0812994523.pdf

“You can’t come in.”
“What do you mean I can’t come in? There is a hearing scheduled and I want to go inside.”
“I’m sorry, sir, you can’t come into the courtroom.”
“Why not?” I asked.
He stood there silently. Finally, I added, “I’m the defense attorney. I think I have to be able
to go inside the courtroom.”
He looked at me closely and was clearly perplexed. “Um, I don’t know. I’ll have to go and
check.” He disappeared inside the courtroom. He came back a few moments later and grinned
at me tentatively. “Um, you can come in.”
I pushed by the deputy, opened the door, and saw that the entire courtroom had been
altered. Inside the courtroom door they had placed a large metal detector, on the other side
of which was an enormous German shepherd held back by a police officer. The courtroom
was already half filled. The benches that had been filled by Walter’s supporters the previous
day were now mostly occupied by older white people. Clearly the people here were
supporting the Morrisons and the prosecution. Chapman and Valeska were already sitting at
the prosecutor’s table, acting as if nothing was going on. I was livid.
I walked over to Chapman, “Who told the deputies not to let the folks outside come into
the courtroom?” I asked. They looked at me as if they didn’t know what I was talking about.
“I’m going to speak to the judge about this.”
I spun on my heel and went directly to the judge’s chambers, and the prosecutors followed
me. When I explained to Judge Norton that McMillian’s family and supporters had been told
that they couldn’t come into the courtroom, even though the State’s supporters had been let
in, the judge rolled his eyes and looked annoyed.
“Mr. Stevenson, your people will just have to get here earlier,” he said dismissively.
“Judge, the problem isn’t that they weren’t here early. The problem is they were told they
couldn’t come into the courtroom.”
“No one is being denied entrance to the courtroom, Mr. Stevenson.”
He turned to his bailiff, who left the room. I followed the bailiff and saw him whisper
something to the deputy outside the courtroom. McMillian’s supporters would be let into the
courtroom—now that half the courtroom was already filled.
I walked over to where two ministers had assembled all of Walter’s supporters and tried to
explain the situation.
“I’m sorry, everyone,” I said. “They’ve done something really inappropriate today. They’ll
let you in now, but the courtroom is already half filled with people here to support the State.
There won’t be enough seats for everyone.”
One of the ministers, a heavyset African American man dressed in a dark suit with a large
cross around his neck, walked over to me. “Mr. Stevenson, it’s okay. Please don’t worry about
us. We’ll have a few people be our representatives today and we will be here even earlier
tomorrow. We won’t let nobody turn us around, sir.”
The ministers began selecting people to be representatives in the courtroom. They told
Minnie, Armelia, Walter’s children, and several others to go on in. When the ministers called
out Mrs. Williams, everyone seemed to smile. Mrs. Williams, an older black woman, stood up
and prepared herself to enter the courtroom. She took great care in fixing her hair just right.
On top of her gray hair she wore a small hat whose placement she precisely adjusted. She