Hello ,
Walter McMillian was convicted of killing 18-year-old Ronda Morrison at a dry cleaner in Monroeville, Alabama in 1986. Three witnesses testified against McMillian, while six witnesses, who were black, testified that he was at a church fish fry at the time of the crime. McMillian was found guilty and held on death row for six years—all the while claiming his
innocence.
An attorney named Bryan Stevenson decided to take on the case to defend McMillian. Stevenson told a reporter:
It was a pretty clear situation where everyone just wanted to
forget about this man, let him get executed so everybody could move on. [There was] a lot of passion, a lot of anger in the community about [Morrison's] death, and I think there was great resistance to someone coming in and fighting for the condemned person who had been accused and convicted.
But with Stevenson's
representation, McMillian was exonerated in 1993. McMillian was eventually freed, but not without scars of being on death row. One of those scars was early-onset dementia.
Stevenson comments, "Many of the doctors believed [the dementia] was trauma-induced; [it] was a function of his experience of being nearly killed—and he witnessed
eight executions when he was on death row." So even after McMillian was free from death row, free from prison, and an exonerated man, in his mind he was still a prisoner. When Stevenson would visit him in the hospital, McMillian was still telling his lawyer, "You've got to get me off death row."*
So many people
struggle with whether or not they can have eternal life, with actually embracing the reality that Jesus CAN and WILL save them. We are not saved by things that WE do...but by what Christ has already done.
"Being confident of this very thing; that He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the
day of Jesus Christ." Phillipians 1:6
Have a great day and God bless!
Suggested Daily Bible Reading
Morning - Zech. 5-8
Evening - Revelation 19
* NPR, "One Lawyer's Fight for Young Blacks and 'Just Mercy,'"
Fresh Air (10-20-14); submitted by Van Morris, Mt. Washington, Kentucky
