Chapter Summaries 

Introduction 

• Stevenson described how he came to visit a person on death row, and how he choose law as a profession. 

• Stevenson majored in philosophy in college. 

• His senior year, he realized he could not get a job in his major. 

• When he looked around at post-college educational opportunities, he discovered that law school did not require any special background knowledge. 

• During his first year at Harvard Law School, Stevenson was disillusioned about the law and his classes. 

• When he learned about an internship, he signed up. 

• The internship involved working for the Southern Prisoners Defense Committee (SPDC) in Georgia advocating for prisoners on death row. 

• His first encounter with a condemned prisoner was when he was sent to tell a man named Henry that it would be at least a year before he could be executed. 

• Stevenson was at first worried about the visit, but the bonded with Henry, and they spent three hours talking. 

• The meeting with Henry inspired Stevenson to commit to helping death row prisoners. 

• Law school became to seem relevant and important as he studied the law and the sociology of race, poverty, and power. 

• His time on death row had shown him that something was missing in the way people were treated in the judicial system. 

• Stevenson grew up in a poor, rural, racially segregated settlement in Delaware. • As African Americans, his family lived in a racially segregated ghetto. 

• People lived in tiny shacks, and families without indoor plumbing had to use outhouses. 

• The black people he lived with were strong, but marginalized. 

• His father left the area to attend high school, and he brought back Stevenson’s mother. 

• Stevenson’s father worked in a food factory, and he did domestic work on the weekends. 

• Stevenson’s mother had a civilian job at an Air Force base. 

• His grandmother was the daughter of slaves. 

• She taught Stevenson that he had to get close to learn and understand important things in life. 

• An early mentor also inspired Stevenson by telling him that capital punishment meant that people who did not have money or capital received the punishment. 

• Stevenson established his first law practice in the Deep South of the United States where it was difficult for African Americans to received justice. 

• Stevenson also introduced the case of Walter McMillian, whose story was one of many that Stevenson would tell. 

• Stevenson believed that we were all implicated when we allowed other people to be mistreated. 

• A lack of compassion could corrupt the decency of a community, a state, and a country. 

Chapters 1

• In Chapter 1, Stevenson was living in Atlanta and trying to set up a legal center to represent people on death row in Alabama. 

• Stevenson met Walter McMillian as he was starting his fourth year at the SPDC. 

• McMillian was a black man who had had his own business, and who had had an affair with a white woman. 

• Up until 2000, interracial marriage or sex was illegal in many southern states. 

• A young woman was murdered in Monroeville, Alabama, known as the home of Harper Lee, the author of To Kill a Mockingbird. 

• McMillian was falsely accused of the young girl’s murder, and he was on death row awaiting execution. 

• Judge Robert E. Lee Key attempted to get Stevenson to not take McMillian’s case. 

Chapters 3

• In Chapter 3, Stevenson provided additional details about the McMillian case. 

• When no murderer was found, Sheriff Tate coerced Ralph Myers and a prison snitch named Bill Hooks to falsely accuse McMillian of the murder. 

• Even though McMillian had an alibi and dozens of people had been with him at the time of the murder, McMillian and Myers were imprisoned at death row before the trial. 

• Myers recanted his story, but after being on death row for a while, he agreed to say whatever the police wanted him to say. 

• In the South, it was common to exclude African Americans from juries, even though it was illegal. 

• There were no African Americans on the jury that convicted McMillian. 

Chapters 5

• In Chapter 5, Stevenson met with McMillian’s family. 

• He met his wife and daughter at their home, and then the two women gave him directions to a trailer in the woods where about 30 family members waited to speak with him. 

• As Stevenson prepared McMillian’s appeal, he was reminded of a story he read by W.E.B. Du Bose that was about an African-American man whose community sent him to college to become a teacher. 

• However, the man was lynched by a white mob, because they did not care for what he was teaching the black children. 

• The story made Stevenson think about hope denied. 

• A man named Darnell Houston contacted Stevenson and told him that Bill Hooks, who had testified that he saw McMillian outside the cleaners on the day of the murder, had been working with him all day. 

• Houston said that Hooks could not have seen McMillian. 

• Soon after, Houston was arrested on a perjury charge. 

• Stevenson arranged a meeting with the new district attorney, Tom Chapman. 

• The attorney refused to believe any of the evidence Stevenson presented, but he did have Houston released from the perjury charge. 

• Stevenson told Houston that he would be his lawyer if he had any further problems. 

Chapters 7

• In Chapter 7, Stevenson revealed that McMillian’s appeal had been denied. • Stevenson was able to hire an attorney, Michael O’Connor, to help with the case load. • Working together they had found new evidence that McMillian was not guilty. • Ralph Myers contacted Stevenson and told him that he had fabricated his testimony. • He also said that there were other people involved in the Pittman murder. 

• Myers had been attending a therapy group, and he felt bad about implicating McMillian. 

• Karen Kelly, in prison for the Pittman killing, told Stevenson that McMillian did not kill Morrison. 

• Stevenson spoke to some of the Pittman family members, and they told him that they had been ignored by the authorities. 

• The victim’s rights movement had been involving victims more in cases, and Pittman’s family members did not feel they got the help they deserved. 

• Stevenson and O’Connor prepared a motion questioning the proceedings in McMillian’s trial and to be allowed to see the records relevant to the case. 

• Surprisingly, the documents were turned over, and there were more than Stevenson had expected. 

• Shortly afterwards, Stevenson and O’Connor began receiving bomb threats. 

Chapters 9

• In Chapter 9, the hearing began to see if McMillian’s conviction should be upheld or overturned. 

• Myers' testimony was clear and consistent. 

• Even doctors from the mental facility where Myers was examined before the first trial testified that Myers had consistently said that he had been coerced into lying about McMillian’s involvement in the murder. 

• There was also evidence that showed that law enforcement and prosecuting attorneys mishandled the case. 

• The second day of the case someone ordered that no blacks were to be allowed in the courtroom. 

• When Stevenson arrived, he was shocked to see all of McMillian’s supporters standing outside the courtroom. 

• When Stevenson tried to enter the room, a deputy told him he was not allowed. 

• When Stevenson said he was the prosecuting attorney, the deputy went to check and see if Stevenson could go in. 

• When Stevenson finally entered the courtroom, he saw that a metal detector had been installed and that everyone entering had to walk past a German shepherd. 

• After Stevenson spoke to the judge, a few black people were allowed in. 

• One of the ministers chose Mrs. Williams to go in, but she stopped and turned around at the sight of the dog. 

• Seeing the dog took her back to a time in the 1960s when she was intimidated by police dogs during equal rights demonstrations. 

• After praying all night, the next day Mrs. Williams was able to convince herself not to be afraid and to enter the courtroom. 

• The final day of the hearing seemed to go well. 

• That evening Stevenson and O’Connor took some time off and went to the beach. 

• They considered the possible dangers they faced from people who were angry that they would attempt to overturn McMillian’s guilty verdict. 

Chapters 11

• In Chapter 11, another bomb threat was received. 

• Though it turned out to be an empty threat, Stevenson and his staff had to take the threats seriously, because civil rights attorneys were being targeted and killed. 

• Judge Norton refused to provide any relief due to McMillian’s most recent hearing. 

• Although Stevenson was disappointed, he still had all the evidence pointing to McMillian’s innocence. 

• He knew that hope was important, and that he had to keep hope alive. 

• Although national news exposure could backfire, Stevenson decided to allow “60 Minutes” to cover the McMillian case. 

• Privately, Chapman, the defense attorney asked the ABI to investigate the case. 

• The investigators discovered that McMillian was innocent and found a possible suspect for the Morrison murder. 

• Eventually all charges were dismissed against McMillian. 

• However, McMillian was not welcome or safe in Monroe County. 

• Despite that, Stevenson said that the day that McMillian was released was a day of celebration. 

• McMillian felt so happy he said he felt like a bird about to fly away. 

Chapters 13

• In Chapter 13, after McMillian was freed and the charges dropped, Stevenson sought to get McMillian compensation for the years he spent in prison. 

• It was difficult for those who were wrongly imprisoned to be compensated for the time they spent in prison. 

• Prosecutors and law enforcement officers were often exempt from prosecution for wrong doing in a case. 

• So many cases were not able to get compensation. 

• Stevenson took McMillian’s case to the Supreme Court and was able to get him a few hundred thousand dollars. 

• Stevenson and McMillian did interviews about the trial and exoneration. 

• McMillian’s wife did not want him back at their home. 

• McMillian decided to go back to Monroe County anyway and start his logging business again. 

• He put a trailer on a piece of land that he owned. 

• When McMillian was injured, he turned to selling auto parts from his land. 

• Stevenson began teaching law students, and he would sometimes have McMillian come as a guest speaker. 

• Sweden awarded Stevenson and his organization a prestigious honor. 

• When Stevenson went to accept the award, he and his story were met with admiration and respect. 

• When he saw the Swedish television documentary on McMillian’s case and how McMillian broke down emotionally as he remembered what he had endured, Stevenson knew it was time to return to Alabama. 

Chapters 15

• In Chapter 15, Stevenson described how McMillian began to decline from dementia that had probably been brought about by trauma. 

• It was difficult to find a nursing home that would care for him because of his felony conviction, even though he had been exonerated. 

• A nursing home took him in for 90 days, and then he went to live with a sister. • Stevenson took on more and more death row cases. 

• The case of Jimmy Dill was not successful, and Stevenson became depressed when the man was executed. 

• Stevenson contemplated quitting, but then he remembered an incident where his mother made him apologize to a young man who stuttered. 

• He also remembered how he was inspired by civil rights leaders like Rosa Parks. • Stevenson realized that everyone was broken. 

• That being broken called for mercy. 

• He could not quit, because there was so much more to do. 

Epilogue 

• In the Epilogue, Stevenson described how McMillian died in 2013 of a combination of his dementia and a fall that broke his hip. 

• McMillian was able to die at his sister’s home quietly in the night. 

• At McMillian’s funeral, Stevenson stressed the need for mercy. 

• As he left the funeral, many people requested help. 

• Stevenson knew that it was not likely he could help many of them, but it made his journey home less sad to have the hope that he might be able to help.