Thirty-one years is a long time to hold on to regret.
Thirty-one years ago, Alabama’s youngest state legislator wasn’t yet born. Thirty-one years ago, Alabama
was a very different place.
Yet 31 years ago, I was part of a Morgan County jury that found Robin “Rocky” Myers guilty of capital murder. I believed then, and I believe now, that Mr. Myers is innocent.
Government lawyers have set in motion the process that permits Gov. Kay Ivey to designate an execution date for Mr. Myers. She should instead exercise her power to grant clemency and resentence Mr. Myers to life without parole. That is all she has the power to do, and it is the least Mr. Myers deserves.
I was a very young woman when I served on Mr. Myers’s jury. The 12-person jury included older men and women with strong personalities. Some of them made up their mind that Mr. Myers was guilty before the trial ever started. I don’t know how they got on that jury.
During deliberations, the jurors were split. Some of us, including me, felt like the prosecution never proved Mr. Myers was guilty. We thought he was innocent. Since then, a great deal of evidence has come out to prove we doubters were right. A key witness against Mr. Myers recanted his testimony, and there was no physical evidence.
The woman who was murdered, who knew Mr. Myers, spoke to the police before she passed away. She described the man who stabbed her. She said he was a stocky black man in a light-colored shirt. She didn’t say “it was my neighbor Rocky,” even though she knew him.
Although I believed Mr. Myers was innocent at the time of trial, I made a terrible mistake. The other doubting jurors and I wanted to spare Mr. Myers’s life. But we were afraid that if we were a hung jury and there was a mistrial, a subsequent jury might find Mr. Myers guilty and sentence him to death. As a compromise, we worked out a deal with the jurors who were determined to find Mr. Myers guilty. We agreed to join them and unanimously find him guilty, but then we voted to give him life without parole.
The jury voted for life without parole 9-3. I left the courthouse feeling like that compromise saved Mr. Myers’s life. I thought, at least he would still be alive to be a father to his young son, whose testimony at trial moved many of us to tears. We had been told the judge could override our sentence but that it was such a rare occurrence that we didn’t worry about it. That practice is now illegal, and it should be. Seeing it happen in Mr. Myers’s case was a betrayal of the care we jurors put into considering his fate. It was unjust.
I have kept up with the case and I’ve since learned the injustices Mr. Myers faced did not end there. His lawyer at trial, John Mays, not only defended the Klan but spoke at Klan rallies in the 1970s and 1980s, using foul, obscene language to urge Klan members to prepare for a race war. Then Mr. Myers’ post-conviction lawyer abandoned him, literally quitting without even telling Mr. Myers. Mr. Myers only learned that his appeals were all denied because the court sent him a letter in prison which a fellow death row prisoner helped him read.
Mr. Myers reads at a 4th grade level, so writing his former lawyer (the one who abandoned him) to advocate for himself was not an option. That lawyer also refused to take any collect calls, which are the only ones you can make from prison. Mr. Myers’ ability to do much of anything else to speak up for himself was limited by his intellectual disability and the fact that he was in prison.
Mr. Myers has lawyers now, but his path to putting on evidence about his innocence or his trial lawyer’s support for the Klan is blocked by a Bill Clinton-era federal law that severely restricts how people can challenge death sentences. His lawyer missed a deadline 25 years ago, and that was the end of Mr. Myers’ chance to have a judge consider his case on the merits.
Mr. Myers has no more options in court. His only hope is that Gov. Ivey grants him clemency. Even her discretion is limited: as governor, she can’t free him, but she can resentence him to life without the possibility of parole.
Prisons in Alabama are awful places to live, but Mr. Myers has a family that loves him. He still speaks frequently with his son, LeAndrew, who was a child when he testified and asked us to spare his father’s life. LeAndrew is now a husband and father who lives here in Decatur. He and I met with Sen. Arthur Orr recently to ask him advocate for Mr. Myers’ life. We were moved beyond measure when Sen. Orr agreed to call Gov. Ivey about Mr. Myers’s case.
As a lifelong resident of Alabama, I have seen this state change over the years. I know we are better than this. I know that Gov. Ivey’s first act as governor was to do away with judicial override. I have written to her; I have testified about Mr. Myers’ case at the legislature; I have met with my elected representative. Now, I pray that Gov. Ivey can see her way to consider clemency for Mr. Myers, who would not be on death row but for judicial override.
If Mr. Myers is executed, it will show that we as a state are more afraid to reckon with our past, where a Klan sympathizer could represent a Black man on trial for his life and a single elected judge could override the will of a jury, than to do the hard but necessary work of reconciliation.
I know how hard it is to face past mistakes because that is what I am doing now, by fighting for Mr. Myers’ life. I am not one to put myself in public spaces, but I am a Christian and I have known for some time that this is what I must do, even though it is hard.
I can’t turn away.