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Chestnut’s cross-examination of Myers made it clear that the witness was lying. When
Chestnut finished, Walter was sure that the State would simply announce that they had made
a mistake. Instead, the prosecutor brought Myers back up to repeat his accusations as if the
logic and contradictions in the testimony were completely irrelevant, as if repeating his lies
enough times in this quiet room would make them true.
Bill Hooks testified that he’d seen Walter’s truck pull out of the cleaners at the time of the
murder and that he recognized the truck because it had been modified as a “low-rider.”
Walter instantly whispered to his lawyers that he hadn’t turned his truck into a “low-rider”
until several months after Morrison was murdered. His lawyers didn’t do much with that
information, which frustrated Walter. Then another white man Walter had never heard of,
Joe Hightower, took the stand and said that he had seen the truck at the cleaners, too.
There were a dozen people who could talk about the fish fry and insist that Walter was at
home when Ronda Morrison was killed. His lawyers called only three of them. Everybody
seemed to be rushing to get the trial over with, and Walter couldn’t understand it. The State
then called a white man, Ernest Welch, who said he was the “furniture man” who collected
money at the McMillian house on the day they were having a fish fry—but it wasn’t the same
day that Ronda Morrison was murdered. He said he remembered better than anyone when
she was murdered because he was her uncle. He said that he had been so devastated that he
went to the McMillian residence to collect money on a different day.
The lawyers made their arguments, the jury retired, and less than three hours later they
filed back into the courtroom. Stone-faced, one by one, they pronounced Walter McMillian
guilty.