Thomas B. Norton Jr.

Thomas B. Norton Jr. was the circuit judge who presided over the post-conviction proceedings in Walter McMillian’s case. His role became decisive when he limited the time for the Rule 32 hearing and, on May 19, 1992, denied relief in a brief order focused on Ralph Myers’s testimony. The episode presents Norton less through private motive than through the concrete exercise of judicial authority: control over the hearing’s scope, the courtroom’s access, and the written account of what the evidence established.

Judicial Role and Approach

Norton was the new judge assigned to McMillian’s case after earlier proceedings had involved other judges. By the time the Rule 32 hearing approached, he had become weary of the defense team’s repeated demands for police and prosecution files. The defense had already uncovered substantial exculpatory material and believed that additional undisclosed evidence remained. After what Bryan Stevenson estimated as the ninth or tenth request for more records, Norton characterized the effort as fishing. Stevenson suspected that Norton had scheduled the final hearing partly to get a contentious, complicated case off his docket; that was the lawyer’s reading of the judge’s purpose, not a reason Norton stated on the record.

The conflict over time exposed the difference between the original trial and the post-conviction inquiry. When Norton asked how long the defense needed, Stevenson requested a week. Norton rejected that estimate as implausible for a Rule 32 hearing, noting that McMillian’s trial had lasted only a day and a half. Stevenson answered that the case was extraordinary and involved several witnesses. Norton then fixed the hearing at three days, telling him that if the defense could not make its case in that period, after all the surrounding drama, it had nothing. The exchange set a firm procedural limit before the evidence was heard and made the judge’s impatience with the dispute part of the hearing’s atmosphere.

Conduct in the Courtroom

Norton’s authority also shaped who could attend. At the opening of the hearing, McMillian’s supporters had filled the viewing area: family members, people who had attended the fish fry on the day of the crime, community members interviewed by the defense, and Sam Crook and his group. Minnie and Armelia were present. The predominantly Black crowd rose when Norton took the bench and then sat down; their settling took a few seconds and seemed to annoy him. The scene placed the judge’s control of the courtroom alongside the visible presence of a community that had come to support McMillian.

The next day, the balance in the room changed. A metal detector and a German shepherd were stationed inside the courtroom entrance, and older white people supporting the Morrisons and the prosecution occupied many of the seats held by McMillian’s supporters the day before. When Stevenson learned that McMillian’s family and supporters had been told they could not enter, he went to Norton’s chambers to object. Norton rolled his eyes and told him that his people would have to arrive earlier. Stevenson replied that the problem was not their arrival time: they had been told they could not come in. The available account does not record Norton’s response to that correction. It does show that he initially treated a reported restriction on one side’s supporters as a matter of lateness, even though the prosecution’s supporters had been admitted.

The Rule 32 Ruling

A few days after the hearing, a clerk in Baldwin County called Stevenson for a fax number so she could send Norton’s ruling. Only three sheets emerged from the machine. Stevenson was concerned by the brevity, though he had already anticipated that Norton might deny relief. In his assessment, the judge had not seemed deeply engaged with the central question of McMillian’s guilt or innocence and appeared more like a custodian of the prior judgment than a judge prepared to unsettle it.

The order was two and a half pages long. It addressed Myers’s testimony but not the defense’s other legal claims or the testimony of more than a dozen additional witnesses. It cited no case law. Norton acknowledged that Myers had recanted most, if not all, of the relevant portions of his trial testimony, then considered whether Myers had lied at trial or at the hearing. The order listed factors including Myers’s demeanor; his opportunity to know the facts; his stated reasons for the original testimony and the recantation; possible external pressure before and after each account; conduct that might support either version; contradictions between his testimony and other evidence; and whether he could have known the facts he had described.

After setting out those considerations, Norton concluded that the other factors did not provide conclusive evidence that Myers had perjured himself at the original trial. He cited evidence of pressure since the trial that might discredit the recantation, and stated that neither the trial record nor the recantation testimony placed Myers somewhere other than the crime scene when the murder occurred. He therefore found that Myers’s trial testimony had not been proved perjured and denied McMillian relief. Stevenson noted that prosecutor Tom Chapman had suggested Myers was pressured to recant but had presented no actual evidence for that claim, one reason the ruling was difficult for the defense to understand.

Significance in McMillian’s Case

Norton’s order did not resolve the broader evidentiary record in the way the defense had hoped. By centering the ruling on whether Myers’s recantation established perjury, it left the other witnesses and legal claims without discussion. Its brevity and narrow focus became consequential not simply as features of judicial style but because the denial meant that McMillian’s case would have to continue through appeal. Stevenson had warned McMillian and his family that an appellate court might be necessary even after a hearing that those present had regarded as positive.

The account does not establish Norton’s private beliefs or explain his decision beyond the reasoning preserved in his order. It does, however, place his rulings within a proceeding where the defense faced restricted preparation time, had repeatedly sought undisclosed files, and protested unequal access to the courtroom. Norton’s characterization of the records requests, his three-day limit, his initial response to the exclusion of McMillian’s supporters, and his treatment of Myers’s recantation together show how procedural decisions shaped the practical opportunity to contest a conviction. The decisive outcome of his part in the case was a denial of relief, not a new trial; the challenge to McMillian’s conviction therefore remained unresolved at this stage.