I'm in jail for murder. I had it all before. I was married, I have kids, but then I got back into drugs. I was addicted to drugs throughout my life but thought I finally cleaned up my act when I got married and had two daughters. But you know how it goes, addiction can difficult to beat and I started using again when my marriage started to go downhill. I met Walter McMillian while I was waitressing at The Waffle House in Monroeville, Alabama and we hit it off. He was married though, and being a black man, other people frowned upon our relationship because according to the state of Alabama black and white people could not be in a relationship together. It was an actual state law although against federal laws. I read up about this in the prison library while I was earning my degree to be a paralegal. Well, though I was truly attracted to Walter who flirted with all the waitresses at the Waffle House, I really was trying to make my husband jealous. We ended up getting a divorce because of my cheating ways.
Afterwards, my life took even more of a downward spiral, I murdered Vickie Pittman, a young girl who had her whole life in front of her because of my drug addiction. I don't even remember how or when it happened because of how many drugs I was on, but the prosecutor said I did it, so I confessed along with Ralph Myers, the town liar.
Ralph thought it would be a good idea and might reduce his sentence if he told the police that Walter McMillian committed another murder. I made the mistake of mentioning my relationship with Walter when I first started hanging around Ralph. He and I had a mutual addiction to painkillers since he was badly burned as a child and suffered from nerve damage. Nevertheless, he remembered Walter's name; that combined with his predilection to lying turned into Ralph confessing to another murder and claiming that he was with Walter.
Now, Walter is on death row and Ralph has a life sentence. I am hopeful that my 60 Minutes interview convinces enough people and the courts to offer Walter an appeal. I told the interviewer, Ben Bradley, that Walter was arrested because of me and that I feel so bad about what happened to Walter and how he was treated. Sheriff Tate was so rough with him and called him a bunch of names, threatened to lynch him even. Walter is a good man and does not deserve to be on death row and have his whole life and the lives of his family destroyed because of Ralph's stupid lie, my relationship with Walter, and the systemic racism in Alabama's court system.
No comments:
Post a Comment