Pretrial death-row confinement of Walter McMillian and Ralph Myers

The pretrial death-row confinement of Walter McMillian and Ralph Myers was an extraordinary and punitive step in the prosecution of McMillian for the murder of Ronda Morrison. Neither man had been tried or convicted, yet both were held among condemned prisoners in conditions more restrictive than ordinary jail custody. The confinement followed Myers’s attempted recantation and created pressure that helped restore him as the prosecution’s principal witness.

The recantation and the decision to confine them

Myers had accused McMillian of involvement in Morrison’s murder, but he was also facing indictment in the case himself. He had been promised that he would avoid the death penalty and receive favorable treatment in exchange for his testimony. As the consequences of admitting involvement in a high-profile murder became clearer, he began to reconsider his allegations. A few days before the capital-murder charges against McMillian were made public, Myers summoned investigators and told them that his accusations were not true.

The investigators did not treat the recantation as a reason to reconsider the case. They pressed Myers for additional incriminating details. He protested that he could not supply details about a story that was false, but they continued to push. The account leaves unclear who decided to place Myers and McMillian on death row before trial. The effect, however, was clear: the nearly unprecedented confinement applied pressure at a point when Myers was backing away from the accusation on which the case depended.

What pretrial death-row confinement meant

Pretrial detainees such as McMillian and Myers were generally held in local jails, where they had greater latitude and more privileges than convicted prisoners sent to prison. Confining someone who had not been tried in a prison for convicted felons was almost never done; placing an unconvicted person on death row was more exceptional still. The law prohibited subjecting pretrial detainees to confinement that amounted to punishment. Death row was the most restrictive punitive confinement available.

Prisoners were locked alone in small cells for twenty-three hours a day, with limited opportunities for exercise and visits and close proximity to the electric chair. At Holman Correctional Facility, the unit occupied windowless concrete buildings known for their heat and discomfort. Cells measured five by eight feet and contained a metal door, a commode, and a steel bunk. In August, temperatures repeatedly exceeded 100 degrees, sometimes for days or weeks. Prisoners trapped rats, poisonous spiders, and snakes found inside the prison both to pass the time and to protect themselves. The remoteness of the facility meant that most prisoners received few visits and had even fewer privileges.

On August 1, 1987, Tom Tate drove McMillian from the county jail to Holman Correctional Facility, a short distance away in Atmore, Alabama. Before the transfer, Tate again threatened McMillian with racial slurs and frightening plans. How Tate persuaded the warden to accept two pretrial detainees is not explained; Tate knew people at the prison from his earlier work as a probation officer. Their transfer came less than a month before the scheduled execution of Wayne Ritter. The condemned prisoners were themselves shocked to see a defendant who had not yet been tried arrive on death row.

Pressure, crisis, and a return to cooperation

Myers was kept on a different tier from McMillian so they could not have contact. He had been charged with capital murder in Morrison’s death as well, and his refusal to continue cooperating had brought him to death row. The promised advantages of his accusation had disappeared. He was depressed, and the confined, heated surroundings sharpened fears he had carried since being burned as a child: fire, heat, and small spaces.

As prisoners discussed the execution of John Evans and the coming execution of Ritter, Myers became increasingly distressed. On the night Ritter was executed, Myers sobbed in his cell. At midnight, as prisoners struck their cell doors with cups in protest, he curled up on the floor, hyperventilating and flinching at each clang. Other prisoners said they could smell burned flesh during an execution; when that odor reached Myers’s cell, he broke down. The next morning he called Tate and said he would say whatever Tate wanted if he could be taken off death row.

Tate had initially defended keeping both men there on safety grounds. Yet the day after Ritter’s execution, he picked Myers up and returned him to the county jail. The move appears to have happened without discussion with anyone. Ordinarily, the Alabama Department of Corrections could not place someone on death row or remove him without court orders or legal filings, and a warden could not make that decision alone. The irregular handling of Myers’s confinement marked another departure from normal procedure in the case.

Consequences for McMillian’s case

Once back in Monroe County, Myers reaffirmed his original accusations. With Myers again available as the prosecution’s principal witness, and Bill Hooks prepared to say that he had seen McMillian’s truck at the crime scene, the district attorney believed the case could proceed. McMillian’s trial was scheduled for February 1988. The sequence was stark: Myers had told investigators his allegations were false; pressure followed; death-row confinement deepened his crisis; and, after his removal, he returned to the accusation.

McMillian remained among condemned prisoners while awaiting trial. The other men repeatedly asked why he was there, and he heard their accounts of race and the kind of jury he might face. The confinement was therefore not simply an abnormal setting for a pending case. It exposed the gulf between the legal status of an unconvicted defendant and the treatment reserved for people already condemned, while placing McMillian inside the machinery of punishment before a jury had heard his case.