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Walter McMillian on 60 Minutes
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His name is Walter McMillian, known to his friends as Johnny D.,
and he's been on death row in Alabama's Holman prison for almost six years.
Was he in fact the man who walked into a dry-cleaning store in Monroeville, Alabama in, November of 1986,
and robbed and murdered the clerk?
Or did they get the wrong man, and is the real murderer still out there somewhere?
A jury was convinced they got the right man, but you may not be after you watch this story.
The clerk who was murdered was 18-year-old Ronda Morrison, the only child of Charles and Bertha Morrison,
who have no doubt that Walter McMillian did it, and want him executed as soon as possible.
Johnny D. says they want to execute the wrong man.
You didn't kill Ronda Morrison?
No sir, I ain't never seen Ronda Morrison a day in my life, god knows I didn't.
Where were you on the day of the murder?
At my house.
Did you ever go into Monroeville on the day of the murder?
No sir.
You never went into town?
I never went into Monroeville period.
McMillian is certainly not a typical death row inmate. He had a good job in the logging business,
no prior felony convictions,
and lived with his family near Monroeville his entire life.
Police didn't arrest McMillian until seven months after the Morrison murder—a crime which had the police stumped—
they had no fingerprints, no telltale ballistics tests,
no physical evidence of any kind linking McMillian or anyone else to the crime.
McMillian's friends and family testified he was at a fish fry
at his house on the morning of the murder, working on the pickup truck he supposedly drove to the cleaners.
We talked to his friend Jimmy Hunter.
And that was the truck you were working on that day?
That's right.
The transmission was – out of – was out of the truck?
Yeah, I had to clean out. You have to take them out.
So you couldn't have driven the truck anywhere?
No.
Johnny D.'s attorney Bryan Stevenson has appealed the cases
of more than a hundred death row inmates.
I have never had a case where
the state's only evidence of guilt comes from one person—
where there's no motive, there's no physical evidence, there's no corroborating circumstances,
there's nothing but the word of one person.
That one person is Ralph Myers, a career criminal who's now doing 30 years for another murder.
Myers testified he was in Johnny D.'s pickup truck outside the cleaners
when McMillian went in to rob the store.
Some point you heard gunshots?
Right.
When you went inside, what did you tell them you saw?
I told them that I had seen a young girl laying on the floor with her mouth open.
Dead.
And what was he doing?
Taking money from out of a paper sack putting it into a briefcase.
Did he have a gun?
Yeah, I had told the court that, yeah.
Now that testimony put him on death row.
Right.
Was it true?
No sir, not at all. Nowhere near true.
So why did Ralph Myers testify against McMillian?
At the time, he was awaiting trial and facing a possible death sentence for murder.
He says an Alabama Bureau of Investigation agent used that
to pressure him to lie about McMillian.
So he tells me, he says, well all you got to do is you go along with what we want you to go along with,
and he says, I promise you, he said, I've done got it fixed with the DA,
I've done got it fixed with the judge, and you won't get but 30 years.
So 30 years and you'd be eligible for parole after—
Well more or less, probably like ten.
So you're looking at ten years versus the electric chair?
Right.
Why should anyone believe you now,
when you're taking back what you said at the trial under oath?
Well it's like this.
I don't know the words for that, but I can tell you this much:
right is right and wrong is wrong,
and for a man to straighten his own life out, he must tell the truth.
He must try to do what is right. And that's what I'm trying to do.
District Attorney Tommy Chapman wasn't involved in McMillian's original trial
but is now handling the state's case.
Let me ask you about Ralph Myers, how would you characterize Ralph Myers?
Ralph's about as low as you can get.
He's a scum.
A liar?
Yes sir, I'd characterize him as a liar, particularly now.
Chapman says he's going to indict Myers for perjury,
not for what he said at the trial, but for what he's saying now.
I intend to ask the Baldwin County grand jury to indict him for perjury.
Because of that, because of his—
recantation.
Now, if he's convicted—
mm-hmm—
what happens to his shot at parole?
He'll probably get life.
I hope he does.
So it seems to me, that he's got more to lose by saying
he's recanting
than by saying he sticks by his story.
He can't lose his life by recanting. He could lose his life for not changing his story.
You know, the prison has its own way of dealing with people who are snitches.
Ralph Myers is a snitch.
I'm sure Ralph Myers would agree that any threat he was under in prison
is nothing like the threat he's under now,
having recanted his testimony and opened himself back up to perjury charges,
to capital murder charges—
What Myers has done is take a pretty radical risk.
But District Attorney Chapman says there were good reasons to believe what Myers said in court.
You said that there were details that he gave?
What were the details that no one else knew?
That her mouth was open, the position of her body,
the way he, uh, the way her clothes were—
those were the types of things.
Ralph Myers, in none of his trial testimony,
in nothing that has ever been presented in the court,
has ever said anything about the victim's body that is consistent with the way in which the victim's body was found.
Myers told police that Ronda Morrison's body was lying face-up behind the cash register.
But the first police officer on the scene found the body lying face-down behind a partition
in another part of the cleaners.
We asked former police officer Woodrow Ikner exactly what he found.
I found a young lady in a the northeast corner of this building laying face down.
Is it possible that the body was dragged from the counter to the back where you saw it?
In my opinion, no.
There was particular dust that was around this body
and there was no evidence that the dust was disturbed.
You think that the body was where it fell when she was shot?
Yes sir.
But did the prosecutor talk to you at all about it?
Yes sir the prosecutor did talk to me about it,
in fact he asked me to testify that the body had been dragged.
The prosecutor asked you to testify that the body had been dragged to the back of the cleaners?
Yes sir he did.
Then what did you say?
I said, no sir, I will not testify because I saw no evidence that the body had been dragged.
The former prosecutor denies he ever asked Ikner to testify the body had been dragged,
still, if Myers really did see the body near the counter,
no one has been able to explain how it could have been dragged to where police found it,
without leaving telltale signs including bloodstains on the floor.
What we now know is that the story that Myers told is simply not true.
In fact, even before the trial, Myers told four psychiatrists at Taylor Hardin in Alabama State Hospital
that his statements implicating McMillian were bogus
and were coerced out of him by the police,
specifically by an agent of the ABI,
the Alabama Bureau of Investigation.
While I'm at Taylor Hardin, I tell the state doctors up there, hey look,
this is what the ABI officer is wanting me to do.
He's wanting me to set this man up, to tell lies on this man, to get this man put on death row.
He says what man are you talking about?
And I said I'm talking about Johnny D. McMillian.
A man who lives in Monroeville, Alabama.
The jury should have known that a month before the trial took place in this case,
Myers had gone to the State Hospital and told four separate doctors that this is all a lie.
What Ralph Myers may have told those people up there at Taylor Hardin
would have been no concern to the state of Alabama
and I'm confident that there was no willful intent on the part of the state of Alabama
to withhold those records.
Johnny D. McMillian wouldn't be on death row today if it were just Ralph Myers's word against his.
By law, the state needed a corroborating witness to back up at least some of what Myers said.
Bill Hooks, a former inmate, was that witness.
He said he saw McMillian's truck parked at the cleaners.
Bill hooks testified in court that as he was driving down the highway that Saturday morning,
he saw Johnny D. McMillian leave the cleaners, walk over to his pickup truck, and get in on the passenger's side,
and with Ralph Myers at the wheel, pull off down the highway.
In court, Hooks, who worked as an auto mechanic, said he knew it was McMillian's truck because it was a lowrider,
a truck that's been customized to sit low to the ground.
McMillian's lowrider was also placed at the cleaners by another witness,
but Clay Cast, the mechanic who converted McMillian's truck,
told us he did that work six months after Rhonda Morrison was murdered.
Sure, it was, she got murdered in November of 86 and this we're talking May of 87.
So if Billy Hook says he drove by there and saw Johnny D.'s truck and it was a lowrider,
then what you're saying is that Hooks is a liar.
Yeah.
If he drove by there when Rhonda Morrison was murdered, and he said it was a lowrider, he's lying.
You Bill Hooks?
Yes.
I'm Ed Bradley from 60 minutes. I just want to ask you a couple questions, if that's okay with you?
Hooks was in jail awaiting a trial for burglary when he gave police a statement
identifying McMillian's truck as a lowrider.
They got my statement, if you want to know anything, go ask them.
But you said that you saw him with that lowrider truck he had, right?
They got everything on that statement.
But that's what you said in the statement, you said he had that lowrider truck.
If it's in the statement, yeah, if it ain't in the statement, nope.
So if it's in the statement that you said a lowrider truck, and it is in the statement—
—then ... If I said in the statement I see it, if it ain't then I didn't see it.
He did have the lowrider truck?
If it is on my statement, it's true, if it's ain't on my statement, it ain't.
Did Bill Hooks really see Johnny D. McMilllian at the cleaners the morning Ronda Morrison was killed?
Darnell Houston, who was working with Hooks at a used-car lot says no way,
because both of them were still at work that morning when Morrison's body was discovered at a quarter to 11:00
And he was there until what time did you leave?
Around 11:00, it was a little after 11.
And he had not left at all?
He hadn't left.
I hadn't seem him left cuz ain't but one way to go out the parking lot.
And he didn't go out of that?
No sir he didn't.
You sure of that?
Positive of it.
Does it bother you that a man may go to the electric chair based on dubious testimony?
Well I wouldn't call it dubious testimony,
you got a man who—
—Hooks truly is a very believable witness when you could look at the fact that he has no reason,
no axe to grind with any of these people,
no reason to say these things.
That, says Bryan Stevenson, is nonsense.
He's benefited quite significantly and based on his cooperation with the state in this case
he's gotten at least $5,000 in reward money,
they dismissed fines against him.
Are you saying that the cops offered Hooks a deal and then he testified?
Oh there's no question that Hooks got assistance from the cops
in exchange for his testimony in this case.
The day that he gave the incriminating statement—
the complete incriminating statement against a Walter McMillian—
is the day that they let him out of jail.
Things got pretty good for you after you told the story.
Things got pretty good for me like what?
Well you got out of jail, charges against you were dropped—
I did my time you—
You got about $5,000 in reward money. That's pretty good isn't it?
You can interview somebody else I ain't got time.
Uh-huh but isn't that pretty good?
During the trial, the jury learned that McMilllian was not a model husband.
He ran around with other women,
one of them was Karen Kelly, who's now doing time for aggravated assault
in a case in a nearby county.
Did any law-enforcement officer ever threaten you or make threatening remarks about
your relationship with Johnny D.?
Yes sir.
What did he say?
They told me that I was going to prison because of that nigger
and they didn't understand why I wanted to mess with with niggers.
You're very clear that that's what he said?
Yes sir.
Why are you reluctant to say who it was?
I just rather not say, for my own best interest.
I don't know why anybody would care by who slept with Karen Kelly.
Black, white, has nothing to do with it?
I would not think so.
Did the relationship between Johnny D. and Karen Kelly ever come up during a trial?
Yes, quite unusually I might add.
You know at the end of Myers's testimony, the state prosecutor stands up and asks Myers,
well do you know who Karen Kelly is?
And he says yes.
And does she know Walter McMillian?
He says well yes.
And the prosecutor asked well were they good friends?
He says well yes.
Would you describe him as boyfriend and girlfriend?
Yes.
Would you describe Karen Kelly for the jury?
Well yes, she's a white woman.
No more questions.
What's wrong with our criminal justice system
is the fact that people want to come back sometimes and second-guess juries.
I don't believe there's been any law enforcement misconduct in this case.
I don't think anyone's proved it.
A prosecutor's job is not to obtain a conviction.
It's to achieve justice.
And one of the greatest tragedies about this case
is that somebody in Monroe County
has literally gotten away with murder.
If an execution date is set for McMilllian, and that day comes
and it's time for him to go to the electric chair,
will you be comfortable?
Yes.
I'll be comfortable with it.
Do you think it's fair, just, he had his day in court?
He was tried by a jury and they heard the testimony and they believed it.
McMillian's fate is now in the hands of the Alabama Supreme Court
which is expected to decide soon if he's entitled to a new trial.
In Alabama tonight a man named Walter McMillian is a free man.
It's quite a story.
He's been released from a cell in Alabama's death row
after an appeals court ruled that he was wrongly convicted of murder.
Ironically, if Mr. McMillian had been sentenced to life in prison,
instead of being given the death penalty,
who knows what would have happened.
ABC's Al Dale has the details.
Walter McMillian walked out of Holman prison after a harrowing six years on death row.
When you get in here, it's even worse when you're innocent.
Being on death row brought attention to McMillian's case
that it otherwise would not have received .
And that scrutiny revealed the weaknesses in the state's case
that eventually led to his freedom.
Being six years away from your family, lost your job,
and lost just about everything I had.
I've been living under stress all these years.
He had been convicted of shooting an 18-year-old woman to death at this dry cleaners
in the small town of Monroeville, despite a dozen witnesses placing McMillian elsewhere at the time.
Prosecutors built their case on the testimony of three men, all of whom later recanted,
and the state withheld crucial evidence from McMillian's attorneys.
Some people close to the case believe the death penalty was racially motivated,
since McMillian had been seeing a white woman.
Before he even came to trial, the judge sent him to death row instead of a regular jail.
The jury sentenced McMillian to life in prison,
but the same judge intervened and ruled that McMillan should die in the electric chair.
His wife said she never lost hope.
Because I knew he was innocent, and I figured they might hold him for years and years,
but I knew sooner or later he would get out.
Because he was facing the death penalty, lawyers kept appealing the case and finally won.
All right!
As he waved goodbye to death row, there had been no apology from the state,
and when McMillian was asked if gaining his freedom means the system works,
he replied firmly, no.
Al Dale, ABC News, Atlanta.
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