The Alabama Judicial Building is where Bryan Stevenson argued Walter McMillian’s appeal before the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals. The courthouse’s imposing architecture and its position among landmarks of Alabama’s racial history frame the hearing; within its second-floor courtroom, the former governor presiding over the court asked Stevenson one question that unsettled his hopes for the appeal.

Setting and architecture

Built in the 1920s as a Scottish Rite Freemasonry temple, the building was renovated into a courthouse in the 1940s. Stevenson described it as cavernous, with marble floors and an impressive domed ceiling. It stood at the end of Dexter Avenue in Montgomery, across from Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had pastored during the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

A block away stood the state capitol. Three flags flew there: the American flag, Alabama’s white-and-red state flag, and the Confederate battle flag. The courthouse thus occupied a civic landscape where landmarks of the civil-rights struggle stood alongside visible emblems of the South’s racial past.

The appellate courtroom

The Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals occupied the building’s second floor. Stevenson came there to argue against McMillian’s conviction and death sentence. The court’s five judges watched him with curiosity but asked few questions. He chose to read their silence as a sign that they saw little support for the conviction and had little to contest.

The presiding judge was John Patterson, a former governor whose political career had been marked by opposition to civil rights and racial integration. With Ku Klux Klan backing, Patterson had defeated George Wallace in the 1958 governor’s race; before becoming governor, he had barred the NAACP from operating in Alabama and blocked civil-rights protests. Wallace, in turn, would later proclaim “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever” just a block from the courthouse.

At the close of Stevenson’s argument, Patterson slowly and firmly asked, “Where are you from?” The question was the judge’s only remark. Stevenson hesitated, thrown by it; the silence he had taken for judicial agreement now carried a more troubling ambiguity.

Historical and narrative significance

The building’s setting gives the hearing a layered significance. Across the avenue lay the church associated with the Montgomery Bus Boycott; nearby stood the capitol with its Confederate flag; inside, a former segregationist governor presided over a case in which Stevenson had challenged racially discriminatory jury selection. These details place the appeal within Alabama’s continuing racial history rather than presenting the courthouse as a neutral backdrop.

The courtroom also marks a reversal in Stevenson’s expectations. He entered it hopeful that the sparse questioning reflected the weakness of the prosecution’s case. Patterson’s final question offered no explanation of the judges’ views, and the appeal was ultimately denied. The building’s grandeur could not guarantee justice: the argument unfolded beneath its dome, but the court affirmed McMillian’s conviction and death sentence.