Walter McMillian and Tommy Chapman

Walter McMillian and Tommy Chapman were connected first as defendant and prosecutor in a capital case, but their relationship changed as the evidence against McMillian came under scrutiny. Chapman publicly defended the conviction with certainty while privately questioning the investigation on which it rested. After an appellate court overturned the conviction, he did not oppose dismissal of the charges, and he asked to shake McMillian’s hand. The shift did not undo the prosecution or its damage; it revealed a reluctant recognition that the case had taught its participants something they had not understood before.

Adversaries in a Racially Charged Case

As district attorney, Chapman stood on the prosecution’s side of a case in which McMillian faced execution. Their conflict unfolded against a legal and political background in which racial exclusion could persist inside institutions despite formal prohibitions. In 1987, all forty elected district attorneys in Alabama were white, including those serving a state with sixteen majority-black counties. In counties such as Monroe County, which was 40 percent black, prosecutors could still use discretionary jury strikes to produce all-white juries. The Supreme Court’s 1986 Batson v. Kentucky decision made it easier to challenge racially discriminatory peremptory strikes, but it also compelled prosecutors to find more creative ways to exclude black jurors. This context does not establish that Chapman personally used discriminatory strikes in McMillian’s case; it shows the unequal system in which the prosecutor-defendant relationship took shape.

The dispute was not simply over competing courtroom interpretations. Black residents had told Chapman that they believed McMillian was innocent, while Chapman remained confident that he could secure a guilty verdict despite doubts about the testimony of Ralph Myers and Bill Hooks. McMillian’s case also proceeded amid concern about the kind of jury he would face. In a later hearing, the courtroom’s changed arrangement made the conflict visible: older white supporters of the prosecution occupied many of the benches where McMillian’s supporters had sat the day before, while McMillian’s family and supporters had been told they could not enter. Chapman and the other prosecutors were already at their table, acting as if nothing was amiss. The account does not say Chapman ordered the exclusion, but the scene sharpened the adversarial divide between the state’s case and McMillian’s supporters.

Public Certainty and Private Doubt

When Chapman appeared on 60 Minutes, he dismissed as silly the suggestion that racial bias had shaped McMillian’s prosecution. He professed complete confidence that McMillian was guilty and should be executed as soon as possible, and expressed contempt for McMillian’s attorneys and for people who second-guessed juries. The certainty of those public statements made Chapman the visible defender of the conviction, tying his own credibility to the prosecution’s account.

Privately, however, Chapman had begun to worry about the reliability of the evidence. The contradictions exposed at a hearing were difficult to ignore. He had relied on local investigators, and their work now appeared seriously flawed; the prospect that an appellate court might reverse the conviction also became real. The contrast between Chapman’s public assurance and private concern marks a central tension in the relationship: he continued to defend the conviction before the public even as the record gave him reasons to question it.

Reopening the Investigation

After the hearing, Chapman called Tom Tate, Woodrow Ikner, and another local investigator together and asked them to explain the conflicting evidence. Their answers did not satisfy him. He then formally requested that the Alabama Bureau of Investigation conduct a new investigation into the murder to confirm McMillian’s guilt. The request was consequential, but it was not an open reconciliation with the defense: Chapman did not tell McMillian’s attorneys that he had sought the investigation, despite their having asked for a re-examination for more than two years.

The new investigators, Tom Taylor and Greg Cole, contacted the defense, and Bryan Stevenson agreed to share the case files, memoranda, and even original evidence. Although disclosure could have put the defense at a disadvantage if the case were retried, Stevenson trusted that an honest investigation would expose the weakness of the charges. Within weeks, Taylor and Cole seemed doubtful that McMillian was guilty. Chapman’s decision to seek outside scrutiny had therefore helped set in motion a process that increasingly undermined the case he had publicly defended.

From Conviction to Dismissal

After the appellate ruling, Stevenson told Chapman that he intended to move to dismiss every charge against McMillian and asked whether Chapman would join the motion or at least refrain from opposing it. Chapman sighed and said, “We certainly won’t oppose it.” The State ultimately joined the motion to dismiss. The record presents a substantial change in his position: from insisting publicly on McMillian’s guilt and execution to allowing the prosecution to end. It does not describe Chapman as having publicly withdrawn his earlier claims or as having personally joined the defense motion when first asked; his stated commitment was that the State would not oppose it.

The change also arrived after years of imprisonment and after the appellate court had overturned the conviction. Chapman’s nonopposition helped clear the final procedural path to McMillian’s release, but it could not restore the years McMillian had lost or resolve the unresolved murder. The relationship thus moved from the state’s effort to secure a death sentence to a shared courtroom moment in which the state accepted dismissal, without erasing the imbalance between the prosecutor’s authority and the defendant’s experience.

A Tentative Gesture, Not a Simple Reconciliation

Before the dismissal hearing, Chapman asked Stevenson, “After we’re done, I’d like to shake his hand.” The request was a small but striking departure from the posture of public contempt he had taken toward the defense. Stevenson believed McMillian would appreciate it. Chapman also reflected, “This case has taught me things I didn’t even know I had to learn.” The exchange suggests a measure of humility, but not a detailed apology or a full account of what he had learned.

For McMillian, freedom was the decisive outcome; for Chapman, the case had become a lesson he acknowledged only after the conviction had been overturned and the State agreed to dismiss the charges. Their final gesture therefore remains deliberately limited. It records a movement from categorical public defense toward doubt, nonopposition, and an offered handshake, while leaving intact the history of the prosecution and the harm it caused.