Just Mercy (32 page)

“Coon?”

“Oh, don’t pretend. You know you like grilled raccoon. Please don’t sit there and tell me you ain’t never had no good coon when I know you grew up in the country just like I did. There has been many a time when me and my cousin would be driving, and a coon would run cross the road and he’d say, ‘Stop the car, stop the car!’ And I’d stop the car and he’d jump out and go running into the woods and come back minutes later with a raccoon he done caught. We would take it home, skin it, and fry or barbecue that meat. Maaaan … what you talking about? That would be some good eatin’.”

“You’ve got to be joking. I grew up in the country, but I never chased any kind of wild animal into the woods to take home and eat.”

We relaxed and laughed a lot. We had laughed before today—Walter’s sense of humor hadn’t failed him despite his six years on death row. And this case had given him lots of fodder. We would often talk about situations and people connected to the case that, for all the damage they had caused, had still made us laugh at their absurdity. But the laughter today felt very different. It was the laughter of liberation.

I drove back to Montgomery and thought about how to expedite Walter’s release. I called Tommy Chapman and told him that I intended to file a motion to dismiss all charges against Walter in light of the appellate court’s ruling, and I hoped he would consider joining the motion or at least not oppose it. He sighed. “We should talk when this is all over. Once you file your motion, I’ll get back to you about whether I’ll join it. We certainly won’t oppose it.”

A hearing on the motion was set. The State did, in fact, join our motion to dismiss the charges, and I didn’t expect the final hearing to last more than a few minutes. The night before, I’d driven down to
Minnie’s to get a suit for Walter to wear at the hearing, since he would finally be able to walk out of court a free man. When I arrived at her house, she gave me a long hug. It looked like she had been crying and hadn’t slept. We sat down, and she told me again how happy she was that they were letting him out. But she looked troubled. Finally, she turned to me.

“Bryan, I think you need to tell him that maybe he shouldn’t come back here. It’s just all been too much. The stress, the gossip, the lies, everything. He doesn’t deserve what they put him through, and it will hurt me to my heart the rest of my life what they did to him, and the rest of us. But I don’t think I can go back to the way things were.”

“Well, you all should talk when he gets home.”

“We want to have everybody over when he gets out. We want to cook some good food, and everybody will want to celebrate. But after that, maybe he should go to Montgomery with you.”

I had already talked with Walter about not staying his first few nights in Monroeville, for security reasons. We had talked about him spending time with family members in Florida while we monitored the local reaction to his release. But I hadn’t discussed his future with Minnie.

I kept urging Minnie to talk with Walter when he got home, but it was clear she didn’t have the heart for that. I drove back to Montgomery, sadly realizing that even as we stood on the brink of victory and what should have been a glorious release for Walter and his family, this nightmare would likely never be completely over for him. For the first time I fully reckoned with the truth that the conviction, the death sentence, and the heartbreak and devastation of this miscarriage of justice had created permanent injuries.

State, local, and national media outlets were crowded outside the courthouse when I arrived the next morning. Dozens of Walter’s family members and friends from the community were there to greet him when he came out. They had made signs and banners, which surprised me. They were such simple gestures, but I found myself deeply moved. The signs gave a silent voice to the crowd: “Welcome Home, Johnny
D,” “God Never Fails,” “Free at Last, Thank God Almighty, We Are Free at Last.”

I went down to the jail and brought Walter his suit. I told him that a celebration was planned at his house after the hearing. The prison had not allowed Walter to bring his possessions to the courthouse, refusing to acknowledge that he might be released, so we would have to go back to Holman Prison to get his things before the homecoming at his house. I also told him that I’d reserved a hotel room for him in Montgomery and that it would probably be safest to spend the next few nights there.

I reluctantly talked to him about my conversation with Minnie. He seemed surprised and hurt but didn’t linger on it.

“This is a really happy day for me. Nothing can really spoil getting your freedom back.”

“Well, y’all should talk at some point,” I urged.

I went upstairs to find Tommy Chapman waiting for me in the courtroom. “After we’re done, I’d like to shake his hand,” he told me. “Would that be all right?”

“I think he’d appreciate that.”

“This case has taught me things I didn’t even know I had to learn.”

“We’ve all learned a lot, Tommy.”

There were deputy sheriffs everywhere. When Bernard arrived, we consulted briefly at the counsel table before a bailiff asked us to go back to the judge’s chambers. Judge Norton had retired weeks before the ruling from the Court of Criminal Appeals. The new judge, Pamela Baschab, greeted me warmly. We made small talk and then discussed what would happen during the hearing. Everyone was strangely pleasant.

“Mr. Stevenson, if you’ll just present the motion and provide a brief summary, I don’t need any arguments or statements, I intend to grant the motion immediately so you all can get home. We can get this done quickly.” We went into the courtroom. There seemed to be more black deputies in the courtroom for this hearing than I’d ever seen in my appearances in that courthouse. There was no metal detector, no
menacing dog. The courtroom was packed with Walter’s family members and supporters. There were more cheering black folks outside the courthouse who couldn’t get in. A horde of television cameras and journalists spilled out of the crowded courtroom.

They finally brought Walter into the courtroom wearing the black suit and white shirt I’d brought him. He looked handsome and fit, like a different man. The deputies didn’t handcuff Walter or shackle him, so he walked into court waving to family and friends. His family had not seen him dressed in anything but his white prison uniform since the trial six years earlier, and many in the crowd gasped when he walked into the courtroom in a suit. For years Walter’s family members and supporters had been confronted with menacing stares and threats of expulsion whenever they expressed some spontaneous opinion during court proceedings, but today the deputies accepted their expressive cheerfulness in silence.

The judge took the bench, and I stepped forward to speak. I gave a brief history of the case and informed the court that both the defendant and the State were moving the court to dismiss all charges. The judge quickly granted the motion and asked if there was anything further. All of sudden, I felt strangely agitated. I’d expected to be exuberant. Everyone was in such a good mood. The judge and the prosecutor were suddenly generous and accommodating. It was as if everyone wanted to be sure there were no hard feelings or grudges.

Walter was rightfully ecstatic, but I was confused by my suddenly simmering anger. We were about to leave court for the last time, and I started thinking about how much pain and suffering had been inflicted on Walter and his family, the entire community. I thought about how if Judge Robert E. Lee Key hadn’t overridden the jury’s verdict of life imprisonment without parole and imposed the death penalty, which brought the case to our attention, Walter likely would have spent the rest of his life incarcerated and died in a prison cell. I thought about how certain it was that hundreds, maybe thousands of other people were just as innocent as Walter but would never get the help
they need. I knew this wasn’t the place or time to make a speech or complain, but I couldn’t stop myself from making one final comment.

“Your Honor, I just want to say this before we adjourn. It was far too easy to convict this wrongly accused man for murder and send him to death row for something he didn’t do and much too hard to win his freedom after proving his innocence. We have serious problems and important work that must be done in this state.”

I sat down and the judge pronounced Walter free to go. Just like that he was a free man.

Walter hugged me tightly, and I gave him a handkerchief to wipe the tears from his eyes. I led him over to Chapman, and they shook hands. The black deputies who had hovered nearby ushered us toward a back door that led downstairs, where a throng of reporters waited. One of the deputies patted me on the back, declaring, “That’s awesome, man. That’s awesome.” I asked Bernard to tell the family and supporters that we would meet them out front.

Walter stood very close to me as we answered questions from the press. I could tell he was feeling overwhelmed, so I cut off the questions after a few minutes, and we walked to the front door of the courthouse. TV camera crews followed us. As we walked outside, dozens of people cheered and waved their signs. Walter’s relatives ran up to him to hug him, and they hugged me, too. Walter’s grandchildren grabbed his hands. Older people I hadn’t previously met came up to hug him. Walter couldn’t believe how many people were there for him. He hugged everyone. Even when some of the men came up to shake his hand, he gave them a hug. I told everyone that Bernard and I had to take Walter to the prison and that we would come to the house directly from there. It took nearly an hour to get through the crowd and into the car.

On the drive to the prison, Walter told me that the men on death row had held a special service for him on his last night. They had come to pray for him and give him their final hugs. Walter said he felt guilty leaving them behind. I told him not to—they were all thrilled to know
he was going home. His freedom was, in a small way, a sign of hope in a hopeless place.

Despite my assurances that we’d be at the house shortly, everyone followed us to the prison. The press, the local TV crews, the family, everyone. When we got to Holman, a caravan of media and well-wishers trailed behind us. I parked and walked to the front gate to explain to the guard in the tower that I didn’t have anything to do with all of the people—I knew that the warden had strict policies about the presence of people who didn’t have business at the prison. But the guard waved us inside. No one tried to get the crowd to leave.

We went to the prison office to collect Walter’s possessions: his legal materials and correspondence with me, letters from family and supporters, a Bible, the Timex watch he was wearing when he was arrested, and the wallet he had had with him back in June 1987 when his nightmare began. The wallet still had $23 in it. Walter had given to other death row prisoners his fan, a dictionary, and the food items he had in his cell. I saw the warden peering at us from his office as we collected Walter’s things, but he didn’t come out.

A few guards watched as we walked out the front gate of the prison. Lots of people were still gathered outside. I saw Mrs. Williams. Walter went up to her and gave her a hug. When their embrace released, she looked over and winked at me. I couldn’t help but laugh.

Men in their cells could see the crowd outside and started shouting encouragement to Walter as he walked away. We couldn’t see them from outside the prison, but their voices rang out just the same—the voices were haunting because they were disembodied, but they were full of excitement and hopefulness. One of the last voices we heard was a man shouting, “Stay strong, man. Stay strong!”

Walter shouted back, “All right!”

As he walked to the car, Walter raised his arms and gently moved them up and down as if he meant to take flight. He looked at me and said, “I feel like a bird, I feel like a bird.”

On a cool, crisp mid-March evening, Marsha Colbey stepped out onto the streets of New York City in an elegant royal blue gown with her husband beside her. She had dreamed of a moment like this for years. She took in the sights and sounds with great curiosity as they strolled down the busy sidewalks. Enormous buildings stretched to the sky in the distance while raucous traffic whizzed through Greenwich Village streets. The clusters of New York students and artisans paid them no mind as they made their way through Washington Square Park. She noticed an amateur jazz trio laboring through standards on a park corner. It all seemed like something out of a movie.

A white woman from a poor rural Alabama town, Marsha had never been to New York, but she was about to be honored at a dinner with two hundred guests. It was all exciting, but she was experiencing something unusual as she made her way to the venue. She soon sorted out what she was feeling. Freedom. She was wandering the streets of the world’s most dazzling city with her husband, and she was free. It was a glorious feeling. Everything in the last three months since her release had been magical. It was beyond what she would have imagined
even before she was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole at the Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women.