring the reversal of his conviction and death sentence, and the remand of the case for a new trial."[8] D.A. Pearson had failed to disclose exculpatory evidence to McMillian's attorneys Bryan Stevenson, Michael O'Connor, and Bernard E. Harcourt, including records from the Taylor Hardin Secure Medical Facility, Myers's June 3 statement and Myer's August 27, 1987 statement obtained by Simon Benson, denying the appellant due process.[8]

Further investigation revealed that McMillian's truck, supposedly seen by witnesses at the scene of the crime, had not been converted to a "low-rider" until six months after the crime took place. During the Court of Criminal Appeals, it emerged that District Attorney Theodore Pearson "had concealed evidence proving his innocence".[9] A witness had seen the victim alive after the time when prosecutors claimed that McMillian had killed her.[2]

The two witnesses who had testified that they had seen McMillian's truck retracted their testimony, and admitted that they lied at trial, committing perjury.[6][2]

McMillian's "appellate lawyers discovered that prosecutors had withheld evidence and that the state's star witnesses had lied."[9] It emerged that the Sheriff Tom Tate of Monroe County, Larry Ikner, an investigator with Monroe County D.A.'s office, and Alabama Bureau of Investigation (ABI)'s Simon Benson,[8] [Notes 6] had "pressured a key witness [Myers] into lying about Mr. McMillian."[3][12] In pursuing those claims, the attorneys obtained the original recording of Myers' confession. After listening to it, they flipped the tape over and discovered a recorded conversation in which Myers complained bitterly that he was being forced to implicate McMillian, whom he did not know, for a crime neither of them had any role in.[6]

District Attorney Thomas Chapman, who had prosecuted McMillian, told Stevenson, "I want to do everything I can so that your client will not have to spend a single day more than he already has on death row. I feel sick about the six years that [McMillian] has spent in prison and the part I played in keeping him there."[10]

Exoneration (March 2, 1993)

McMillian was exonerated on March 2, 1993. It was his fifth appeal to the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals.[5] The Circuit Court Judge was Pamela W. Baschab.[5] The vote was 5 to 0 to reverse the lower court decision, and dismiss all charges against McMillian.[6][5] Chapman, who did not prosecute the original case in 1987, "joined the defense in seeking to have the charges" against McMillian dismissed.[5] However, Chapman did not agree that there had been a "deliberate effort to frame Mr. McMillian."[5]

Civil law suit

After returning to his family and hometown of Monroeville, McMillian filed a civil lawsuit against state and local officials including against respondent Monroe County and numerous officials, including "the three men in charge of investigating the Morrison murder--Tom Tate, the Sheriff of Monroe County; Larry Ikner, an investigator with the District Attorney's office in Monroe County; and Simon Benson, an investigator with the Alabama Bureau of Investigation",[18] for his wrongful prosecution and conviction. It was appealed to US Supreme Court.[18] The U.S. Supreme Court ruled against McMillian, holding that a county sheriff, Sheriff Tom Tate, could not be sued for monetary damages.[18]

Subsequently, McMillian settled with other officials for an undisclosed amount. McMillian's case served as a catalyst for Alabama's compensation statute, which was passed in 2001.[6][Notes 7]

McMillian later developed dementia, believed to be brought on by the trauma of imprisonment.[3] He died in 2013.[6]

Media Coverage

In the fall of 1992, McMillian's case received national attention in the CBS News program "60 Minutes". It was pointed out that Monroeville, Alabama was "best known as the home of the Harper Lee, whose To Kill a Mockingbird told a painful story of race and justice in the small-town Jim Crow South."[5] A 2017 article in the New York Times echoed the similarities and drew attention to the fact that Sheriff Tate "has been elected seven times" since the McMillian case "and is in his third decade in office."[12]

The story was featured in a 1995 book entitled Circumstantial Evidence: Death, Life, and Justice in a Southern Town by former Washington Post journalist, Pete Earley.[10][11] The movie, Just Mercy starring Michael B. Jordan and directed by Destin Daniel Cretton[19] is based on Bryan Stevenson's 2014 book entitled Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption.

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ According to the 1993 appeal, Judge R.E.L. Key had retired by 1993
  2. ↑ According to David Rose in his 1999 article in The Guardian, reporting on the trial of Brian Baldwin, where Theodore Pearson was prosecutor and Key was the judge: "Forty-six per cent of Monroe County's population is black. At the start of Baldwin's trial, there were 11 African Americans on the jury panel. The prosecutor, District Attorney Theodore Pearson, used his power to remove all of them, with the approval of the judge, Robert E. Lee Key."
  3. ↑ During the 1993 appeal it was revealed that, "Two mechanics, Willie Nettles and Clay Kast, testified that they had modified the appellant's truck to convert it to a low-rider and that they did not do this work until several months after the commission of the crime at Jackson Cleaners."
  4. ↑ In 1992 Stevenson founded Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) a nonprofit law center in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
  5. ↑ In Walter McMillian v. State 1993, the owner of Jackson Cleaners, Miles Jackson "had told the police during their investigation that he had entered Jackson Cleaners at 10:30 a.m. on the day of the murder; that Ronda Morrison, the victim, was alive at that time." This was withheld by D.A. Theodore Pearson.
  6. ↑ In the case Walter McMillian v. State proceedings it was recorded that Myers identified Larry Ikner, Thomas Tate, and as the law enforcement officers.
  7. ↑ "Exoneree Compensation: In order to be eligible to receive compensation for wrongful incarceration a person must: (1) Have been convicted by the state of one or more felony offenses, all of which the person was innocent, and have served time in prison as a result of the conviction or convictions; or (2) have been incarcerated pretrial on a state felony charge, for at least two years through no fault of his or her own, before having charges dismissed based on innocence. Minimum of $50,000 for each year of incarceration, Committee on Compensation for Wrongful Incarceration can recommend discretionary amount in addition to base, but legislature must appropriate any funds. Effective: 2001." Innocence Project

References

  1. ↑ Obituary Walter McMillian, Tributes, nd, retrieved December 14, 2017
  2. 1 2 3 4 "Alabama frees black man on death row for 6 years - Walter McMillan". Jet. Johnson Publishing Co. March 22, 1993. Retrieved September 16, 2015.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 Stevenson, Bryan (2014). Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption. New York: Spiegel & Grau. p. 368. ISBN 081298496X.
  4. 1 2 Rose, David (June 20, 1999). "Death of justice in Alabama: Brian Baldwin was condemned to the electric chair by a racist travesty". Retrieved December 15, 2017.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Applebome, Peter (March 3, 1993). "Alabama Releases Man Held On Death Row for Six Years". Bay Minette, Alabama. Retrieved December 15, 2017.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Walter McMillian, The National Registry of Exonerations, University of Michigan, retrieved September 16, 2015
  7. ↑ The False Arrest of Walter McMillian, What Now? New Dialogues on Race in America, American Forum, August 5, 2016, retrieved December 14, 2017 An interview with Bryan Stevenson, Professor of Law at New York University and author of Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption. With Pulitzer Prize winning host Douglas Blackmon
  8. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Walter McMillian v. State (616 So. 2d 933), 1993
  9. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Williams, Paige (November 17, 2014), "Double Jeopardy: In Alabama, a judge can override a jury that spares a murderer from the death penalty", The New Yorker, retrieved December 15, 2017, "In 1987, Walter McMillian, a black pulpwood worker, was accused of killing Ronda Morrison, a white eighteen-year-old dry-cleaning clerk, in Monroeville.
  10. 1 2 3 4 5 McCarthy, Colman (October 10, 1995). "A Matter of Death and Life". Review of Circumstantial Evidence: Death, Life, and Justice in a Southern Town by Pete Earley Bantam. Retrieved December 14, 2017.
  11. 1 2 3 Earley, Pete (August 1, 1995). Circumstantial Evidence: Death, Life, and Justice in a Southern Town. Bantam. p. 416. ISBN 0553763563. Pete Earley is a former Washington Post reporter
  12. 1 2 3 4 Bogdanich, Walt; Ashford, Grace (December 14, 2017). "A Sheriff, a Mystery Check and a Blogger Who Cried Foul: In Alabama, an official's use of public funds and behavior toward critics raise questions about the broad powers of American sheriffs". New York Times. Decatur, Alabama. Retrieved December 14, 2017.
  13. 1 2 3 4 Walter McMillian, Equal Justice Initiative, nd, retrieved December 14, 2017
  14. ↑ Judge Override, Equal Justice Initiative, nd, retrieved December 14, 2017
  15. ↑ Adams, Tim (February 1, 2015). "Bryan Stevenson: 'America's Mandela'". The Guardian. Retrieved December 15, 2017.
  16. ↑ Conover, Ted (October 19, 2014). "Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson". New York Times. Sunday Book Review. Retrieved December 14, 2017.
  17. ↑ Bianculli, David, ed. (August 21, 2015). "One Lawyer's Fight For Young Blacks And 'Just Mercy'". NPR. Fresh Air. Retrieved December 14, 2017. So you hear this tape where the witness is saying, you want me to frame an innocent man for murder, and I don't feel right about that. And the police officers are saying, well, if you don't do it, we're going to put you on death row, too. And they actually did put the testifying witness on death row for a period of time until he agreed to testify against Mr. McMillian. ...But it was challenging because even when we presented all of that evidence and we presented Mr. McMillian's strong alibi, the first couple of judges said, no, we're not going to grant relief. ...This is one of the few cases I've worked on where I got bomb threats and death threats because we were fighting to free this man who was so clearly innocent....[O]ne of the things that turned the case around was the appointment of two ABI investigators who just took an honest approach to the case and helped us show the evidence of innocence to prosecutors.
  18. 1 2 3 Walter McMillian, Petitioner v. Monroe County, Alabama on writ of certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh circuit, June 2, 1997, retrieved December 15, 2017
  19. ↑ Just Mercy The movie which stars Michael B. Jordan and is directed by Destin Daniel Cretton,
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