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something about the Morrison murder was clearly gone now. He was depressed and sinking
deeper into an emotional crisis. From the time he was burned as a child, he had always feared
fire, heat, and small spaces. As the prisoners talked more and more about the details of the
Evans’s execution and Wayne Ritter’s impending execution, Myers became more and more
distraught.
On the night of the Ritter execution, Myers was in full crisis, sobbing in his cell. There is a
tradition on death row in Alabama that, at the time scheduled for the execution, the
condemned prisoners bang on their cell doors with cups in protest. At midnight, while all the
other prisoners banged away, Myers curled up on the floor in the corner of his cell,
hyperventilating and flinching with each clang he heard. When the stench of burned flesh
that many on the row claimed they could smell during the execution wafted into his cell,
Myers dissolved. He called Tate the next morning and told him that he would say whatever
he wanted if he would get him off death row.
Tate initially justified keeping Myers and McMillian on death row for safety reasons. But
Tate immediately picked Myers up and brought him back to the county jail the day after the
Ritter execution. Tate didn’t appear to discuss with anyone the decision to move Myers off
death row. Ordinarily, the Alabama Department of Corrections couldn’t just put people on
death row or let them off without court orders or legal filings—and certainly no prison
warden could do so on his own. But nothing about the prosecution of Walter McMillian was
turning out to be ordinary.
Once removed from death row and back in Monroe County, Myers affirmed his initial
accusations against McMillian. With Myers back as the primary witness and Bill Hooks ready
to say that he saw Walter’s truck at the crime scene, the district attorney believed that he
could proceed against McMillian. The case was scheduled for trial in February 1988.
Ted Pearson had been the district attorney for nearly twenty years. He and his family had
lived in South Alabama for generations. He knew the local customs, values, and traditions
well and had put them to good use in the courtroom. He was getting older and had plans to
retire soon, but he hated that his office had been criticized for failing to solve the Morrison
murder more quickly. Pearson was determined to leave office with a victory and likely saw
the prosecution of Walter McMillian as one of the most important cases of his career.
In 1987 , all forty elected district attorneys in Alabama were white, even though there are
sixteen majority-black counties in the state. When African Americans began to exercise their
right to vote in the 1970 s, there was deep concern among some prosecutors and judges about
how the racial demographics in some counties would complicate their reelections. Legislators
had aligned counties to maintain white majorities for judicial circuits that included a
majority-black county. Still, Pearson had to be more mindful of the concerns of black
residents than at the beginning of his career—even if that mindfulness didn’t translate into
any substantive changes during his tenure.
Like Tate, Pearson had heard from many black residents that they believed Walter
McMillian was innocent. But Pearson was confident he could win a guilty verdict despite the
suspect testimony of Ralph Myers and Bill Hooks and the strong doubts in the black
community. His one lingering concern may have been a recent United States Supreme Court
case that threatened a longstanding feature of high-profile criminal trials in the South: the all-
white jury.