Walter McMillian

Walter "Johnny D." McMillian was an African-American pulpwood worker from Monroeville, Alabama, who was wrongfully convicted of murder and sentenced to death. His conviction was wrongfully obtained, based on police coercion and perjury; in the 1988 trial, under a controversial doctrine called "judicial override", the judge imposed the death penalty, even though the jury imposed 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.