Ed Bradley

Ed Bradley was the veteran reporter whose 60 Minutes investigation brought the contested evidence in Walter McMillian’s case to a national audience. His interviews in Monroeville made him a conspicuous outsider in a community where local coverage had largely endorsed the prosecution’s account; after the broadcast, the evidence became harder to dismiss and influential residents began asking questions about the case.

Reporter and Assignment

Bradley came to the case after Bryan Stevenson had spoken at Yale Law School, where a 60 Minutes producer heard him and later contacted him. Stevenson had been wary of press attention: favorable coverage of death-penalty cases could provoke local backlash, harm a client, or even contribute to an expedited execution. He nevertheless decided to proceed, hoping that a fuller public understanding of McMillian’s conviction might make life after release less dangerous and help counter the community’s distorted picture of the case.

In July, on a day when the temperature reached 100 degrees, Bradley and producer David Gelber traveled from New York City to Monroeville. The reporting followed testimony already presented at a hearing, taking the case beyond the courtroom and testing its evidence through interviews with people who had direct knowledge of it.

Interviews and Local Resistance

Bradley and Gelber spoke with Walter McMillian, Ralph Myers, Karen Kelly, Darnell Houston, Clay Kast, Jimmy Williams, McMillian’s family, and Woodrow Ikner. They confronted Bill Hooks at his workplace and conducted an extensive interview with Tommy Chapman, the district attorney defending the conviction. The range of interviews placed accounts from the prosecution, the defense, witnesses, and McMillian’s family within the same investigation.

Bradley’s presence quickly became a local story of its own. The Monroe Journal objected to what it presented as a familiar genre of outside reporting, complaining that “a few have been demonstrably inaccurate” and that the community could do without the “big-time reporter comes to hick town” approach. Before the program aired, another Journal report relayed Chapman’s contention that the CBS researchers had already made up their minds. Chapman also used an arrest photograph of McMillian, with long hair and a beard, to insist that the clean-shaven prisoner interviewed by CBS was not the same-looking man. The dispute over McMillian’s appearance became part of the effort to discredit the investigation before audiences had seen it.

Broadcast and Aftermath

When the program aired months later, local officials attacked it. The Mobile Press Register described Chapman condemning the broadcast as a “Disgrace,” while local coverage argued that renewed attention would distress Ronda Morrison’s parents and encourage people to think McMillian was innocent. The criticism reflected a deeper conflict: local news accounts had often repeated the prosecution’s theory and presented McMillian as a dangerous figure, so a report questioning the conviction also challenged the press’s own earlier portrayal.

The broadcast nevertheless gave viewers a concise account of evidence presented at the hearing and raised new doubts about McMillian’s guilt. Many people in the community already watched and generally trusted 60 Minutes. Influential business and community leaders, concerned that the case made Monroeville appear backward and possibly racist, began pressing Chapman and law enforcement with difficult questions. In the Black community, where people had discussed McMillian’s wrongful conviction for years and closely followed each court development, seeing the evidence presented on national television offered a long-awaited public account of their doubts.

Narrative Significance

Bradley’s role in the book is concentrated in this investigative episode: he is the reporter who carries a local legal dispute into public view. The investigation did not itself decide McMillian’s case, and its arrival brought immediate hostility as well as attention. Its consequence was a change in the conditions of public discussion: evidence that local coverage had marginalized was summarized for a national audience, doubts reached people beyond the courtroom, and local leaders began demanding explanations.