Bryan Stevenson

Oddly, the jury comes back after convicting him and says, we think he should be sentenced to life without parole.

I think they knew that there was no credible evidence against him and they didn't... Even though they convicted him.

Even though they convicted him.

And their compromise was to sentence him to life without parole.

But Alabama...

It allowed its trial judges, its elected trial judges, to override jury verdicts of life and impose the death penalty.

So the judge immediately overrode that life sentence and imposed a death sentence.

So Mr. McMillan is sent back to death row, and I got involved after he had been sentenced and quickly learned.

about all of the problems with the case.

First of all, I went into the community, the people who were with him, and they came up to me and they'd say, Mr. Stevenson, we feel like we've been convicted too.

We feel like we've been sentenced to death too.

We were with him.

It would have been better if he'd been out in the woods hunting by himself when this crime took place, because at least then you had to entertain the possibility.

But because we were with him...

And we quickly uncovered evidence about the coercion for some bizarre reason when they coerced these two witnesses to testify falsely against him.

They tape recorded those interviews and they hid the tapes.

I found the tapes by going to another courthouse and doing some discovery.

And the first thing you hear on this tape from the witness is, quote, you want me to frame an innocent man for murder, and I don't feel right about that.

And the police officer effectively says, well, if you don't do what we want, we'll put you on death row.

And they put the witness on death row for three months until he agreed to testify falsely against Mr. McMillan.