we thought it might give us some perspective on the coercion that was leveled against Myers. We now knew that because Myers had recanted his accusations against Walter before the trial, the State might not be entirely surprised to hear that he was denying McMillian’s involvement in the crime. We needed as much objective evidence as we could find to confirm the truth of what Myers was now saying. Understanding the Pittman case and documenting the other demonstrably false things Myers had asserted would strengthen our evidence.
Vickie Pittman’s murder had been all but forgotten. Monroe County officials had reduced Myers’s and Kelly’s sentences in exchange for Myers’s testimony against Walter. How they managed to reduce sentences in the Pittman case, which was outside their jurisdiction in another county, was another anomaly. Myers insisted that there were other people besides him and Kelly involved in the Pittman murder, including a corrupt local sheriff. There were still questions about why Vickie Pittman had been killed. Myers told us that her murder had everything to do with drug debts and threats she had made to expose corruption.
We had learned from some of the early police reports that the father of Vickie Pittman, Vic Pittman, had been implicated as a suspect in her death. Vickie Pittman had had two aunts, Mozelle and Onzelle, who had been collecting information and desperately seeking answers to the questions surrounding their niece’s death. We reached out to them on the off chance that they’d be willing to speak with us, and we were astounded when they eagerly agreed to talk.
Mozelle and Onzelle were twin sisters—they were also colorful, opinionated talkers who could be bracingly direct. The two middle-aged, rural white women spent so much time together that they could finish each other’s sentences without even seeming to notice. They described themselves as “country tough” and presented themselves as fearless, relentless women who could not be intimidated.
“Just so you know: We’re gun owners, so don’t bring no drama when you come.” This was Mozelle’s last warning before I hung up the phone with her the first time we talked.
Michael and I traveled to rural Escambia County and were greeted by the twins. They invited us in, sat us at the kitchen table, and wasted no time.
“Did your client kill our baby?” Mozelle asked bluntly.
“No, ma’am, I sincerely believe he did not.”
“Do you know who did?”
I sighed. “Well, not completely. We’ve spoken to Ralph Myers and believe that he and Karen Kelly were involved, but Myers insists that there were others involved as well.”
Mozelle looked at Onzelle and leaned back.
“We know there’s more involved,” said Onzelle. The sisters voiced suspicions about their brother and about local law enforcement but complained that the prosecutor had disrespected and ignored them. (Vic Pittman was never formally charged for the murder.) They said they were turned away even by the state’s victims’ rights group.
“They treated us like we were low-class white trash. They could not have cared less about us.” Mozelle looked furious as she spoke. “I thought they treated victims better. I thought we had some say.”
Although crime victims had long complained about their treatment in the criminal justice system, by the 1980s a new movement had emerged that resulted in much more responsiveness to the perspective of crime victims and their families. The problem was that not all crime victims received the same treatment.
Fifty years ago, the prevailing concept in the American criminal justice system was that everyone in the community is the victim when an offender commits a violent crime. The party that prosecutes a criminal defendant is called the “State” or the “People” or the “Commonwealth” because when someone is murdered, raped, robbed, or assaulted, it is an offense against all of us. In the early 1980s, though, states started involving individual crime victims in the trial process and began “personalizing” crime victims in their presentation of cases. Some states authorized the family members of the victim to sit at the prosecutor’s table during trial. Thirty-six states enacted laws that gave victims specific rights to participate in the trial process or to make victim impact statements. In many places, prosecutors started introducing themselves as the lawyer representing a particular victim, rather than as a representative of the civic authorities.
In death penalty cases, the U.S. Supreme Court said in 1987 that introducing evidence about the status, character, reputation, or family of a homicide victim was unconstitutional. The prevailing idea for decades had been that “all victims are equal”—that is, the murder