As hard as it is to believe, the judge who oversaw Walter McMillian's 1988 trial was Judge Robert E. We used both books to investigate the Just Mercy true story. The racist attitudes Lee observed in her hometown of Monroeville helped to inspire the characters in her 1960 novel.Īnother book about Walter McMillian's wrongful incarceration is journalist Pete Earley's 1995 true crime book Circumstantial Evidence: Death, Life, and Justice in a Southern Town. Interestingly, the real-life events in Just Mercy unfold in Monroeville, Alabama, which is the birthplace of Harper Lee, author of the similarly-themed (fictional) book To Kill a Mockingbird. The movie is based on lawyer Bryan Stevenson's 2014 bestselling memoir Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption. I'm going to put twelve people on a jury who are going to find your goddamn black ass guilty." -The Washington Post I don't give a damn what your people say either. Tate responded, "I don't give a damn what you say or what you do. At the trial, McMillian's lawyer put a dozen witnesses on the stand who all testified that McMillian was helping with the fish fry on the morning of the murder.ĭid Sheriff Tate really tell Walter that he was going to "put twelve people on a jury who are going to find your goddamn black ass guilty"?Īccording to reports, this is indeed what Sheriff Tom Tate told Walter McMillian after McMillian tried to explain that he was at home hosting a fish fry on the morning of November 1, 1986, when Ronda Morrison, a white woman, was murdered. The purpose of the fish fry was to recruit new members for their church congregation (they didn't have an actual church building yet). When 18-year-old community college student and dry-cleaning clerk Ronda Morrison (pictured below) was shot multiple times at Jackson's Cleaners on the morning of Saturday, November 1, 1986, Walter McMillian and his wife Minnie were hosting a fish fry at their home, where he was surrounded by dozens of witnesses. Sheriff Tate had been under pressure to produce a suspect.ĭid Walter McMillian have a solid alibi that proved he couldn't have murdered Ronda Morrison? Her body had been discovered at her place of employment, Jackson's Dry Cleaners in Monroeville, Alabama. In answering the question, "How accurate is Just Mercy?" we learned that it took more than six months for the newly elected sheriff, Tom Tate, to arrest Walter McMillian in relation to the Novemmurder of an 18-year-old white woman, Ronda Morrison.
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