Chapter One
In the 1980s Alabama had no public defender system. Brian Stevenson set out to change the lack of public defender system in Alabama. It was through Brian Stevenson's extraordinary efforts and ideas that he met Walter McMillian. Walter McMillian was a black entrepreneur who started a pulp-wood business. In the book Just Mercy, Brian Stevenson argues that maybe Walter McMillian would have not gotten into so much legal trouble had he kept in mind the virulent restrictions on interracial sex and marriage of the time. Walter McMillian was a known womanizer. However, upon meeting Karen Kelly, he had met the person who would almost be his downfall.
The tale of Walter McMillian and Karen Kelly's affair would speak of the horrors presented by the miscegenation laws affirmed by Alabama Supreme Court in the case of Tony Pace and Mary Cox. This couple fell in love in Alabama. Both Tony and Mary were sentenced to two years in prison and the Alabama Supreme Court upheld this decision in 1882. This decision was upheld by the US Supreme Court in the same vein as Plessy v. Ferguson. It enforced the same ideals espoused by “separate but equal” laws in the early 1900s.
Karen Kelly had fallen into Bad Company post-affair when she met Ralph Myers, a notorious liar and criminal. Meyers made several false accusations to the police, before finally accusing Walter McMillian of assisting in the murder of Vicky Pittman that at the time, increasingly appeared to have been done by Ralph Myers himself. At the same time in Alabama, Rhonda Morrison was murdered. Rhonda Morrison was an innocent young lady with a bright future ahead of her. Naturally many of the southern white citizens were enraged by her murder. Police struggled to find the true culprit for many months. Brian Stevenson argues that in their desperation for an answer, they mistook the most convenient answer for the moral one. Ralph Myers knew the police were looking for a quick and acceptable answer to the question of who killed Rhonda Morrison. Apart from accusing Walter McMillian of assisting in the murder of Vicky Pittman along with Karen Kelly, he accused Walter McMillian of killing Rhonda Morrison.
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