Just Mercy (14 page)

“At least then we could understand how it might be possible for him to have done this.” She paused and looked down at the floor of the room where we had gathered.

“But because we were standing next to him that whole morning … We
know
where he was.… We know what he was doing!” People hummed in agreement as her voice grew louder and more distraught. It was the kind of wordless testimony of struggle and anguish I heard all the time growing up in a small rural black church.

“Just about everybody in here was standing next to him, talking to him, laughing with him, eating with him. Then the police come along months later, say he killed somebody miles away at the same time we were standing next to him. Then they take him away when you know it’s a lie.”

She was now struggling to speak. Her hands were trembling and the emotion in her voice was making it hard to get her words out.

“We were with him all day! What are we supposed to do, Mr. Stevenson? Tell us, what are we supposed to do with that?”

Her face twisted in pain. “I feel like I’ve been convicted, too.”

The small crowd responded to each statement with shouts of “Yes!” and “That’s right!”

“I feel like they done put me on death row, too. What do we tell these children about how to stay out of harm’s way when you can be at your own house, minding your own business, surrounded by your entire family, and they still put some murder on you that you ain’t do and send you to death row?”

I sat on the crowded sofa in my suit, staring into the face of a lot of pain. I hadn’t expected to have such an intense meeting when I arrived. Folks were desperate for answers and trying to reconcile themselves to a situation that made no sense. I was struggling to think of something appropriate to say when a younger woman spoke up.

“Johnny D could have never done this no kind of way, whether we was with him or not,” she said, using the nickname Walter’s family and friends had given him. “He’s just not like that.”

The younger woman was Walter’s niece. She continued with her rebuttal to the very idea that Walter would need an alibi, which seemed to generate support among the crowd.

I was relieved to have the pressure off me for a moment, as Walter’s large family seemed to be moving toward some sort of debate over whether Walter’s character rendered an alibi unnecessary—or even insulting. It had been a long day. I was no longer sure what time it was, but I knew it was very late, and I was wearing down. I’d spent several intense hours on death row earlier in the day with Walter going over his trial transcript. Before my meeting with Walter, I spent time with other new clients on the row. Their cases weren’t active, and there were no deadlines on the horizon, but I hadn’t seen them since the Richardson execution and they had been anxious to talk.

Now that Walter’s case record was complete, appeal pleadings
would be due soon, and time was critical. I should have returned to Montgomery directly from the prison, but Walter’s family wanted to meet, and since they were less than an hour from the prison I had promised to come to Monroeville.

Walter’s wife, Minnie Belle McMillian, and his daughter Jackie were waiting patiently when I pulled up to the McMillians’ dilapidated house in Repton, which was off the main road leading into Monroeville. Walter had told me I would know I was close when I passed a cluster of liquor stores on the county line between Conecuh and Monroe counties.
Monroe County is a “dry county” where no alcoholic beverages can be sold; for the convenience of its thirsty citizens, several package stores marked the boundary with Conecuh County. Walter’s house was just a few miles from the county line.

I pulled into the driveway and was surprised at the profound disrepair; this was a poor family’s home. The front porch was propped on three cinder blocks piled precariously beneath wood flooring that showed signs of rot. The blue window panes were in desperate need of paint, and a makeshift set of stairs that didn’t connect to the structure was the only access to the home. The yard was littered with abandoned car parts, tires, broken pieces of furniture, and other detritus. Before getting out of my car, I decided to put on my well-worn suit jacket, even though I had noticed earlier that it was missing buttons on both jacket sleeves.

Minnie walked out the front door and apologized for the appearance of the yard as I carefully stepped onto the porch. She kindly invited me inside while a woman in her early twenties lingered behind her.

“Let me fix something for you to eat. You been at the prison all day,” she said. Minnie looked tired but otherwise appeared as I had imagined—patient and strong—based on Walter’s descriptions and my own guesses from our phone conversations. Because the State had made Walter’s affair with Karen Kelly part of its case in court, the trial
had been especially difficult for Minnie. But she looked like she was still standing strong.

“Oh, no, thank you. I appreciate it, but it’s fine. Walter and I ate some things on the visitation yard.”

“They don’t have nothing on that prison yard but chips and sodas. Let me cook you something good.”

“That’s very kind, I appreciate it, but I’m really okay. I know you’ve been working all day, too.”

“Well, yes, I’m on twelve-hour shifts at the plant. Them people don’t want to hear nothing about your business, your sickness, your nerves, your out-of-town guests, and definitely nothing about your family problems.” She didn’t sound angry or bitter, just sad. She walked over to me, gently looped her arm with mine, and slowly led me into the house. We sat down on a sofa in the crowded living room. Chairs that didn’t match were piled with papers and clothes; her grandchildren’s toys were scattered on the floor. Minnie sat close to me, almost leaning on me as she continued speaking softly.

“Work people tell you to be there, and so you got to go. I’m trying to get her through school and it ain’t easy.” She nodded to her daughter, Jackie, who looked back at her mother sympathetically. Jackie walked across the room and sat near us. Walter and Minnie had mentioned their children—Jackie, Johnny, and “Boot”—to me several times. Jackie’s name was always followed by “She’s in college.” I had begun to think of her as Jackie “She’s in College” McMillian. All of the kids were in their twenties but still very close and protective of their mother.

I told them about my visit with Walter. Minnie hadn’t been to the prison in several months and seemed grateful that I had spent some time there. I went over the appeals process with them and talked about the next steps in the case. They confirmed Walter’s alibi and updated me on all the rumors in town currently circulating about the case.

“I believe it was that old man Miles Jackson who done it,” Minnie said emphatically.

“I think it’s the new owner, Rick Blair,” Jackie said. “Everybody
knows they found a white man’s skin under that girl’s fingernails where she had fought whoever killed her.”

“Well, we’re going to get to the truth,” I said. I tried to sound confident, but given what I’d read in the trial transcript, I thought it very unlikely that the police would turn over their evidence to me or let me see the files and the materials collected from the crime scene. Even in the transcript, the law enforcement officers who had investigated Walter seemed lawless. These police put Walter on death row while he was a pretrial detainee; I feared that they would not scrupulously follow the legal requirement to turn over all exculpatory evidence that could help him prove his innocence.

We talked for well over an hour—or they talked while I listened. You could tell how traumatizing the last eighteen months since Walter’s arrest had been.

“The trial was the worst,” Minnie said. “They just ignored what we told them about Johnny D being home. Nobody has explained to me why they did that. Why did they do that?” She looked at me as if she honestly hoped I could provide an answer.

“This trial was constructed with lies,” I said. I was wary about expressing such strong opinions to Walter’s family because I hadn’t investigated the case enough to be sure there was more evidence to convict Walter. But reading the record of his trial had outraged me, and I felt that anger returning—not just about the injustice done to Walter but also about the way it had burdened the entire community. Everyone in the poor, black community who talked to me about the case had expressed hopelessness. This one massive miscarriage of justice had afflicted the whole community with despair and made it hard for me to be dispassionate.

“One lie after the other,” I continued. “People were fed so many lies that by the time y’all started telling the truth, it was just easier to believe
you
were the ones who were lying. It frustrates me to even read it in the trial record, so I can only imagine how you all feel.”

The phone rang, and Jackie jumped up to answer it. She came back
a few minutes later. “Eddie said that people are getting restless. They want to know when he’s going to be there.”

Minnie stood up and straightened her dress. “Well, we should probably get going down there. They been waiting most of the day for you.”

When I looked confused, Minnie smiled. “Oh, I told the rest of the family we would bring you down there, since it’s so hard to find where they live if you’ve never been there before. His sisters, nephews, nieces, and other folks all want to meet you.” I tried not to show my alarm, but I was getting worried about the time.

We piled into my two-door Corolla, which was stacked with papers, trial transcripts, and court records. “You must spend your money on other things,” Jackie joked as we pulled away.

“Yes, expensive suits are my spending priority these days,” I replied.

“There’s nothing wrong with your suit or your car,” Minnie said protectively.

I followed their directions down a long, winding dirt road full of impossible turns through a heavily wooded area. As darkness fell around us, the road twisted through dense forest for several miles until it came to a short, narrow bridge with room for only one car to pass. It looked shaky and unstable, so I slowed the car to a stop.

“It’s okay. It hasn’t rained that much, and that’s the only time when it’s really a problem,” Minnie said.

“What kind of problem?” I didn’t want to sound scared, but we were in the middle of nowhere and in the pitch-black night I couldn’t tell whether it was a swamp, a creek, or a small river under the bridge.

“It will be all right. People drive through here every day,” Jackie chimed in.

It would have been too embarrassing to turn around, so I drove slowly across the bridge and was relieved when we had made it to the other side. I continued for another mile until the forest began to give
way to trailers, a few small homes, and finally, an entire community hidden away in the woods.

We pulled up a hill until we reached a trailer that was glowing in the darkness, lit by a fire burning in a barrel out front. Six or seven small children were playing outside; they dashed into the trailer when they saw our car pull up. As we got out of the car, a tall man emerged from the trailer. He walked up to us and hugged Minnie and Jackie before shaking my hand.

“They been waiting for you,” he told me. “I know you probably got a lot of work to do, but we appreciate you coming to meet with us. I’m Giles, Walter’s nephew.”

Giles led me to the trailer and opened the door for me to step inside. The small home was packed with more than thirty people, whose chattering fell silent when I walked in. I was startled by the size of the group, which stared at me appraisingly and then, one by one, started to smile at me. Then, to my amazement, the room broke into loud applause. I was stunned by the gesture. No one had ever applauded me just for showing up. There were older women, younger women, men Walter’s age, and several men much older. Their faces were creased with a by-now familiar look of anxiety. When the applause had died down, I began to speak.

“Thank you, that’s very kind,” I started. “I’m so glad to meet you all. Mr. McMillian told me he had a large family, but I didn’t expect so many of you to be here. I saw him today, and he wants me to pass along his thanks and his gratitude to all of you for sticking by him. I hope you know how much your support means. He has to wake up on death row every morning, and that’s not easy. But he knows he’s not alone. He talks about you all the time.”

“Sit down, Mr. Stevenson,” someone shouted. I took a seat on an empty couch that seemed to have been reserved for me and Minnie sat down beside me. Everyone else stood, facing me.

“We don’t have any money. We gave it all to the first lawyer,” called out one of the men.

“I understand that, and I won’t take a penny. I work for a nonprofit law office, and we provide legal assistance at no cost to the people we represent,” I replied.

“Well, how do you pay the bills?” asked one young woman. People laughed at the question.

“We get donations from foundations and people who support our work.”

“Well, you get Johnny D home, and I’ll make all kinds of donations,” said another woman slyly. People laughed and I smiled.

An older woman spoke up. It was Armelia Hand. “We don’t have much, Mr. Stevenson, but you have someone we love in your care. Anything we have, you have. These people have broken our hearts,” she said.

I began answering questions and listening to comments and testimonials about Walter, the town, race, the police, the trial, and the way the whole family was now being treated by people in the community. The hours passed, and I knew that I had probably exhausted whatever helpful information could be obtained from Walter’s family, but folks still wanted to talk. There seemed to be therapeutic relief in voicing their concerns to me. Before long I heard some hopefulness in their questions and comments. I explained the appeals process and talked about the kind of issues that were already apparent from the record. I began to feel encouraged that some of the information I provided maybe eased their anxiety. We started to joke some, and before I knew it I felt embraced in a way that energized me.

An older woman had given me a tall glass of sweet iced tea as I sat there listening and responding to questions. I drank the first glass thirstily because I was a little nervous (the tea was very good). The woman watched me drain the glass and smiled at me with a look of great satisfaction. She quickly filled the glass, and no matter how much or how little I drank, she minded my glass religiously the entire evening. After over three hours, Minnie grabbed my hand and announced that they should let me go. It was close to midnight, and it
would take me at least two hours to get to Montgomery. I said my farewells and exchanged hugs with practically everyone in the room before stepping out into the dark night.