Robert E. Lee Key

Robert E. Lee Key is the Alabama judge whose rulings shaped the prosecution of Walter McMillian at nearly every stage, from the defense’s attempt to secure counsel and a new trial to the choice of venue and the final death sentence. The book presents him less through personal biography than through his courtroom decisions: each was formally framed as a matter of procedure, yet each narrowed the practical avenues available to McMillian and his defense.

Identity and Introduction

Key enters the account as a judge who calls Bryan Stevenson after Stevenson files an appearance in McMillian’s case. Stevenson has met McMillian only recently and has not yet reviewed the trial transcript. Key, however, opens with a warning against taking the case, describing McMillian as reputed to be a major drug dealer and invoking the possibility that the men involved might belong to the Dixie Mafia. He says that the situation is ugly even though he does not fully understand it. The warning arrives before the judge has heard Stevenson’s assessment of the evidence, and it makes the judge’s first appearance in the narrative an effort to dissuade the defense lawyer from proceeding.

Key also objects to appointing an out-of-state lawyer who is not a member of the Alabama bar. Stevenson replies that he is admitted to the bar; he lives in Atlanta and had been admitted in Alabama the previous year after working on cases involving jail and prison conditions. Key then stresses that he is sitting in Mobile rather than Monroeville, warns that a hearing would require Stevenson to travel from Atlanta, and says he will not accommodate him. He adds a separate ground for refusing appointment: he does not believe McMillian is indigent, because reports claim McMillian has money buried throughout Monroe County. The conversation thus turns practical barriers—distance, bar membership, and ability to pay—into reasons to withdraw, even as Stevenson answers each objection directly.

Venue and the Jury

Key later presides over the pretrial hearing at which McMillian’s lawyers, J. L. Chestnut and Bruce Boynton, seek a change of venue. Such motions were rarely granted in Alabama, and the defense approached the hearing chiefly as a formality while preparing for trial. In an unexpected turn, district attorney Ted Pearson agrees that the extraordinary publicity surrounding the murder of Ronda Morrison warrants moving the case. Key grants the motion, but the apparent concession does not produce the venue the defense expects.

When Key proposes moving the trial to a neighboring county, several available counties have substantial Black populations: Wilcox County is 72 percent Black, Conecuh County 46 percent, Clarke County 45 percent, Butler County 42 percent, and Escambia County 32 percent. Baldwin County, by contrast, is only 9 percent Black. Key quickly selects Baldwin County. Chestnut and Boynton object and try to withdraw their motion, but Key says he cannot authorize a trial in a community where so many people have formed opinions about the accused. The case is consequently set for Bay Minette, the county seat.

The venue ruling has a concrete consequence for jury selection. McMillian’s lawyers expect few, if any, Black jurors and understand Baldwin County as more conservative than its neighbors and less removed from the racial politics of Jim Crow. This choice matters against a wider legal background: although the Supreme Court had ruled in Batson v. Kentucky that prosecutors could be challenged more directly over racially discriminatory peremptory strikes, Black defendants continued to face the exclusion of Black jurors. Key’s order does not itself establish why he chose Baldwin County, but the result places McMillian’s trial in the county least likely among those considered to yield a racially representative jury.

Motions and the Trial Judgment

After Chestnut and Boynton raise a new-trial motion, Key quickly denies it. That ruling later becomes important when Stevenson learns that alibi witness Darnell Houston says Bill Hooks’s testimony was false. Stevenson seeks reconsideration before the case proceeds on direct appeal, because an appeal would not consider new evidence and the opportunity to introduce new facts in the trial court was closing. The book’s account describes Key’s earlier denial as a procedural barrier the defense must try to reopen; it does not supply a separate explanation from Key for that decision.

On direct appeal, Stevenson challenges the reliability of the evidence and identifies alleged prosecutorial misconduct, discriminatory jury selection, the venue change, and other trial defects. He also contests Key’s decision to override the jury’s sentence of life imprisonment and impose death. The Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals rejects the arguments and affirms the conviction and sentence in a seventy-page opinion. The account therefore links Key’s role not only to the pretrial conditions but to the punishment itself: the jury’s life sentence does not stand, and McMillian remains under a death sentence after appellate review.

Judicial Power and Narrative Significance

Key’s decisions accumulate across distinct points of the case. First, he tries to discourage Stevenson from representing McMillian and raises obstacles to appointment; then he selects a venue that the defense considers disastrous for jury composition; later, he denies the initial new-trial motion and overrides the jury’s life sentence. None of these actions is presented as an isolated dramatic reversal. Their force comes from how they work together: a defense already confronting dubious testimony and racial exclusion must also overcome rulings that restrict where it can try the case, what evidence it can add, and what sentence the jury’s judgment will determine.

The narrative also situates these proceedings within the long history of racial hierarchy in the South. It describes the post-Reconstruction restoration of white supremacy, laws governing interracial relationships, and the persistence of all-white juries despite constitutional rulings. That history does not establish Key’s private motives. It does, however, clarify why the venue decision and jury-selection issues carry more weight than routine courtroom management: in McMillian’s case, procedural choices operate within a system whose racial inequalities had repeatedly survived formal legal change. Key’s significance lies in this institutional position, where judicial discretion could shape the conditions of a capital trial and help make the sentence imposed on McMillian possible.