McMillian was freed after six years on death row and remained close with Stevenson until his death in 2013. In 1989, a twenty-nine-year-old African-American civil-rights lawyer named Bryan Stevenson moved to Montgomery, Alabama, and founded an organization that became the Equal Justice Initiative. After turning down four previous appeals, the court ruled that McMillian had been wrongfully convicted. In 1993, Alabama's Court of Criminal Appeals heard his case again. "That '60 Minutes' piece helped Walter McMillian get off death row." "Perception is everything. To be able to put the facts out there for the world to see brought the pressure of society and helped wrongs get righted," Jordan says. McMillian's case eventually drew national attention and was the subject of a 1992 "60 Minutes" expose that showed how flimsy the case was against the convicted man awaiting death by electrocution. Conservative lawmakers were primarily concerned with swift punishment as retribution and as deterrent putting people convicted of horrible crimes to death as soon as possible, according to. A pivotal '60 Minutes' expose really did turn the tide for McMillian "When we had to figure out how to represent the other work, it was easy to decide that it should be represented through Eva’s commitment and the work she has done," Stevenson says. But for the sake of storytelling, these deeds were incorporated through Larson's Ansley. Some EJI actions depicted during McMillian's long fight for freedom involved other lawyers.
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