Summary
Chapter Five: Homeland
After a long day on death row, Stevenson visits Walter’s wife Minnie and his daughter Jackie at their house in Repton, outside Monroeville. The house is dilapidated and surrounded by broken furniture. Minnie offers to make him something to eat. He notes she is standing strong despite the difficulty of the case—particularly because it involved exposing her husband’s infidelity. She insists on cooking despite being on twelve-hour shifts at the plant. She mentions how she is trying to get her daughter through college.
In the crowded and messy living room, they discuss Walter’s case. Minnie says the trial had been the worst. Though cautious about expressing strong opinions, but having read the trial transcript with anger, Stevenson says the trial was constructed with lies. The phone rings, and Jackie and Minnie explain that Walter’s extended family want to meet Stevenson. He follows their directions as they drive down a long, winding dirt road. Stevenson is hesitant to drive in the middle of nowhere in the pitch-black night until they reach a trailer glowing in the darkness, around which children are playing. Walter’s nephew Giles leads them inside the trailer, which is packed with thirty people, who all smile and applaud at Stevenson’s presence.
The subject of money comes up, and Stevenson explains that he works for a nonprofit law office, providing legal assistance at no cost, made possible by donations from foundations and people who support their work. The family voices their concerns and comments about Walter, the trial, the town, race, the police, and how they were now being treated in the community. They discuss how they were standing next to him at the time of the murder, how the police took him away despite knowing it’s a lie. The family expresses how they feel as though they too had been convicted. Around midnight, Stevenson says farewell and hugs nearly everyone in the room. He leaves with the knowledge that Walter’s family, and indeed most poor black people in the community, were burdened by the conviction and are now desperate for justice. This makes Stevenson anxious but even more determined.
People occasionally call Stevenson to offer support for Walter’s case, and he relates the details when he meets Walter on death row, every other week. Walter describes most of the odd people who called as some degree of interesting, or “reeeeaaalll” interesting, reluctant to say anything negative about the strange characters in his life. During their visits, Stevenson notices Walter’s empathy, imagining the guards’ frustration to excuse the rude things they said to him. Stevenson finds that the time he spends relating to Walter and other clients helps him see the clients as friends. His work is becoming his life. The more time he spends with Walter, the more he cares about him. This time spent with clients is also important for developing trust. A person's life often depends on a lawyer’s ability to put a client’s history into a narrative that provides context for poor decisions and violent behavior. Uncovering things about a client’s background is key to helping the case, as well as forging genuine connections.
Soon after visiting Walter’s family, Stevenson receives a call from Darnell Houston, who claims he can prove Walter is innocent. Stevenson drives out to rural Monroe County to meet, and Darnell says he was working on a car with Bill Hooks the Saturday morning Morrison was killed; there was no way he could have seen Walter’s truck outside the cleaners. Stevenson gets a written affidavit from Darnell stating that Hooks' testimony was a lie and makes a motion to reconsider the denial of a new trial for Walter. But soon he receives a call from Darnell saying he had been arrested and indicted for perjury, based on what he had told McMillian’s lawyers a year earlier. Stevenson is shocked: an arrest for lying under oath without investigation or evidence was unheard of. Police were trying to punish Darnell for talking to the EJI, and might be willing to threaten others who contradicted them.
Stevenson calls Tom Chapman, the new district attorney, asking to discuss Darnell’s arrest. He is hopeful that Chapman may be fairer-minded than Pearson. They meet, and Chapman is courteous and professional. Stevenson reveals his skepticism about Walter’s supposed guilt and the handling of the conviction. He becomes frustrated, seeing Chapman as naïve. He explains that the whole community is convinced Walter didn’t commit the crime, and couldn’t have. Chapman defends the conviction, and Stevenson’s voice rises in anger as he asks if he intends to prosecute everyone who challenges the evidence, stating that a perjury indictment seems like an intimidation tactic. Chapman informs Stevenson that the motion to reconsider the case has been denied by the judge, without even a hearing. Stevenson knows he is right that Myers's testimony is invalid if not confirmed by Hooks, but he also realizes he won’t convince Chapman.
He leaves frustrated, and files a stack of motions in Darnell’s case. Darnell is relieved to hear the perjury charges were dropped, but he is shaken. He was just trying to be honest, but now he is scared. Stevenson reminds Darnell that he is his lawyer now, and offers to protect Darnell as best he can. But he realizes that it will be difficult to prove Walter’s innocence if law enforcement threatens others who try to help with the case. He worries about how police would react if he challenged them even more.
Chapter Six: Surely Doomed
Chapter Six opens with Stevenson on the phone with a woman whose grandson has just been jailed for murder. Many of his Alabama clients were on death row for crimes they were accused of committing at 16 or 17. Alabama had more juveniles sentenced to death than any other state or country. As a result, Stevenson's caseload is growing, and he can only take on people formally condemned to death row. Nonetheless, he offers to visit the woman’s grandson and see what he can do.
Charlie, at fourteen, had no record and was considered well-behaved, but Charlie had shot and killed his mother’s boyfriend George, who was drunk and violent. The night of the shooting, George punched Charlie’s mother, causing her to fall unconscious on the floor. Charlie tried to revive her and stop the bleeding, begging his mother to wake up. He had to call an ambulance, but the phone was in the bedroom with George. He entered while George was asleep and considered his hatred for George and everything he’d done to his mother before now likely having killed her. Instead of picking up the phone, he withdrew the handgun he knew George kept in a clothes drawer. He fired at George’s head, then heard his mother wake up. He couldn’t believe she was alive. He called 911 and sat next to her until police arrived. George was a police officer himself. The prosecutor insisted that Charlie be tried as a result, and the judge agreed.
Stevenson thinks Charlie is way too small and young-looking and terrified to be even fourteen. Charlie can’t make eye contact or respond as Stevenson introduces himself. Stevenson’s concern for Charlie grows as the boy remains unresponsive. He tries to make jokes, but receives no response. Eventually Stevenson leans toward him, and Charlie leans back and starts shaking. When he does speak, he details how multiple men in prison had been physically and sexually abusing him. When Stevenson tells the judge and the prosecutor that Charlie was being sexually abused and raped, they agree to move him to a juvenile facility. Stevenson takes on the case and manages to have it transferred to a juvenile court, meaning Charlie wouldn’t be sent to adult prison and would be released at eighteen. He visited Charlie regularly and watched him recover from everything that had happened.
After giving a talk at a church, Stevenson is approached by an older white Methodist couple who want to help Charlie. They offer to use the college fund they’d saved for their grandchild, who’d committed suicide as a teenager. The couple correspond with Charlie until his release, and eventually the couple become his family, helping him, along with his mother, bring Charlie back into society.
Chapter Seven: Justice Denied
Stevenson files a brief about Walter’s case to the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals, documenting all the issues. But his appeal is denied in a seventy-page opinion. He’d expected a different result, despite Alabama’s long history of systemic racism. He tells Walter the bad news, but retains a genuine hopefulness. He is still investigating the case intensively and had been able to hire additional lawyers. One new hire is Michael O’Connor, who is instrumental in helping with the case. In addition to many details provided by witnesses, after a few months, they discover that Bill Hooks had been paid $5,000 by Sheriff Tate to testify, and immediately freed after giving testimony. The State was legally obligated to reveal all of this to Walter’s counsel before trial, but they hadn’t.
The most significant break in the case comes when Ralph Myers calls Stevenson; he has something to tell him. Michael and Stevenson discuss why Myers would want to contact them and consider it could be a setup by the State. Three days later Michael and Stevenson drive two hours to meet Myers at a maximum-security prison in Springville. Myers is shorter and frailer than expected. In person, the large burn scars on his face make him seem sympathetic rather than menacing. He blurts out that everything he said at the trial was a lie. He says that he had learned in a group therapy class to be honest about everything bad that had happened in his life. Over two hours of questioning and three cans of Sunkist Orange, Myers tells Stevenson about how Sheriff Tate had threatened him with death row, and that lots of people had coerced him to testify falsely against Walter.
Stevenson and Michael spend weeks following the leads Myers provided. They meet Karen Kelly in prison, where she is serving a ten-year sentence for Vickie Pittman’s murder. She says she feels like she’s the reason Walter is in prison and recounts how Sheriff Tate had asked her repeatedly why she “wanted to sleep with one of them.” Stevenson and Michael spend more time looking into the Pittman murder, hoping to uncover what Myers had said: that a corrupt local sheriff had ordered him and Kelly to kill Pittman. Stevenson meets with Mozelle and Onzelle, Pittman’s aunts, who still have questions about the case and say they were treated by police like white trash.
Stevenson digresses to discuss how, leading up to and including that time in the 1980s, not all crime victims received the same treatment or respect. Poverty and race played a role. If victims were white, defendants were more likely to get the death penalty. The pairing of a black defendant and a white victim increased the likelihood of a death sentence. Similarly, poor victims’ cases and their families were treated with less importance than those of people with high social standing. Some victims were more protected than others. The lack of response and concern from police concerned Mozelle and Onzelle. Stevenson promises to find out all they could about who was responsible for Vickie’s death.
Stevenson files a Rule 32 petition to challenge Walter’s conviction based on him being unfairly tried, wrongly convicted, and illegally sentenced. The Alabama Supreme Court agrees to pause their direct appeal process to go ahead with the petition—a positive development. This meant they could meet the DA with a court order to turn over all files, and they could meet the officers involved in Walter’s prosecution, which they do at the DA’s office. Stevenson asks that they sign something to say these are all the files they have on the case. Chapman suggests it isn’t necessary. Tate takes the request as Stevenson questioning his integrity.
At the office, they go over the astonishing files. Inspired to research the elaborate conspiracies Myers had described, they start asking questions about the law enforcement officers whose names kept coming up in files having to do with the Pittman murder. They even talk to the FBI. Soon after, the EJI starts receiving bomb threats.
Analysis
The theme of hope and resilience continues in the fifth chapter when Stevenson meets Walter’s family. Despite the clear injustice of the situation, the family is warm-hearted and hopeful. As the family expresses how the aftermath of the case has affected them, and how they feel as though they have been convicted themselves, Stevenson touches on the motif of how condemned people’s families and communities are negatively impacted by their imprisonment—particularly in communities and families already dealing with systemic racial prejudice and impoverishment.
As Stevenson gets to know Walter, he is surprised by Walter’s empathy and sensitivity: Walter has every right to be angry about his situation, but he ironically demonstrates far more understanding than those condemning and mistreating him. The theme of closeness arises again as Stevenson recounts how he saw Walter and other clients as friends, not just clients.
Injustice in the form of police corruption and conspiracy are made evident when Stevenson’s witness Darnell Houston is arrested—an intimidation tactic to punish him for having gone to the EJI. Stevenson demonstrates resilience when he offers Darnell legal protection and proceeds with Walter’s case despite law enforcement threats.
The motif of police corruption is carried into the sixth chapter, as Stevenson recounts how a child could be sentenced to death row for shooting a violent police officer with his own gun. The theme of inhumane prison conditions arises unexpectedly when Stevenson learns that Charlie was being gang-raped in adult prison. The older white couple who more or less adopt Charlie as their child and support his education to help him recover convey the empathy necessary to welcoming imprisoned people back into society.
More evidence of a miscarriage of justice surfaces in Walter’s case, giving Stevenson hope. Myers finally comes clean about having lied in court: significantly, Myers’s newfound honesty is due to a group therapy class he participates in while incarcerated. This details the necessity of mental health services in reforming the criminal justice and prison systems.
The motif of police corruption recurs when Stevenson and the EJI receive the court-mandated release of the State’s files on Walter’s case. The files suggest a connection between Walter’s case and the Vickie Pittman murder, which, due to her lower social status, was treated with less attention than Ronda Morrison’s murder. As the EJI investigates, they receive bomb threats—likely from police implicated in the case—to intimidate them into stopping their probe.
