Ralph Myers was the Alabama man whose false testimony put Walter McMillian on death row for the 1986 murder of Ronda Morrison in Monroeville, and whose later recantation helped free him. Myers was a white man with a long criminal record and visible burn scars from a childhood injury.1Pete Earley. For the Murder Victims in Just Mercy, Justice Remains Denied He testified against McMillian after being coerced by Monroe County law enforcement, then took back that testimony once he was in prison. He served 30 years on an unrelated murder charge, was released in 2017, and died in Alabama in December 2021.2Equal Justice Initiative. Just Mercy
How Myers Became a Witness Against Walter McMillian
Ronda Morrison, an eighteen-year-old clerk, was killed at Jackson Cleaners in downtown Monroeville on November 1, 1986. The case went unsolved for six months. Suspicion eventually fell on Walter McMillian, a 45-year-old self-employed logger with no criminal history, largely because he had been involved in an interracial affair with a married white woman whose divorce had become public.3Equal Justice Initiative. Walter McMillian
Myers entered the picture through a different case. On June 3, 1987, he was arrested in Escambia County for the unrelated murder of Vickie Lynn Pittman in Brewton, Alabama. Karen Kelly, who had been romantically involved with both McMillian and Myers at different times, connected the two men in investigators’ minds.4Justia. McMillian v. State, 616 So. 2d 9335U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. McMillian v. Monroe County
While questioning Myers about the Pittman killing, Monroe County Sheriff Tom Tate, district attorney’s investigator Larry Ikner, and Alabama Bureau of Investigation agent Simon Benson pressed him about Morrison’s murder. In a tape-recorded statement that same day, Myers vigorously denied any knowledge of it. He told the officers he had never been inside the cleaners and had nothing to do with the crime.4Justia. McMillian v. State, 616 So. 2d 933 Prosecutors never turned that tape over to McMillian’s defense.
The Coercion
What happened next is central to any honest account of Myers. He was placed in a cell on death row near the execution chamber and forced to listen to an execution being carried out. Officers told him he would face the electric chair himself if he did not cooperate and implicate McMillian.6Montana Innocence Project. Innocent Black People More Likely To Be Exonerated From Death Row He was kept in isolation for weeks without family visits, phone calls, or access to a lawyer. Investigators supplied details through leading questions, and Myers repeated them back.4Justia. McMillian v. State, 616 So. 2d 933
He was also offered a deal. In exchange for testimony against McMillian, prosecutors agreed to a lighter sentence in the Pittman case.1Pete Earley. For the Murder Victims in Just Mercy, Justice Remains Denied
What Myers Told Doctors Before the Trial
Before McMillian’s trial, Myers was sent to the Taylor Hardin Secure Medical Facility for a psychiatric evaluation. There, he told four separate hospital staff doctors that police were pressuring him to testify falsely and that he had no knowledge of the crime. A May 10, 1988 report by Dr. Norman Poythress documented Myers’s statement that his earlier accounts were “bogus” and the product of psychological coercion. The other doctors recorded nearly identical information.4Justia. McMillian v. State, 616 So. 2d 933 Those records, like the June 1987 tape, were withheld from the defense.7Westlaw. McMillian v. Monroe County
His Testimony at McMillian’s Trial
McMillian and Myers were jointly indicted on December 11, 1987, on two counts of capital murder committed during a first-degree robbery.4Justia. McMillian v. State, 616 So. 2d 933 At the trial in Baldwin County, Myers testified that he and McMillian had driven to Jackson Cleaners on November 1, 1986, that he had waited outside while McMillian went in, that he heard popping noises, and that he then entered and saw McMillian standing over Morrison’s body holding money.8Death Penalty Information Center. Walter McMillian
A nearly all-white jury heard that account alongside testimony from dozens of Black alibi witnesses, including a police officer, who placed McMillian at a church fish fry eleven miles away at the time of the killing. The jury convicted McMillian and recommended life without parole. Trial Judge Robert E. Lee Key overrode that recommendation and imposed a death sentence.3Equal Justice Initiative. Walter McMillian
About five months after testifying, Myers pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of third-degree robbery and was sentenced as a habitual offender to 30 years in prison.4Justia. McMillian v. State, 616 So. 2d 933
The Recantation
Once he was in prison and McMillian’s appeal was underway, Myers contacted McMillian’s trial counsel and took back everything. He said his testimony was false, that he had never been at the cleaners, that he had no knowledge of the crime, and that officers Ikner, Tate, and Benson had told him what to say. He described the isolation and psychological pressure that led him to repeat whatever investigators indicated he should say.4Justia. McMillian v. State, 616 So. 2d 933
The recantation alone did not free McMillian. The trial court held an evidentiary hearing and found “insufficient evidence” that Myers had perjured himself, pointing out that Myers had faced pressure from other inmates and had chances to report the perjury to an FBI agent and a probation officer without doing so. On February 23, 1993, the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed that ruling and deferred to the lower court’s credibility findings.4Justia. McMillian v. State, 616 So. 2d 933
What eventually mattered was not the recantation on its own but the physical evidence behind it. Bryan Stevenson and the Equal Justice Initiative, who had begun representing McMillian in 1988, tracked down the June 1987 tape on which Myers had denied any knowledge of the Morrison murder. The suppression of that tape established a violation of Brady v. Maryland.9Cornell Law Institute. McMillian v. Monroe County, 520 U.S. 781 EJI also recovered the Taylor Hardin psychiatric records and other suppressed witness statements, including one from a witness named Miles Jackson who had reported seeing Morrison alive at a time that contradicted the prosecution’s timeline.10FindLaw. McMillian v. Monroe County When Stevenson confronted Myers with the evidence of his initial denial, Myers agreed to recant formally.6Montana Innocence Project. Innocent Black People More Likely To Be Exonerated From Death Row
The Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals reversed McMillian’s conviction on the Brady grounds. The Alabama Bureau of Investigation reopened the case, confirmed McMillian’s innocence, and prosecutors dropped all charges. McMillian was released from death row in March 1993 after six years there. The person who actually killed Ronda Morrison has never been publicly identified.3Equal Justice Initiative. Walter McMillian
Myers’s Later Years
Myers served the full 30 years of his sentence and was released in 2017. He lived in Alabama until his death in December 2021.2Equal Justice Initiative. Just Mercy His story reached a wider audience through Bryan Stevenson’s 2014 memoir Just Mercy and the 2019 film of the same name, in which Tim Blake Nelson played him.11Los Angeles Times. Tim Blake Nelson Plays Convict in Just Mercy
Perpetrator and Victim
Myers sits in an uneasy position in the history of Alabama wrongful convictions. He gave the perjured testimony that put an innocent man on death row, and he did so in exchange for a lighter sentence in his own murder case. He also refused to implicate McMillian at first, said so on tape, said so again to four separate doctors, and had every one of those statements buried by the officers who had pressed him to lie. When he was finally shown proof of his own earlier denials, he recanted, and that recantation was one of the pieces that pried McMillian off death row after six years there.