might be less personally connected to Ronda Morrison and her family, it was an extremely
conservative county that had made even less progress leaving behind the racial politics of Jim
Crow than its neighbors.
Given what he’d heard from other death row prisoners about all-white juries, Walter
worried about the venue change as well. But he still put his faith in this fact: No one could
hear the evidence and believe that he committed this crime. He just didn’t believe that a jury,
black or white, could convict him on the nonsensical story told by Ralph Myers—not when he
had an unquestionable alibi with close to a dozen witnesses.
The February trial was postponed. Once again, Ralph Myers was having second thoughts.
After months in the county jail, away from death row, Myers again realized he didn’t want to
implicate himself in a murder he had not committed. He waited until the morning that the
trial was set to begin before he told investigators that he could not testify because what they
wanted him to say was not true. He tried to wrangle for more favorable treatment but
decided that there was no punishment he was willing to accept for a murder he hadn’t
committed.
Myers’s refusal to cooperate got him sent back to death row. Back at Holman, it wasn’t long
before he again showed serious emotional and psychological distress. After a couple of weeks,
prison officials were so concerned that they sent him to the state hospital for the mentally ill.
The Taylor Hardin Secure Medical Facility in Tuscaloosa did all of the diagnostic and
assessment work for courts managing people accused of crimes who might be incompetent to
stand trial due to mental illness. It had frequently been criticized by defense lawyers for
almost never finding serious mental disabilities that would prevent defendants from going to
trial.
Myers’s time at Taylor Hardin did very little to change his predicament. He hoped that he
might be returned to the county jail after his thirty-day stint at the hospital, but instead he
was returned to death row. Realizing he could not escape the situation he’d created for
himself, Myers told investigators he was ready to testify against McMillian.
A new trial date was scheduled for August 1988. Walter had been on death row for over a
year. As hard as he had tried to adjust, he couldn’t accept the nightmare his life had become.
Although he was nervous, he had been convinced that he was going home back in February,
when the first trial was scheduled. His lawyers seemed happy that Myers was struggling and
told Walter it was a good sign when the trial was continued because Myers refused to testify.
But it meant another six months on death row for Walter, and he couldn’t see anything
encouraging about that. When they finally moved him to the Baldwin County Jail in Bay
Minette for the August trial, Walter left death row confident he’d never return. He had
become friends with several men on the row and was surprised by how conflicted he felt
about leaving them, knowing what they would soon face. Yet when they called his name to
the transfer office, he lost no time gathering his things and getting in the van to leave.
A week later, Walter sat in the van with shackles pinching his ankles and chains tightly
wound around his waist. He could feel his feet beginning to swell because the circulation was
cut off by the metal digging into his skin. The handcuffs were too tight, and he was becoming
uncharacteristically angry.
“Why you got these chains on me this tight?”