Joe Hightower

Joe Hightower is identified in the book as a witness whose account placed Walter McMillian’s truck at the cleaners around the time Ronda Morrison was murdered. The defense later challenged that account with evidence that the truck did not acquire the low-rider appearance the witnesses described until months after the crime.

Identification and Testimony

Hightower appears in the account as one of two witnesses, alongside Bill Hooks, who claimed to have seen McMillian’s modified low-rider truck pulling away from the cleaners at about the time Morrison was murdered. The testimony mattered because it placed McMillian’s vehicle at the scene and could support the prosecution’s case against him. The text gives no further biographical information about Hightower or details about his relationship to the other participants.

The Truck Evidence

At the post-conviction evidentiary hearing, the defense called Clay Kast, the white mechanic who had modified McMillian’s truck. Kast testified that it was not a low-rider in November 1986, when Morrison was murdered. His records and recollection placed the modification in May 1987, more than six months after the sighting Hightower and Hooks described. The discrepancy directly challenged the vehicle’s identifying feature in their account: if the truck had not yet been modified, it could not have appeared as the low-rider they said they saw.

Place in the Case

Hightower’s account formed part of the prosecution evidence that the defense later sought to rebut. In appealing McMillian’s conviction and death sentence, the defense argued that the evidence was insufficient and that the State could not rely exclusively on Ralph Myers’s accomplice testimony without credible corroboration. The Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals rejected the appeal. The later hearing’s evidence about the truck supplied a concrete challenge to the alleged sighting, though the book does not state Hightower’s response to it or describe any separate consequence for him.