then pulled out a long blue scarf that she delicately wrapped around her neck. Only then did
she slowly begin to make her way to the courtroom door where the line of McMillian
supporters had formed. I found her dignified ritual riveting, but when the spell was broken I
realized that I needed to get going myself. I hadn’t spent the morning preparing for witnesses
as I had intended but had instead been drawn into this foolish mistreatment of McMillian’s
supporters. I walked past the line of patient people and went inside to begin preparing for the
hearing.
I was standing at counsel’s table when out of the corner of my eye I saw that Mrs. Williams
had made it to the courtroom door. She was quite elegant in her hat and scarf. She wasn’t a
large woman, but there was something commanding about her presence—I couldn’t help but
watch her as she moved carefully through the doorway toward the metal detector. She
walked more slowly than everyone else, but she held her head high with an undeniable grace
and dignity. She reminded me of older women I’d been around all my life—women whose
lives were hard but who remained kind and dedicated themselves to building and sustaining
their communities. Mrs. Williams glanced at the available rows to see where she would sit,
and then turned to walk through the metal detector—and that’s when she saw the dog.
I watched all her composure fall away, replaced by a look of absolute fear. Her shoulders
dropped, her body sagged, and she seemed paralyzed. For over a minute she stood there,
frozen, and then her body began to tremble and then shake noticeably. I heard her groan.
Tears were running down her face and she began to shake her head sadly. I kept watching
until she turned around and quickly walked out of the courtroom.
I felt my own mood shift. I didn’t know exactly what had happened to Mrs. Williams, but I
knew that here in Alabama, police dogs and black folks looking for justice had never mixed
well.
I was trying to shake off the dark feeling that the morning’s events had conjured when the
officers brought Walter into the courtroom. Because there was no jury, the judge had not
permitted me to give him street clothes to wear, so Walter was wearing his prison uniform.
They allowed him to be in the courtroom without handcuffs but had insisted on keeping his
ankles shackled. Michael and I conferred briefly about the order of witnesses as the rest of
McMillian’s family and supporters slowly filed through the metal detector, past the dog, and
into the courtroom.
Despite the State’s early-morning maneuvers and the bad omen of the dog and Mrs.
Williams, we had another good day in court. Evidence from the state mental health workers
who had dealt with Myers after he initially refused to testify in the first trial and was sent to
the Taylor Hardin Secure Medical Facility for evaluation confirmed Myers’s testimony from
the day before. Dr. Omar Mohabbat explained that Myers had told him then “that the police
had framed him to accept the penalty for the murder case that he is accused of or ‘to testify’
that ‘the man did.’ ” Mohabbat reported that Myers “categorically denied having anything to
do with the alleged crime. He claimed, ‘I don’t know the name of this girl, I don’t know the
time of the alleged crime, I don’t know the date of the alleged crime, I don’t know the place
of the alleged crime.’ ” Mohabbat testified that Myers had told him, “They told me to say
what they wanted me to say.”
Evidence from other doctors further confirmed this testimony. Dr. Norman Poythress from