Bay Minette, Alabama, the seat of Baldwin County, became the setting for two decisive stages of Walter McMillian’s case: his 1988 capital trial and a later Rule 32 post-conviction hearing. The change of venue took the trial away from a community where many people knew McMillian and believed he was innocent, but placed him in a county where his lawyers expected few, if any, Black jurors. Bay Minette thus represented both the procedural geography of the case and the racial pressures that shaped it.

Setting and venue change

The trial was moved from Monroe County after the judge concluded that too many people there had formed opinions about McMillian. The decision led to Bay Minette, Baldwin County’s county seat. Although McMillian’s attorneys had requested a change of venue, they immediately objected to the judge’s choice and asked to withdraw their motion. The judge said he could not authorize a trial in a community where opinion about the accused was so widespread; the case would proceed in Bay Minette.

The practical consequences were severe. McMillian’s lawyers, Bruce Boynton and J. L. Chestnut, anticipated very few Black jurors in Baldwin County. They also regarded the county as exceptionally conservative, and as having made less progress in leaving behind Jim Crow racial politics than neighboring communities. By contrast, Monroe County was 40 percent Black. Its racial composition did not guarantee a representative jury: prosecutors had long used discretionary peremptory strikes to remove Black prospective jurors, and the 1986 Batson v. Kentucky decision had made discriminatory strikes more directly challengeable without ending the practice. The venue change therefore intensified McMillian’s concern about who would judge him.

McMillian nevertheless believed that the evidence would overcome the location’s disadvantages. He trusted that no jury could accept Ralph Myers’s account when McMillian had an alibi supported by nearly a dozen witnesses. That confidence accompanied him into the case’s new setting, even as his lawyers understood how much the county’s likely jury pool mattered.

The capital trial

When the trial was rescheduled for August 1988, McMillian had already spent more than a year on death row. An earlier trial date in February had passed after Myers refused to testify, and the delay meant another six months of confinement. McMillian’s lawyers had treated Myers’s difficulty cooperating as encouraging; McMillian could not see the delay as good news. He had expected to go home in February and found it hard to accept that he remained on death row.

For the August proceedings, McMillian was moved to the Baldwin County Jail in Bay Minette. He left death row believing he would not return. He had formed friendships with several prisoners there and felt conflicted about leaving men who would soon face execution, but when his name was called for transfer, he gathered his belongings and climbed into the van. During the journey a week later, shackles pinched his ankles, chains pressed around his waist, and tight handcuffs added to his discomfort. The bodily details of the transfer marked the distance between his hope of returning home and the confinement imposed by the case.

The post-conviction hearing

Bay Minette later became the site of McMillian’s Rule 32 hearing. Because the case was pending on direct appeal, the State was not required to provide the defense access to its files. Bryan Stevenson and Michael O’Connor filed a Rule 32 petition in Monroe County Circuit Court, seeking a trial-court forum in which to present new evidence and obtain discovery. The petition alleged an unfair trial, wrongful conviction, illegal sentence, ineffective counsel, undisclosed evidence, and police and prosecutorial misconduct. After the Monroe County judges did not take up the matter, it was transferred to Baldwin County on the theory that the post-conviction proceeding should be heard in the county where the trial had taken place.

By the time Judge Thomas B. Norton Jr. set the hearing, the lawyers had repeatedly sought police and prosecution files and had uncovered exculpatory material that had not previously been disclosed. Norton had grown weary of the contentious pretrial disputes and described their repeated requests for more files as fishing. The defense asked for a week to present its evidence. The hearing itself lasted three days, ending without a rebuttal case from the State. The judge asked the parties to submit written briefs, giving them time to explain the significance of the evidence and argue for a ruling that could free McMillian.

The courtroom and its community

The hearing brought McMillian’s supporters visibly into the courthouse. The viewing area filled with mostly Black and poor community members: family, people who had attended the fish fry on the day of the crime, people interviewed by the defense, former coworkers, and Sam Crook and his companions. Minnie McMillian and Armelia Hand smiled at Stevenson as he entered. The parents of Ronda Morrison were also escorted to the front of the courtroom. When the judge took the bench, the Black community members rose together and then sat; many were dressed as if for church. Their presence energized Stevenson and offered public support to McMillian amid a proceeding that had drawn the law-enforcement team responsible for his prosecution.

The next day, the courtroom’s arrangement changed. A metal detector stood inside the entrance, with a German shepherd held by an officer beyond it. The benches that had held McMillian’s supporters were now mostly occupied by older white people supporting the Morrisons and the prosecution. Meanwhile, McMillian’s family and supporters had been told they could not enter, although the State’s supporters were admitted. Stevenson challenged the exclusion before Judge Norton. The contrast between the crowded hearing and the next day’s unequal access made the courtroom itself part of the dispute over whose presence and testimony would count.

After the three days of litigation, the defense team returned to its hotel exhausted but satisfied. Bay Minette was about thirty minutes from the Gulf of Mexico, and the lawyers later drove toward the shore near Fort Morgan. The courthouse proceedings had ended for the moment with written arguments still to come; the nearby coast offered a stark change of setting, not a resolution of McMillian’s case.