Stevenson himself plays a key role in Walter’s story as his appeals lawyer. In Just Mercy, Stevenson depicts Walter’s deeply unsettling experience with the American criminal justice system: the false accusation, the complete and utter lack of due process, his time on death row. If you have read Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy or seen the 2019 film adaptation, Walter’s name and story will be familiar. Incredibly, the judge went even further by overriding the jury’s decision and sentenced Walter to death by electrocution. In violation of his rights, Walter was placed on death row within a few days of the arrest, where he waited over a year for his trial to begin.Īfter a two-day trial in 1988, despite numerous testimonies that Walter was at a church cookout with his family 11 miles from the site of the murder, the predominantly white jury found Walter guilty and sentenced him to life in prison. Bryan Stevenson, Founder of the Equal Justice Initiative (Source: ) Walter McMillian and the Origins of EJIĪfter the 1986 murder of an 18-year-old white clerk named Ronda Morrison in Monroeville, Alabama, police officers were desperate for a suspect and arrested Walter McMillian, a 45-year-old self-employed black man with no prior criminal activity.
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