AL Man Denied New Trial, Attorneys Challenge Conviction

Robin “Rocky” Myers of Morgan County, Alabama, has spent more than three decades behind bars for a murder he maintains he did not commit. Despite questions surrounding the physical evidence, shifting witness accounts, and his original attorney’s ties to the Ku Klux Klan, his latest attempt to clear his name has been denied.

According to Atlanta Black Star, an Alabama judge 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 originally sentenced to death in 1994 before Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey commuted his sentence to life without parole in 2025. Atlanta Black Star reports that Ivey, a Republican who supports capital punishment, cited uncertainty surrounding Myers’ guilt when she decided his execution should not proceed.

Now, Myers and his attorneys are continuing to challenge a conviction they argue was built without physical evidence connecting him to Tucker’s murder.

“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, home during the early morning hours of Oct. 5, 1991. Her cousin, Marie Dutton, was also stabbed but survived.

Atlanta Black Star reports that police received a 911 call from Tucker’s home at 12:19 a.m. Officer James Tilley arrived about a minute later and found Dutton suffering from a stab wound before discovering Tucker, who had been stabbed three times in the stomach and once in the chest.

Before Tucker died at Decatur General Hospital, Atlanta Black Star reports that she described her attacker as a short, stocky Black man wearing a white or light-colored T-shirt with blood on it and possibly a plaid shirt.

Tilley later testified that Tucker “did not indicate that she knew the subject.”

That detail has become significant to Myers’ supporters because Myers lived directly across the street from Tucker and knew her. His family said he regularly visited Tucker’s home to purchase 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 could not identify him.

The Atlanta Black Star also sources AL.com where Myers’ ex-wife, Debbie Anthony, states that she continues to believe he is innocent.

“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 reports that investigators recovered no murder weapon, bloody clothing or hair evidence connecting Myers to the killing. A partial palm print found inside Tucker’s home did not match Myers or another man initially arrested in the case.

Evidence reports also indicated that hairs found on Tucker’s clothing were unlikely to have come from a Black person.

Investigation Initially Focused On Another Man Before Witness Accounts Changed

In Atlanta Black Star, a VCR was the only item police identified as stolen from Tucker’s home, and the device initially led investigators to Anthony “Cool Breeze” Ballentine.

Three witnesses told investigators they had seen Ballentine with the VCR at a nearby drug house, where it was allegedly traded for crack cocaine. Police arrested and charged Ballentine with murder.

The investigation shifted about a month later after Alabama’s governor offered a $5,000 reward for information.

New witnesses came forward claiming they had seen Myers with the VCR. Police then reinterviewed witnesses who initially implicated Ballentine, and their accounts changed to identify Myers as the person who brought the VCR to the drug house.

Investigators eventually confirmed through its serial number that the VCR belonged to Tucker, but Myers’ fingerprints were not recovered from the device and investigators found no other forensic evidence tying him to it.

One of the witnesses who implicated Myers, Marzell Ewing, later changed his account.

Ewing said in a 2004 declaration that he lied about seeing Myers with the VCR because of pressure and had not actually seen who brought it to the drug house. The man who initially tipped investigators about Myers later split the $5,000 reward with Ewing.

Juror Questioned Conviction As Myers’ Attorneys Scrutinized His Defense

Atlanta Black Star reports that one of the 11 white jurors who heard Myers’ case later questioned the proceedings. In 2011, juror Mae Puckett wrote Alabama officials 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 originally recommended life without parole, but the trial judge overrode that recommendation and sentenced Myers to death under a practice Alabama has since abolished.

Myers’ current attorneys have also scrutinized the background and performance of his original defense attorney, John Edmond Mays.

Mays represented the Ku Klux Klan in legal matters before taking Myers’ case and appeared at a Klan rally during the 1970s. Mays has denied being a member of the organization.

Mays’ friend and fellow attorney Richard Jaffe told CNN that Mays acted as an attorney for the Klan rather than a member and defended his work representing Myers and other Black clients.

“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 assessment.

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 reports that Mays also described Myers’ neighborhood as “the very pit of hell” during his opening statement 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 treated him as though his life had little value.

“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 team filed a petition in August 2025 seeking to vacate his conviction. The Morgan County District Attorney’s Office opposed the effort, arguing that his claims were untimely and without merit.

The judge rejected Myers’ request for a new trial Aug. 28. 

For Myers, freedom would also mean returning to the people he says he has missed most throughout his decades 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 decades spent incarcerated, Myers said he has not given up hope of eventually walking free.