looked at me for an instant with a serious expression, and then we both broke out simultaneously in wild laughter. I wasn’t sure I should be laughing, but Joe was laughing, which made me think it was okay. Honestly, I couldn’t help it. In a few seconds we were both in hysterics. He was rocking in his wheelchair from side to side with laughter, clapping his hands. I couldn’t stop laughing, either; I was trying hard to stop but failing. We looked at each other as we laughed. I watched Joe, who laughed like a little boy, but I saw the lines in his face and even the emergence of a few prematurely gray hairs on his head. I realized even while I laughed that his unhappy childhood had been followed by unhappy, imprisoned teenage years followed by unhappy incarceration through young adulthood. All of a sudden it occurred to me what a miracle it was that he could still laugh. I thought about how wrong the world is about Joe Sullivan and how much I wanted to win his case.
We both finally calmed down. I tried to speak as sincerely as I could manage. “Joe, it’s a very, very nice poem.” I paused. “I think it’s beautiful.”
He beamed at me and clapped his hands.
Chapter Fifteen
Broken
Walter’s decline came quickly. The moments of confusion got longer and longer. He started forgetting things he had done just a few hours earlier. The details of his business slipped away from him, and managing work became complicated in ways he couldn’t understand, which depressed him. At some point I went over his records with him, and he’d been selling things at a fraction of their worth and losing a lot of money.
A film crew from Ireland came to Alabama to make a short documentary about the death penalty that would feature Walter’s case and the cases of two other Alabama death row prisoners. James “Bo” Cochran had been released after spending nearly twenty years on Alabama’s death row; a new trial was awarded after federal courts reversed his conviction because of racial bias during jury selection. At his new trial, a racially diverse jury found him not guilty of murder, and he was freed. The third man featured in the film, Robert Tarver, also adamantly maintained his innocence. The prosecutor later admitted that his jury had been illegally selected in a racially discriminatory manner, but courts refused to review the claim because the defense lawyer failed to make an adequate objection, so Tarver was executed.
We hosted a premiere of the film at our office, and I invited Walter and Bo to address the audience. About seventy-five people from the community gathered in EJI’s meeting room, where we screened the film. Walter struggled. He was more terse than usual and looked at me frantically whenever someone asked him a question. I told him that he wouldn’t have to do any more presentations. His sister told me that he’d started wandering in the evenings and getting lost. He began drinking heavily, something he’d never done before. He told me that he was anxious all the time and that the alcohol calmed his nerves. Then one day he collapsed. He was at a hospital in Mobile when they reached me in Montgomery. I drove down to speak with his doctor, who told me that Walter had advancing dementia, likely trauma-induced, and that he would need constant care. The doctor also said the dementia would progress and that Walter would likely become incapacitated.
We met with Walter’s family at our office and agreed that he should move to Huntsville to live with a relative who could provide consistent care. It worked for a while, but Walter became agitated there, and he was out of money, so he moved back to Monroeville, where his sister Katie Lee agreed to watch him. For a while, he did much better in Monroeville, but then his condition began to deteriorate again.
Soon, Walter needed to be moved into the sort of facility that provided care for the elderly and infirm. Most places wouldn’t take him because he had been convicted of a felony. Even when we explained that he was wrongfully convicted and later proved innocent, we couldn’t get anyone to admit him. EJI now had a social worker on staff, Maria Morrison, who began working with Walter and his family to find a suitable placement for him. It was an extremely frustrating and maddening process. Maria eventually found a place in Montgomery that