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about the inability of people in the local community to get a fair picture of what was going
on. Aside from the hostility we feared he would face if Walter was released, we were worried
about what would happen if a new trial was ordered. All of the prejudicial media coverage
would make a fair trial nearly impossible. The local press in Monroe County and Mobile had
demonized Walter and had defiantly maintained that his conviction was reliable and his
execution necessary.
Local papers had painted Walter as a dangerous drug dealer who had possibly murdered
several innocent teenagers. Monroeville and Mobile newspapers freely printed assertions that
Walter was a “drug kingpin,” a “sexual predator,” and a “gang leader.” When he was first
arrested, local headlines emphasized the absurd sexual misconduct charges involving Ralph
Myers. “McMillian Charged with Sodomy” was a common headline. In covering the hearings,
the Monroe Journal focused on the danger Walter posed: “Those entering the courtroom had
to pass through a metal detector, as has been the case throughout the court proceedings
against McMillian, and officers were stationed throughout the courtroom.” Despite all of the
evidence presented at our hearing showing that Walter had nothing to do with the Pittman
murder, the local press invoked the case to scare up more fear about Walter. “Convicted
Slayer Wanted in East Brewton Murder” was an early headline in the Brewton paper. “Ronda
Wasn’t the Only Girl Killed” was the headline in the Mobile Press Register after our hearing.
The Mobile paper reported after the hearing: “Myers and McMillian were part of a burglary,
theft, forgery and drug smuggling ring that operated in several counties in South Alabama,
according to law enforcement officers. McMillian was the leader of the operation.” From its
focus on his pretrial placement on death row to the extra security surrounding his court
appearances, the narrative in the press was clear: This man was extremely dangerous.
At this point, people seemed uninterested in the truth surrounding the crime. During the
most recent hearing in Baldwin County, the State’s local supporters walked out of the
courtroom rather than hear the evidence that supported Walter’s innocence. It was risky, but
we hoped that national press coverage of our side of the story would change the narrative.
A Washington Post journalist, Walt Harrington, had come to Alabama to do a piece on our
work a year earlier and had heard me describe the McMillian case. He passed that
information to a journalist friend of his, Pete Earley, who contacted me and became
immediately interested. After reading the transcripts and files we provided him, he jumped
into the case, spent time with several of the players, and quickly came to share our
astonishment that Walter had been convicted on such unreliable evidence.
I’d given a speech at Yale Law School earlier in the year that was attended by a producer
from the popular CBS investigative program 60 Minutes, and he also called me. We’d gotten
calls from various news magazine programs over the previous few years that expressed
interest in covering our work, but I was wary. My general attitude was that press coverage
rarely helped our clients. Beyond the general anti-media sentiments in the South, the death
penalty was particularly polarizing. It’s such a politically charged topic that even sympathetic
pieces about people on death row usually triggered a local backlash that created more
problems for the client and the case. Even though the clients sometimes wanted press
attention, I was extremely resistant to media interviews about pending cases. I knew of too
many cases where a favorable profile in the media had provoked an expedited execution date
or retaliatory mistreatment that made things much worse.