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death sentence. The court didn’t conclude that he was innocent and must be released, but it
ruled in our favor on every other claim and ordered a new trial. I didn’t realize how much I
had feared that we would lose until we finally won.
I jumped into the car and raced down to death row to tell Walter in person. I watched him
take it all in. He leaned back and gave me a familiar chuckle.
“Well,” he said slowly, “you know, that’s good. That’s good.”
“Good? It’s great!”
“Yeah, it is great.” He was grinning now with a freedom I hadn’t seen before. “Whew, man,
I can’t believe it, I can’t believe it.... Whew!”
His smile started to fade, and he began slowly shaking his head.
“Six years, six years gone.” He looked away with a pained expression. “These six years feel
like fifty. Six years, just gone. I’ve been so worried they were going to kill me, I haven’t even
thought about the time I’ve lost.”
His troubled look sobered me, too. “I know, Walter, and we’re not clear yet,” I said. “The
ruling only gives you a new trial. Given what the ABI has said, I can’t believe they would try
to prosecute you again, but with this crowd reasonable conduct is never guaranteed. I’m
going to try and get you home as soon as humanly possible.”
With thoughts of home, his mood lightened and we started talking about things we’d been
to afraid to discuss since we’d met. He said, “I want to meet everybody who has helped me in
Montgomery. And I want to go around with you and tell the world what they did to me.
There are other people here who are as innocent as I am.” He paused and started smiling
again. “Man, I want some good food, too. I ain’t had no real good food in so long that I can’t
even remember what it tastes like.”
“Whatever you want, it will be my treat,” I said proudly.
“From what I hear, you might not be able to afford the kind of meal I want,” he teased. “I
want steak, chicken, pork, maybe some good cooked coon.”
“Coon?”
“Oh, don’t pretend. You know you like grilled raccoon. Please don’t sit there and tell me
you ain’t never had no good coon when I know you grew up in the country just like I did.
There has been many a time when me and my cousin would be driving, and a coon would run
cross the road and he’d say, ‘Stop the car, stop the car!’ And I’d stop the car and he’d jump
out and go running into the woods and come back minutes later with a raccoon he done
caught. We would take it home, skin it, and fry or barbecue that meat. Maaaan ... what you
talking about? That would be some good eatin’.”
“You’ve got to be joking. I grew up in the country, but I never chased any kind of wild
animal into the woods to take home and eat.”
We relaxed and laughed a lot. We had laughed before today—Walter’s sense of humor
hadn’t failed him despite his six years on death row. And this case had given him lots of
fodder. We would often talk about situations and people connected to the case that, for all the
damage they had caused, had still made us laugh at their absurdity. But the laughter today
felt very different. It was the laughter of liberation.
I drove back to Montgomery and thought about how to expedite Walter’s release. I called
Tommy Chapman and told him that I intended to file a motion to dismiss all charges against
Walter in light of the appellate court’s ruling, and I hoped he would consider joining the