rocky myers alabama

Robin "Rocky" Myers is a 53-year-old intellectually disabled black man who was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death in 1993 for a crime he did not commit. “[He] was just a jabbering and his voice was a quivering,” Dutton said later in a statement. Puckett, the juror, noticed these holes in the prosecutors’ case. And Roadrunner testified that Cool Breeze had also been at the shot house on multiple occasions that night, at one point “sweating real hard” and wearing a white sweatshirt with blood on it. This documentary examines the issues in Rocky’s case including his intellectual disability, his innocence, and how the justice system failed Rocky–including his lawyer abandoning him and judicial override. He did odd jobs, scraping together cash from friends and family while his wife worked as a cook at a nearby restaurant. Franklin Myers in Alabama. The stab wound to her chest had pierced her heart, and not long after arrival, she was pronounced dead. The judge who’d presided over the case had exercised his option of “judicial override,” discarding the jury’s recommendation of life without parole and sentencing Rocky to die instead. Skip to ... Alabama … More than two years later, a man named Robin “Rocky” Myers was convicted of Ludie Mae Tucker’s murder. Middle School Teachers Suspended After Assignment Asks Students How They Would ‘Punish’... Black History: The Black Women Who Helped America Reach the Moon, Michigan Deputy Fired After Arresting Black Man Collecting Signatures. “I just froze. UNDISCLOSED, The State V. Rocky Myers Episode 2 - The Superman Defense June 24, 2019 _____ Colin Miller: In the movie My Cousin Vinny , two northerners played by Ralph Macchio and Mitchell Whitfield are traveling through rural Alabama in their mint green Buick Detectives called him for a urine test, which he failed—a violation of his probation. When Dutton peered out of her room, she could see Ludie Mae talking through the window blinds with a man on the porch. “[He] was just a jabbering and his voice was a quivering,” Dutton said later in a statement. The stab wound to her chest had pierced her heart, and not long after arrival, she was pronounced dead. He’d planned to go to a club with his in-laws but when he arrived at their house, they’d already left. The verdict came as a stunning blow to Rocky, who’d been convinced that the trial would end with his acquittal. Rocky lives under near-constant lockdown at Holman, sometimes going days without yard time due to staff shortages in the Alabama Department of Corrections. So you have someone who’s intellectually disabled fumbling it, and sounding like somebody fumbling it.”. Ludie Mae was near-hysterical, but conscious enough to describe her attacker to the officers who arrived moments later as a black male, stocky and short with a “light colored shirt that looked like it had blood on it.” An ambulance rushed her to the hospital, but it was too late. Three-quarters of such cases involved a white victim, though only 35 percent of homicide victims in the state are white. Around midnight, the doorbell rang. The next step was to prepare to file a federal habeas petition. He Might Be Innocent. He ceased to represent Rocky -- without notice to the court or his client. “And I think that’s it.”. He testified that on the afternoon of Ludie Mae’s murder he’d bought crack from Butch and smoked it back at his house. His sister was running the property as a “shot house,” where people could buy whiskey and beer, and a local drug dealer named Leon “Butch” Madden sold crack cocaine from the porch. Powered by . In federal court, Marzell’s declaration along with Puckett’s account of the jury’s compromise verdict might at a minimum have called his death sentence into question, if not the conviction itself. To Kacey Keeton, a federal defender who picked up Rocky’s appeal in 2007, the case is a checklist for everything that’s wrong with the death penalty in America. Juror Mae Puckett in her home (Andrea Morales/ACLU). Rocky says it’s been frustrating to watch other prisoners get breaks in their case and be released while he’s been effectively shut out of court. Rocky, who could only read at a third-grade level, had to ask another prisoner to read the letter aloud to him." 486 likes. Even after convicting him, the jury recommended that Rocky receive a life sentence. And because of egregious conduct by an attorney working on his case, Rocky lost his chance for a post-conviction appeal—which meant that he was unable to present new evidence in federal court, including testimony revealing that police interfered with a key witness. 29-Year-Old Charmaignette Vanzant Has Been Missing Since Nov…. After Butch and Roadrunner changed their statements, homicide detectives turned their focus toward Rocky, who was on probation for receiving stolen property. Roadrunner also testified that the alley leading to the shot house was a well-known stash spot, saying that he himself had frequently found and hidden stolen goods and drugs there. article black lives matter blm death penalty death row dustin john higgs equality execution injustice justice petition petitions prison racism robin "rocky" myers robin myers rocky myers social justice tw death penalty tw execution. He said he’d found it at his sister’s house, which was just a few blocks up the road from Ludie Mae’s. Instead of Cool Breeze, they now fingered Rocky Myers as the man who’d come to the shot house with the VCR. The interrogation wasn’t filmed or recorded, but the two detectives gave an account of it during Rocky’s trial. Soon police got another tip that pointed toward his involvement in the murder. “But with every nickname came a different version of the story.”. “I kept waiting for that word that was going to tell me what happened and there was never one. After Butch and Roadrunner changed their statements, homicide detectives turned their focus toward Rocky, who was on probation for receiving stolen property. But during the appeals process, Schwarz quit. To Kacey Keeton, a federal defender who picked up Rocky’s appeal in 2007, the case is a checklist for everything that’s wrong with the death penalty in America. Clemency for Rocky Myers. In fact, there was no evidence at all that Rocky had been at the scene of the crime aside from his possession of a VCR. At the time of Ludie Mae’s death, Rocky was living across the street from her with his wife and children on one side of a converted duplex. With Cool Breeze in custody, the governor’s office issued a reward for further information about the murder to see if they could strengthen their case. Schwarz later admitted to negligence, signing a declaration that said he “did not tell Mr. Myers I was no longer representing him,” and that he “did not inform Mr. Myers that I would not pursue relief on his behalf in federal court.” The Board of Professional Responsibility of the Supreme Court of Tennessee issued a public censure to him in 2005, saying that he “willfully neglected his representation of his client.”. A year later, Rocky received a letter from the state Attorney General’s office saying that he’d missed the deadline to file any further habeas corpus petitions and notifying him that Alabama would be moving to set an execution date. “It was the state’s place to prove that Rocky Myers was in the home and committed that crime. Rocky Meyer's Current Attorney, Kacey Keeton (Andrea Morales/ACLU). When he had the money, he’d walk up a narrow alley that ran three blocks up from his home to Butch’s shot house and buy $10 or $20 worth of crack. Keeton, Rocky’s current attorney, says that his inability to provide a clear time line during the interrogation has everything to do with his intellectual disability, which she’s observed in more than a decade of working with him on his case. A few weeks later, a local man who’d known Cool Breeze for nearly 30 years came forward to claim it, saying that he’d seen someone else cross the road near Ludie Mae’s house with a VCR tucked under his arm on the night of the murder. His story has been presented in the podcast Undisclosed, covered in The Nation, and discussed by the Death Penalty Information Center. He is a wrongfully convicted, intellectually disabled man who has been fighting his conviction and death sentence in Alabama for decades. The prosecutor told the jury a straightforward story: Rocky’s drug addiction had overwhelmed his judgment, and after Butch refused to give him crack on credit he broke into Ludie Mae’s house and killed her for her VCR. In that case, Rocky would be retried in front of a new jury that could have even fewer sympathetic members, and increasing the chances that he would be sentenced to death. “I was very surprised,” he said in a phone interview. He said he’d found it at his sister’s house, which was just a few blocks up the road from Ludie Mae’s. In my mind it never happened,” she said. Instead of Cool Breeze, they now fingered Rocky Myers as the man who’d come to the shot house with the VCR. A few weeks later, a local man who’d known Cool Breeze for nearly 30 years came forward to claim it, saying that he’d seen someone else cross the road near Ludie Mae’s house with a VCR tucked under his arm on the night of the murder. According to Detective Sergeant Dwight Hale, Rocky admitted to using crack but denied knowing anything about the murder and said he’d never met Roadrunner or Butch before. They lifted a number of fingerprints, including one partial palm print, and determined that a VCR—a valuable consumer good in 1991—was missing. “When I’m praying, I tell the Lord I’m terrified,” Rocky said. He had an execution date in June of last year, and we won a stay. “They had all these people, witnesses coming up, and they would have a given name and a nickname, and then a street nickname,” said Mae Puckett, a juror who served on the case. A woman who lived in the neighborhood called in and said she’d seen him run into an alley near Ludie Mae’s house on the night of the murder, wearing a white shirt stained with blood. Roadrunner also testified that the alley leading to the shot house was a well-known stash spot, saying that he himself had frequently found and hidden stolen goods and drugs there.

}, Cool Breeze was well-known in the neighborhood. But I’m not able to do that. Rocky was sent to jail, where he was interrogated. Around the time homicide detectives shifted their focus away from Cool Breeze, Marzell was arrested while driving a stolen car in Decatur. A decade after the trial, when Keeton took over Rocky’s appeal she interviewed another juror who openly used a vicious racial slur to refer to Rocky and called him a “thug.”. His sister was running the property as a “shot house,” where people could buy whiskey and beer, and a local drug dealer named Leon “Butch” Madden sold crack cocaine from the porch. But it still wasn’t enough. Alabama Is Going to Execute Rocky Myers. In 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Florida’s judicial override statute was unconstitutional. She didn’t manage to get a clear look at him—except that he was wearing a “light looking shirt.” When Dutton came out of her room, holding the wound on her side, Ludie Mae was lying on the couch bleeding with the phone in her hand. “He was under extreme stress and anxiety and not understanding a lot of the communication,” she said. Would you want someone like that on a jury?”. She’d been stabbed four times, including once in the left side of her chest, but she’d managed to dial 911 and was on the phone with Decatur police. Roadrunner claimed he’d implicated Cool Breeze because he was angry over an argument they’d had the night of the murder, and Butch said he’d backed up Roadrunner’s statement because “I just figured that’s what everybody wanted to hear.” They said the story they’d originally told was still mostly true: A man had come to the shot house asking for crack on credit the night of Ludie Mae’s murder, returning later with a VCR to trade. 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