Black Alabama Man Challenges His unlawful killing Conviction…
Robin “Rocky” Myers of Morgan County, Alabama, has spent more than three a long time behind bars for a homicide he maintains he didn’t commit. Despite questions surrounding the bodily evidence, shifting witness accounts, and his unique attorney’s ties to the Ku Klux Klan, his latest attempt to clear his title has been denied.
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According to Atlanta Black Star, an Alabama choose 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 death in 1994 before Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey commuted his sentence to life without parole in 2025. Atlanta Black Star reviews that Ivey, a Republican who helps capital punishment, cited uncertainty surrounding Myers’ guilt when she determined his execution shouldn’t proceed.
Now, Myers and his attorneys are persevering with to problem a conviction they argue was constructed without bodily evidence 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 eliminateer
Tucker, 69, was fatally stabbed inside her Decatur, Alabama, home during the early morning hours of Oct. 5, 1991. Her cousin, Marie Dutton, was also stabbed but survived.
Atlanta Black Star reviews that police acquired a 911 call from Tucker’s home at 12:19 a.m. Officer James Tilley arrived about a minute later and discovered Dutton struggling from a stab wound before discovering Tucker, who had been stabbed thrice in the abdomen and once in the chest.
Before Tucker died at Decatur General Hospital, Atlanta Black Star reviews that she described her attacker as a short, 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 develop into important to Myers’ supporters because Myers lived immediately across the road from Tucker and knew her. His household said he repeatedly visited Tucker’s home 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, but she couldn’t establish him.
The Atlanta Black Star also sources AL.com where Myers’ ex-wife, Debbie Anthony, states that she continues to consider 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 reviews that investigators recovered no homicide weapon, bloody clothes or hair evidence connecting Myers to the killing. A partial palm print discovered inside Tucker’s home didn’t match Myers or another man initially arrested in the case.
Evidence reviews also indicated that hairs discovered on Tucker’s clothes have 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 merchandise police recognized as stolen from Tucker’s home, and the gadget 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, where 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 provided a $5,000 reward for info.
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 particular person who introduced the VCR to the drug home.
Investigators finally confirmed through its serial quantity that the VCR belonged to Tucker, but Myers’ fingerprints weren’t recovered from the gadget and investigators discovered no other forensic evidence 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 break up the $5,000 reward with Ewing.
Juror Questioned Conviction As Myers’ Attorneys Scrutinized His Defense
Atlanta Black Star reviews that one of 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 really useful life without parole, but the trial choose overrode that suggestion and sentenced Myers to death under a observe Alabama has since abolished.
Myers’ current attorneys have also scrutinized the background and efficiency of his unique protection attorney, John Edmond Mays.
Mays represented the Ku Klux Klan in legal issues before taking Myers’ case and appeared at a Klan rally during the Seventies. Mays has denied being a member of the group.
Mays’ buddy and fellow attorney Richard Jaffe told GWN that Mays acted as an attorney for the Klan reasonably than a member and defended his work representing Myers and other Black purchasers.
“I took Rocky’s case because I hate the death penalty and I felt I could provide him with effective representation,” Mays said through 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 control 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 reviews 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 attorney 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’ legal group filed a petition in August 2025 searching for to vacate his conviction. The Morgan County District Attorney’s Office opposed the trouble, arguing that his claims have been premature and without advantage.
The choose 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 a long time in prison.
“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 legal setback and a long time spent incarcerated, Myers said he has not given up hope of finally strolling free.
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