Bryan Stevenson
speaker
1,245 appearances
5 recordings
3 series
first heard Jun 2025
last heard 3 Jul
Bryan Stevenson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 4 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
What gives me some comfort is that I meet very few people who wouldn't want to do exactly what I did when I met that little boy. I think if most anyone listening to this, if they had been in that room and held that little boy while he was crying, talking about these things, even knowing what he has been accused of, I
I think almost everyone would leave there saying, we've got to get that child out of that environment. And I think the power in that instinct, in that desire to not add suffering to suffering, not to add violence to violence. not to add wrongdoing to wrongdoing, is that that can yield something extraordinary. It can yield something redemptive. It can yield something that can feel healing almost.
So we were able to get him out of that facility that day and ultimately was able to get a resolution of the case where he got released. After he got out, he got his high school degree, his GED. Then he went to college. He actually became an engineer. He got married. He has a beautiful family.
And I know the day of his release, it's the 11th, because on the 11th of every month for the last 18 years, at 8 a.m. exactly, This young man calls me and he says, hey, Mr. Bryan, just want you to know I'm doing great and I love you. Every month for 18 years. And that's the beauty that comes out of reacting, responding to injustice when we see it, abuse when we see it. And I can't quantify that.
The value that gives my life, the joy that gives me, it's priceless as far as I'm concerned. And I think when we hold our children that are struggling, that are in places of despair, that have been traumatized, and we look for ways to make things better, there's a return on that.
Sure. It involves a man named Walter McMillan who was accused of killing a young white woman in Monroeville, Alabama. And it is shocking in a lot of ways. One of the things that was immediately fascinating to me about this case is that Monroeville, Alabama is the community where Harper Lee grew up and wrote the story To Kill a Mockingbird. And so Monroeville...
prides itself on being the birthplace, the home place of that story. And so every year they put on a play, the streets are named after characters in the book. It's a big deal. You can go to the courthouse where they filmed the movie, scenes from the movie, and people say, oh, you can go stand where Gregory Peck stood. They romanticized this story of To Kill a Mockingbird.
They couldn't solve the murder. And after several months, the community was very frustrated with the police and the prosecutors for not solving the crime. The young 18-year-old was killed. broad daylight in the middle of downtown Monroeville. And the pressure was building.
And we believe that led them to Mr. McMillan, not because they had any evidence of his guilt, but because Mr. McMillan had had an affair with a young white woman in the community and word had spread about that. And that caused them to focus on him. Now, it turns out that at the time of the murder, Mr. McMillan was actually at his house raising money for his sister's church.
So he was surrounded by 30, 35 people.
A police officer who had gone to the place to buy, they were having a fish fry and selling sandwiches. So a police officer bought a sandwich and noted, bought a sandwich from Walter McMillan at almost the exact time of the crime, which was 11 miles away. But the police arrested Mr. McMillan. They coerced two people to testify falsely against him.
They put him on death row before the trial took place. Is that legal? It's completely illegal.
That's right. So the lawyers didn't complain about the fact that the newspapers were now saying Death Row defendant Walter McMillan will be arraigned next week. Death Row defendant, they were already characterizing him as someone who should get the death penalty. The trial takes place and lasts for a day and a half. These two witnesses give these false testimony.
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...
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. And 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.
They present that evidence at trial, some other evidence. But we found out all of this stuff. We found the police officer's log that said he was at Mr. McMillan's house.
In the making.
Showing 1161–1180 of 1,245 · page 59 of 63
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