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The two Baldwin County deputies who had picked him up a week earlier had not been
friendly on the trip from death row to the courthouse. Now that he had been convicted of
capital murder, they were downright hostile. One seemed to laugh in response to Walter’s
question.
“Them chains is the same as they were when we picked you up. They just feel tighter
because we got you now.”
“You need to loosen this, man, I can’t ride like this.”
“It ain’t going to happen, so you should get your mind off it.”
Walter suddenly recognized the man. At the end of the trial when the jury had found
Walter guilty, his family and several of the black people who had attended the trial were in
shocked disbelief. Sheriff Tate claimed that Walter’s twenty-four-year-old son, Johnny, said,
“Somebody’s going to pay for what they’ve done to my father.” Tate asked deputies to arrest
Johnny, and there was a scuffle. Walter saw the officers wrestle his child to the ground and
place him in handcuffs. The more he looked at the two deputies driving him back to death
row, the more convinced he became that one of them had tackled his son.
The van began to move. They wouldn’t tell Walter where he was going, but as soon as they
got on the road it was clear that they were taking him back to death row. He had been upset
and distraught on the day of his arrest, but he was so sure he’d be released soon. He got
frustrated when the days turned into weeks at the county jail. He was depressed and terrified
when they took him to death row before trial before being convicted of any crime, and the
weeks became months. But when the nearly all-white jury pronounced him guilty, after
fifteen months of waiting for vindication, he was shocked, paralyzed. Now he felt himself
coming back to life—but all he could feel was seething anger. The deputies were driving him
back to death row and talking about a gun show they were planning to attend. Walter
realized that he had been foolish to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. He knew Tate was
vicious and no good, but he assumed that the others were just doing what they had been told.
Now he was feeling something that could only be described as rage.
“Hey, I’m going to sue all of y’all!”
He knew he was screaming and that it wasn’t going to make any difference. “I’m going to
sue all of y’all!” he repeated. The officers paid him no attention.
“Loose these chains. Loose these chains.”
He couldn’t remember when he’d last lost control, but he felt himself falling apart. With
some struggle he became silent. Thoughts of the trial flew back into his mind. It had been
short, methodical, and clinical. Jury selection lasted just a few hours. Pearson used his
peremptory strikes to exclude all but one of the handful of African Americans who had been
summoned to serve on the jury. His lawyers objected, but the judge summarily dismissed
their complaints. The State put Myers on the stand to tell his absurd story about Walter
forcing him to drive to Jackson Cleaners because his arm hurt. This version had Myers going
into the cleaners where he saw Walter standing over the dead body of Ronda Morrison.
Bizarrely, he also claimed that a third person was present and involved in the murder, a
mysterious white man with salt and pepper hair who was clearly in charge of the crime and
who directed Walter to kill Myers too, but Walter couldn’t because he was out of bullets.
Walter thought the testimony was so nonsensical he couldn’t believe that people were taking
it seriously. Why wasn’t everyone laughing?