Black Alabama Man Challenges His Murder Conviction…
Robin “Rocky” Myers of Morgan County, Alabama, has spent more than three many years behind bars for a homicide he maintains he didn’t commit. Despite questions surrounding the bodily proof, shifting witness accounts, and his authentic legal professional’s ties to the Ku Klux Klan, his latest try to clear his title has been denied.
Source: F. Carter Smith / Getty
According to Atlanta Black Star, an Alabama decide rejected Myers’ request for a new trial on Aug. 28, leaving the 61-year-old Black man serving life without parole. What for: the 1991 killing of his white neighbor, Ludie Mae Tucker.
Myers was initially sentenced to demise in 1994 before Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey commuted his sentence to life without parole in 2025. Atlanta Black Star studies that Ivey, a Republican who helps capital punishment, cited uncertainty surrounding Myers’ guilt when she determined his execution mustn’t proceed.
Now, Myers and his attorneys are persevering with to challenge a conviction they argue was constructed without bodily proof connecting him to Tucker’s homicide.
“I’ve been locked up in one cell for 31 years. I don’t want to be inside no more,” Myers said. “I want to be free.”
No Physical Evidence Identified Myers As Tucker’s Killer
Tucker, 69, was fatally stabbed inside her Decatur, Alabama, residence during the early morning hours of Oct. 5, 1991. Her cousin, Marie Dutton, was also stabbed however survived.
Atlanta Black Star studies that police obtained a 911 name from Tucker’s residence at 12:19 a.m. Officer James Tilley arrived about a minute later and located Dutton affected by a stab wound before discovering Tucker, who had been stabbed thrice in the abdomen and as soon as in the chest.
Before Tucker died at Decatur General Hospital, Atlanta Black Star studies that she described her attacker as a brief, stocky Black man sporting a white or light-colored T-shirt with blood on it and presumably a plaid shirt.
Tilley later testified that Tucker “did not indicate that she knew the subject.”
That element has turn into vital to Myers’ supporters because Myers lived straight across the avenue from Tucker and knew her. His household said he commonly visited Tucker’s residence to buy ice from a machine on her porch.
Dutton also described the attacker as a Black man who was “short” and “chunky,” according to Atlanta Black Star, however she couldn’t establish him.
The Atlanta Black Star also sources AL.com the place Myers’ ex-wife, Debbie Anthony, states that she continues to imagine he’s harmless.
“The one thing that I don’t understand,” Anthony said, “the woman knew my husband. Why didn’t she say Rocky did it?”
Atlanta Black Star studies that investigators recovered no homicide weapon, bloody clothes or hair proof connecting Myers to the killing. A partial palm print discovered inside Tucker’s residence didn’t match Myers or another man initially arrested in the case.
Evidence studies also indicated that hairs discovered on Tucker’s clothes had been unlikely to have come from a Black particular person.
Investigation Initially Focused On Another Man Before Witness Accounts Changed
In Atlanta Black Star, a VCR was the only item police recognized as stolen from Tucker’s residence, and the device initially led investigators to Anthony “Cool Breeze” Ballentine.
Three witnesses told investigators they’d seen Ballentine with the VCR at a close-by drug home, the place it was allegedly traded for crack cocaine. Police arrested and charged Ballentine with homicide.
The investigation shifted about a month later after Alabama’s governor supplied a $5,000 reward for data.
New witnesses got here ahead claiming they’d seen Myers with the VCR. Police then reinterviewed witnesses who initially implicated Ballentine, and their accounts modified to establish Myers as the one who introduced the VCR to the drug home.
Investigators ultimately confirmed by its serial quantity that the VCR belonged to Tucker, however Myers’ fingerprints weren’t recovered from the device and investigators discovered no other forensic proof tying him to it.
One of the witnesses who implicated Myers, Marzell Ewing, later modified his account.
Ewing said in a 2004 declaration that he lied about seeing Myers with the VCR because of strain and had not really seen who introduced it to the drug home. The man who initially tipped investigators about Myers later cut up the $5,000 reward with Ewing.
Juror Questioned Conviction As Myers’ Attorneys Scrutinized His Defense
Atlanta Black Star studies that one in all the 11 white jurors who heard Myers’ case later questioned the proceedings. In 2011, juror Mae Puckett wrote Alabama officers asking that Myers’ life be spared.
“I do not want to sit in silence while someone I believe to be innocent is executed,” Puckett wrote.
The jury initially advisable life without parole, however the trial decide overrode that suggestion and sentenced Myers to demise under a follow Alabama has since abolished.
Myers’ current attorneys have also scrutinized the background and performance of his authentic protection legal professional, John Edmond Mays.
Mays represented the Ku Klux Klan in authorized issues before taking Myers’ case and appeared at a Klan rally during the Nineteen Seventies. Mays has denied being a member of the group.
Mays’ buddy and fellow legal professional Richard Jaffe told CNN that Mays acted as an legal professional for the Klan somewhat than a member and defended his work representing Myers and other Black shoppers.
“I took Rocky’s case because I hate the death penalty and I felt I could provide him with effective representation,” Mays said by Jaffe.
Myers’ current attorneys disagree with that evaluation.
Kacey Keeton, who represented Myers for years in federal habeas proceedings, argued that his circumstances gave him little management over who defended him.
“When you are poor and Black in Alabama, you get what the state gives you. And that’s what they gave Rocky Myers,” Keeton said.
Atlanta Black Star studies that Mays also described Myers’ neighborhood as “the very pit of hell” during his opening assertion and told jurors, “You’re people who are not used to being around criminals. You’re people who are not used to being around crackheads.”
Myers’ son, LeAndrew Hood, said he believes his father’s legal professional handled him as though his life had little worth.
“He was just up there calling him a crackhead, calling him a no-good, wasn’t good for society,” Hood said. “Like he didn’t have a mother that loved him, or kids, or a wife. He was just up there talking about him like he was nothing.”
‘I’m Just Gonna Keep On Believing’
Myers’ authorized team filed a petition in August 2025 looking for to vacate his conviction. The Morgan County District Attorney’s Office opposed the effort, arguing that his claims had been premature and without benefit.
The decide rejected Myers’ request for a new trial Aug. 28.
For Myers, freedom would also imply returning to the people he says he has missed most throughout his many years in jail.
“What I’m gonna do?” Myers said. “I’m just gonna keep on believing that I’m gonna get out of here. I miss my family because I love, love, love my family,” he said.
Despite the latest authorized setback and many years spent incarcerated, Myers said he has not given up hope of ultimately strolling free.
The publish Black Alabama Man Challenges His Murder Conviction After His Trial Attorney’s KKK Ties Surface appeared first on Bossip.
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