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