0812994523.pdf

Oklahoma and Illinois limit the total amount an innocent person can recover to under
$ 200 , 000 , even if the person has spent decades in prison. While other states have caps of
more than a million dollars, and many have no cap at all, several states impose onerous
eligibility requirements. In some jurisdictions, if the person lacks the support of the
prosecuting attorney who wrongly convicted him, compensation will be denied.
At the time Walter was set free, Alabama was not among the handful of states that
provided aid to innocent people released from prison. The Alabama legislature could pass a
special bill granting compensation to a person wrongly convicted, but that almost never
happened. A local legislator introduced a bill seeking compensation on Walter’s behalf that
prompted the local press to report that Walter was seeking $ 9 million. The proposed
legislation, of which Walter had no prior knowledge, went nowhere. But the news coverage
about the possible $ 9 million payoff outraged people in Monroeville who still questioned his
innocence and titillated some of Walter’s friends and family, a few of whom started soliciting
him aggressively for financial help. One woman even filed a paternity suit falsely claiming
that Walter was the father of her child, a child that was born less than eight months after
Walter’s release. DNA tests confirmed that he was not the father.
Walter at times expressed frustration that people didn’t believe him when he told them he
had received nothing. We pressed ahead in our efforts to get compensation for him through a
lawsuit, but there were obstacles. Our civil suit ran up against laws that give police,
prosecutors, and judges special immunity from civil liability in criminal justice matters. While
Chapman and the state officers connected with the case now readily acknowledged Walter’s
innocence, they were unwilling to accept any responsibility for his wrongful prosecution and
death sentence. Sheriff Tate, who seemed most active in Walter’s wrongful pretrial placement
on death row and whose racist threats and intimidation tactics seemed the most actionable in
a civil suit, reportedly accepted Walter’s innocence upon his release but then started telling
people that he still believed Walter was guilty.
Rob McDuff, an old friend of mine from Jackson, Mississippi, agreed to join our team for
the civil litigation. Rob is a white native Mississippian whose Southern charm and manner
enhanced his outstanding litigation skills in Alabama courts. He had recently asked me to
help him with an Alabama civil rights case involving law enforcement misconduct. That case
involved a police raid on a nightclub in Chambers County during which black residents had
been illegally detained, mistreated, and abused by local authorities who refused to accept any
responsibility for their misconduct. We ended up taking the case all the way to the U.S.
Supreme Court, and we ultimately won a favorable ruling.
Walter’s civil case would also go to the U.S. Supreme Court. We sued almost a dozen state
and local officials and agencies. As expected, the defendants all claimed immunity for the
conduct that had resulted in Walter’s wrongful conviction. The immunity from civil liability
given to prosecutors and judges is even greater than the protections provided to law
enforcement officers. So even though it was clear that Ted Pearson, the prosecutor who had
tried the case against Walter, had illegally withheld evidence that directly resulted in Walter’s
wrongful conviction, we would likely not succeed in a civil action against him. As he was the
person most in charge of Walter’s wrongful prosecution and conviction, it was hard to
reconcile his immunity with his culpability in the whole affair, but there was little we could
do. State and federal courts have persistently insulated prosecutors from accountability for