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come up with so much new evidence to prove Walter’s innocence, I think the court’s ruling
would have been even more overwhelming. I told Walter before I left the prison, “They don’t
know what we now know about your innocence. As soon as we present the new evidence to
them, they’ll think differently.” My hopefulness was genuine, in spite of everything that had
happened already. But I was underestimating the resistance we would face.
I’d finally been able to hire some additional lawyers for the organization, which gave me
more time to investigate Walter’s case. One of my new hires was Michael O’Connor, a recent
Yale Law School graduate with a passion for helping people in trouble that had been kindled
by his own struggles earlier in life. The son of Irish immigrants, Michael had grown up
outside of Philadelphia in a tough working-class neighborhood. When his high school friends
started experimenting with hard drugs, so did Mike, and he soon developed a heroin
addiction. His life descended into a nightmare of drug dependency and chaos, complete with
the growing risk of death by overdose. For several years he floated from one crisis to another
until the overdose death of a close friend motivated him to crawl his way back to sobriety.
Throughout all of this heartache, his family had never abandoned him. They helped him
stabilize his life and find his way back to college. At Penn State he revealed himself to be a
brilliant student, graduating summa cum laude. His academic credentials got him into Yale
Law School, but his heart was still connected to all the brokenness his years on the street had
shown him.
When I interviewed him for the job, he was apologetic about the darker episodes in his
past, but I thought he was perfect for the kind of staff we were trying to build. He signed up,
moved to Montgomery, and without hesitation jumped into the McMillian case with me. We
spent days tracking leads, interviewing dozens of people, following wild rumors, investigating
different theories. I was increasingly persuaded that we would have to figure out who really
had killed Ronda Morrison to win Walter’s release. Aside from my appreciation for Michael’s
invaluable help with the work itself, I was grateful finally to have someone around to share
the insanity of the case with—just as I was discovering that it was even crazier than I
thought.
After a few months of investigation, we’d uncovered strong evidence to support Walter’s
innocence. We discovered that Bill Hooks had been paid by Sheriff Tate for his testimony
against Walter—we found checks in the county’s financial records showing close to $ 5 , 000 in
payments to Hooks in reward money and “expenses.” Sheriff Tate had also paid Hooks money
to travel back and forth out of the county around the time of the trial. This information
should have been disclosed to Walter’s counsel prior to trial so that they could have used it to
cast doubt on the credibility of Hooks’s testimony.
We also found out that Hooks had been released from jail immediately after giving the
police his statement that he’d seen Walter’s “low-rider” truck at the cleaners on the day of the
murder. We found court records revealing that the D.A. and the sheriff, who are county
officials, had somehow gotten city charges and fines against Hooks dismissed, even though
they had no authority in city courts. Under U.S. Supreme Court precedent, that Hooks had
charges against him dismissed in exchange for cooperation with authorities was information
that the State was obligated to reveal to the defense. But, of course, they hadn’t.
We found the white man who was running the store on the day that Ralph Myers came in
for the purpose of giving a note to Walter. Walter had tried to persuade his original lawyers