Denial of Walter McMillian's direct appeal

The denial of Walter McMillian’s direct appeal left his conviction and death sentence intact despite a lengthy challenge to the reliability and fairness of his trial. The Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals rejected every argument raised for him, including the claim that the prosecution had not corroborated its principal witness, Ralph Myers. The ruling turned a case already marked by racial suspicion and disputed evidence into a formal appellate affirmance, not a reconsideration of the verdict’s factual foundation.

The Appeal and Its Claims

Bryan Stevenson filed a lengthy brief challenging both the evidence and the conduct of the trial. He argued that Myers’s testimony lacked credible corroboration and that Alabama law did not permit the State to rely exclusively on an accomplice’s account. The appeal also alleged prosecutorial misconduct, racially discriminatory jury selection, and an improper change of venue.

Stevenson challenged Judge R. E. L. Key’s decision to override the jury’s recommendation of life imprisonment and impose death. Even a reduction of the sentence to life without parole, Stevenson argued, would not have remedied the injustice of sentencing an innocent man to prison. The appeal therefore questioned not only whether the evidence supported the conviction, but also how the death sentence had been reached.

A Racially Contested Trial

The jury-selection challenge arose against a history in which formal prohibitions on racial exclusion had not ensured representative juries. In Alabama, prosecutors had continued to use peremptory strikes to remove Black potential jurors; earlier legal standards had made discriminatory use of those strikes difficult to prove. The 1986 decision in Batson v. Kentucky offered defendants a more direct way to challenge such strikes, while also pressing prosecutors to find more creative means of excluding Black jurors. In a county that was 40 percent Black, McMillian’s concern about the jury he would face was not abstract.

That concern was part of a wider climate in which race shaped the interpretation of his life and relationships. The affair between McMillian and Karen Kelly existed against a long history of laws and policing directed at interracial intimacy, particularly relationships between Black men and white women. Black residents also told local officials they believed McMillian was innocent; their objections had not prevented the prosecution from proceeding. On appeal, the defense’s arguments about jury selection and prosecutorial conduct thus confronted an institutional record extending beyond a single courtroom.

The Court’s Decision

The Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals issued a seventy-page opinion affirming the conviction and death sentence. The State’s appellate lawyer characterized the case as a routine capital murder prosecution and argued that death had been appropriately imposed. Stevenson, by contrast, believed the conviction rested on too little reliable evidence, especially given the absence of the corroboration required for accomplice testimony in a murder case.

The opinion rejected all of the defense’s claims. Its length did not bring relief: the court affirmed the outcome rather than ordering a new trial or setting aside the sentence. The appellate decision left the trial’s contested evidence and alleged procedural defects without a remedy at this stage.

News on Death Row

Stevenson had entered the oral argument hopeful that the weakness of the evidence would make affirmance difficult. He had not encouraged McMillian’s family to travel to Montgomery for the hearing, believing the legal issues were technical and that the short argument would not make the journey worthwhile. Afterward, he regretted their absence, wishing the court had seen sympathetic faces that could signal how much the case mattered to the people who supported McMillian.

When Stevenson drove to the prison to deliver the decision, McMillian listened without speaking and looked despairing. He had been warned that overturning the conviction might take years, but the argument had revived his hope. He believed the court knew he had not committed the murder and could not admit it had made a mistake. The denial therefore did more than close one procedural step: it reinforced his sense that an institution could preserve a conviction even when the defense regarded its factual basis as profoundly unreliable.