Walter McMillian

Walter "Johnny D." McMillian (October 27, 1941 – September 11, 2013) was a pulpwood worker from Monroeville, Alabama, who was wrongfully convicted of murder. His conviction was wrongfully obtained, based on police coercion and perjury. In the 1988 trial, under a controversial and now abolished Alabama doctrine known as judicial override, the judge imposed the death penalty, although the jury had voted for a sentence of life imprisonment.

From 1990 to 1993, the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals turned down four appeals. In 1993, after McMillian had served six years on Alabama's death row, the Court of Criminal Appeals reversed the lower court decision and ruled that he had been wrongfully convicted.

The controversial case received national attention beginning in the fall of 1992. Bryan Stevenson, McMillian's defense attorney, raised awareness on the CBS News program 60 Minutes. Journalist Pete Earley covered it in his book Circumstantial Evidence: Death, Life, and Justice in a Southern Town (1995). Stevenson featured this early case of his career in a TED talk and in his memoir Just Mercy (2014). This was adapted as an eponymous feature film, released in 2019. Jamie Foxx portrays McMillian and Michael B. Jordan stars as Stevenson.

In an interview in 2005, Stevenson said the judge had inadvertently done McMillian a favor by sentencing him to death. Since McMillian had been sentenced to death, this resulted in Stevenson, who was working specifically on capital cases, taking up his case. Had McMillian instead been sentenced to life imprisonment as recommended by the jury, Stevenson said, "he would be in prison today."