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“Sir?”
“My people were heroes of the Confederacy. I’ve inherited their land, their title, and their
pride. I love this county, but I know what happened to Walter McMillian ain’t right.”
“Well, I appreciate your call.”
“You’re going to need some backup, someone who knows some of these people you’re
going against, and I’m going to help you.”
“I’d be very grateful for your help.”
“I’ll tell you something else.” He lowered his voice. “Do you think your phone is being
tapped?”
“No, sir, I think my phone is clear.”
Sam’s voice rose in volume again.
“Well, I’ve decided I ain’t going to let them string him up. I’ll get some boys, and we’ll go
cut him down before we let them take him. I’m just not going to stand for them putting a
good man down for something I know he didn’t do.”
Sam Crook spoke in grand proclamations. I hesitated over how to respond.
“Well ... thank you,” was all I could manage.
When I later asked Walter about Sam Crook, he just smiled. “I’ve done a lot of work for
him. He’s been good to me. He’s a very interesting guy.”
I saw Walter just about every other week for those first few months, and I learned some of
his habits. “Interesting” was Walter’s euphemism for odd people, and having worked for
hundreds of people throughout the county over the years, he’d encountered no shortage of
“interesting” people. The more unusual or bizarre the person was, the more “interesting” they
would become in Walter’s parlance. “Very interesting” and “real interesting” and finally
“Now, he’s reeeeaaaalll interesting” were the markers for strange and stranger characters.
Walter seemed reluctant to say anything bad about anyone. He’d just chuckle if he thought
someone was odd.
Walter grew much more relaxed during our visits. As we became more comfortable with
each other, he would sometimes veer into topics that had nothing to do with the case. We
talked about the guards at the prison and his experiences dealing with other prisoners. He
talked about people back home he thought would visit but hadn’t. In these conversations,
Walter showed remarkable empathy. He spent a lot of time imagining what other people were
thinking and feeling that might mitigate their behavior. He guessed what frustrations guards
must be experiencing to excuse the rude things they said to him. He gave voice to how hard it
must be to visit someone on death row.
We talked about food he liked, jobs he’d worked when he was younger. We talked about
race and power, the things we saw that were funny, and the things we saw that were sad. It
made him feel better to have a normal conversation with someone who wasn’t on the row or
a guard, and I always spent extra time with him to talk about things unrelated to the case.
Not just for him but for myself as well.
I was trying so hard to get the project off the ground that my work had quickly become my
life. I found something refreshing in the moments I spent with clients when we didn’t relate
to one another as attorney and client but as friends. Walter’s case was becoming the most
complicated and time-consuming I’d ever worked on, and spending time with him was
comforting even though it made me feel the pressure of his mistreatment in ways that became