Judge Norton denies Walter McMillian post-conviction relief

Judge Thomas B. Norton Jr.’s denial of post-conviction relief in Walter McMillian’s case preserved McMillian’s conviction despite Ralph Myers’s recantation and extensive evidence presented at a hearing. Issued on May 19, 1992, the order treated the question of Myers’s credibility as decisive, yet did not discuss the other witnesses or legal claims the defense had brought before the court.

Background to the Ruling

After the post-conviction hearing, the defense had reason to hope that a reviewing court might recognize weaknesses in the prosecution’s case. Myers had recanted most of the relevant parts of his trial testimony, and the hearing included testimony from more than a dozen other witnesses. The defense had also presented legal claims beyond the question of Myers’s recantation. Judge Norton, however, had not appeared especially engaged with the central question of whether McMillian was guilty or innocent.

The ruling arrived amid a case shaped by contested testimony and concerns about race and jury selection. In 1987, all forty elected district attorneys in Alabama were white, including in a state with sixteen majority-black counties. In serious cases in Monroe County, where 40 percent of residents were black, prosecutors had often excluded African Americans from jury service. The Supreme Court of the United States had recently made it easier to challenge racially discriminatory peremptory strikes in Batson v. Kentucky, but that decision also gave prosecutors an incentive to find more creative ways to exclude black jurors. This wider setting does not itself explain Judge Norton’s decision, but it underscores the institutional stakes surrounding McMillian’s effort to overturn his conviction.

The Order and Its Scope

A few days after bomb threats had prompted the office to be evacuated and searched by police dogs, a clerk in Baldwin County, Alabama, called Bryan Stevenson to say Judge Norton had ruled and to request his fax number. Stevenson waited beside the fax machine. When only three pages came through, the brevity itself heightened his concern: the court’s order was only two and a half pages long.

The order focused on Myers. It recounted that he had testified at the hearing and recanted most, if not all, of the relevant portions of his trial testimony, then considered whether he had lied at trial or at the post-conviction proceeding. It did not address the other legal claims, or the testimony of the other dozen-plus witnesses. Nor did it cite any case law. Its narrowness was not merely a matter of length: the ruling left almost the entire body of the defense’s presentation without a written response.

The Court’s Reasoning

Judge Norton listed factors he said he had considered in assessing Myers: his demeanor, his opportunity to know the facts, his stated reasons for testifying at trial and later recanting, possible external pressure, actions that might support either account, contradictions with other trial evidence, and whether any source showed that he could not have known the facts he had described. Because Judge R. E. L. Key had presided over the original trial and was retired, Norton said he could not compare Myers’s demeanor at trial with his demeanor during the recantation.

The order concluded that the other factors did not conclusively establish that Myers had perjured himself at trial. It acknowledged ample evidence of pressure on Myers after his trial testimony, but treated that pressure as a reason that could discredit his recantation. It also stated that the trial record and recantation testimony contained no evidence placing Myers somewhere other than the crime scene when the murder occurred. On that basis, the court formally declined to find that his trial testimony had been perjured.

Consequences and Significance

The order denied McMillian relief and left his conviction in place. Stevenson was more disappointed than surprised: he had suspected Norton would refuse to overturn the judgment. What he found striking was how little the ruling engaged with the evidence and arguments presented. The hearing had brought forward a recantation and numerous other witnesses, but the written decision reduced the dispute to whether Myers’s recantation had been conclusively proved true.

That distinction mattered. The court did not establish that Myers’s original testimony was reliable; it found insufficient proof that he had perjured himself at trial. By treating uncertainty about the recantation as sufficient to deny relief, the order left McMillian bearing the consequences of a conviction without answering the broader challenges raised at the hearing. Its brief, single-witness analysis became a stark instance of the gap between the defense’s attempt to reopen the case and the court’s limited written consideration of that attempt.