Robin “Rocky” Myers was sentenced to death once before.
Now, after spending decades fighting to prove he was wrongfully convicted and uncovering evidence that the attorney who defended him had ties to the Ku Klux Klan, his latest bid for freedom has been denied.
An Alabama judge rejected Myers’ request for a new trial on Aug. 28, leaving the 61-year-old Black man to continue serving a life sentence for a murder he has long maintained he did not commit.
Myers was sentenced to death in 1994 for the 1991 killing of his white neighbor, Ludie Mae Tucker.
His current attorneys have repeatedly challenged the conviction, pointing to disputed witness testimony, a lack of adequate counsel previously, an investigation that initially focused on another suspect, and a lack of physical evidence connecting Myers to the crime.
Myers’ case attracted renewed attention after Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey commuted his death sentence to life without parole in 2025. Ivey, a Republican and supporter of capital punishment, cited uncertainty surrounding Myers’ guilt when she decided not to allow his execution to proceed.
Tucker, 69, was killed inside her Decatur home in the early morning hours of Oct. 5, 1991. Another woman, Tucker’s cousin Marie Dutton, was also stabbed but survived, according to AL.
Police received a 911 call at 12:19 a.m. from Tucker’s home. The dispatcher later testified that the caller initially could only breathe heavily into the phone before eventually providing her address and saying she had been “cut.”
Officer James Tilley arrived about a minute later and found Dutton bleeding from a stab wound to her side. He then discovered Tucker, who had been stabbed three times in the stomach and once in the chest.
As paramedics rushed Tucker to the hospital, she drifted in and out of consciousness. She was able to describe 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 over it.
Tilley later testified that Tucker “did not indicate that she knew the subject.”
She died at Decatur General Hospital.
Dutton later testified that she and Tucker had gone to bed around 11 p.m. At some point after midnight, Dutton heard the doorbell and saw Tucker speaking with a man at the front door.
The man reportedly told Tucker he had been hurt, gotten into a wreck and a fight, and needed to contact his family. Dutton said she heard him provide part of a telephone number and Tucker offer to call his family.
Then, Dutton heard Tucker mention that her husband was in another room. Tucker was not married.
Moments later, Dutton heard Tucker scream her name. Dutton testified that the man then entered her bedroom and stabbed her before fleeing.
Dutton described the attacker as a Black man who was “short” and “chunky” and wearing a light-colored or “bluish white” shirt. She could not identify him.
The description became significant because Myers lived directly across the street from Tucker with his wife and four children. He was also familiar with Dutton. His family said Tucker sold ice from an ice machine on her front porch, and Myers regularly visited her to buy it.
Myers’ ex-wife, Debbie Anthony, told AL.com she still believes he was innocent.
“The one thing that I don’t understand,” Anthony said, “the woman knew my husband. Why didn’t she say Rocky did it?”
Anthony said Myers had severe eczema at the time, causing his skin to flake off in pieces. A detective who later testified about interrogating Myers recalled that “he did have real scale-y skin that looked bad on his arm.”
But investigators did not find pieces of Myers’ skin at the crime scene.
More broadly, no physical evidence identified Myers as Tucker’s killer. There was no murder weapon, bloody clothing, or hair evidence connecting him to the stabbing. A partial palm print recovered from Tucker’s home did not match Myers or the man police initially arrested.
Evidence reports also indicated that hairs found on Tucker’s clothing were unlikely to have come from a Black person.
There was another potentially significant absence: Tucker’s surviving cousin could not identify the attacker, despite being in the house during the assault.
The only item police identified as stolen from Tucker’s home was a VCR. Investigators found its cables still lying on the floor after they had apparently been yanked from the machine.
The VCR initially led police to another man, crack cocaine user 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.
One lookout described Ballentine as sweating and shaking while carrying the VCR. Police arrested and charged him with murder in the case.
About a month later, however, the investigation shifted. After Alabama’s governor offered a $5,000 reward for information, new witnesses came forward and said they had seen Myers with the VCR, including a man who worked with the father of Ballentine.
Police reinterviewed the witnesses who had implicated Ballentine. Their stories changed, and they began telling investigators that Myers was the person who had brought the VCR to the drug house.
The VCR was eventually confirmed to be Tucker’s through its serial number. But investigators never found Myers’ fingerprints on it or other forensic evidence tying him to the device.
One of the witnesses who implicated Myers was Marzell Ewing. Years later, Ewing changed his story.
In a 2004 declaration, Ewing said he had lied about seeing Myers with the VCR because of pressure and that he had not actually seen who brought it to the drug house. The man who initially tipped police about Myers later split the $5,000 reward with Ewing.
The shifting testimony became central to Myers’ later challenges to his conviction. One of the 11 white jurors who sat on Myers’ case also came to question the proceedings. Mae Puckett wrote Alabama officials in 2011, 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 had recommended life without parole. The trial judge overrode the recommendation and sentenced Myers to death; a practice Alabama has since abolished.
Myers’ current attorneys have also raised questions about his original defense lawyer, John Edmond Mays.
Before representing Myers, Mays had represented the Ku Klux Klan in legal matters and appeared at a Klan rally in the 1970s. Myers’ lawyers argue that his history and conduct during the trial raise serious questions about whether Myers received an adequate defense.
Mays has denied being a Klan member. His friend and fellow attorney Richard Jaffe told CNN that Mays was acting as a lawyer for the organization rather than as a member.
Jaffe also defended Mays’ work on Myers’ case, saying his earlier Klan representation did not erase what he described as his advocacy for 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’ new attorneys disagree. Kacey Keeton, who represented Myers in federal habeas proceedings for years, argued that a poor Black defendant facing execution had little control over who represented 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.
His son, LeAndrew Hood, has also criticized the representation his father received.
“He had a lawyer that didn’t care about him,” Hood told CNN.
The dispute over Mays’ performance extends beyond his previous Klan work.
In his opening statement, Mays reportedly described Myers’ neighborhood as “the very pit of hell” 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.”
Hood said the language made it seem as though Myers’ own attorney was helping prosecutors portray him as less deserving of sympathy.
“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.”
Myers’ legal team filed a petition in August 2025 seeking to vacate his conviction. The Morgan County District Attorney’s Office opposed the request, arguing that Myers’ claims were untimely and without merit.
The judge rejected the request for a new trial Aug. 28.
For Myers, the fight is about more than clearing his name. After spending most of his adult life incarcerated, he says he wants the chance to experience a freedom he has largely known only through imagination.
“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.”
Even after decades in prison, Myers said he continues to believe he will eventually leave.
“What I’m gonna do?” he said. “I’m just gonna keep on believing that I’m gonna get out of here.”
And despite everything he has lost, he said the thing he misses most remains his family.
“I miss my family because I love, love, love my family,” Myers said.
