Alabama Death Row Inmate Rocky Myers Appeals After Lawyer Who Defended KKK Represented Him Robin Rocky Myers, a Black man sentenced to death in 1994, is appealing his conviction after discovering his court-appointed attorney had previously represented the Ku Klux Klan. His legal team filed an appeal on Oct. 8 after a lower court rejected his petition. Robin Rocky Myers, a Black man sentenced to death in 1994 for the murder of his White neighbor Ludie Mae Tucker, is fighting for freedom after discovering that the attorney originally appointed to defend him had previously represented the Ku Klux Klan. Court Rejects Petition to Overturn ConvictionHis legal team filed an appeal with the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals on Oct. 8, according to his attorneys, after a lower court rejected his petition to overturn his conviction. It is not clear when the appeals court will rule. The setback came after the Morgan County District Attorney filed a brief opposing the petition on Aug. 24. On Aug. 28, Morgan County Circuit Court Judge Charles Elliott agreed with the district attorney and denied the petition.Myers has spent 31 years in one cell at the St. Clair Correctional Facility, about 30 miles northeast of Birmingham. In a phone call from the prison recreation yard, Myers said he has been locked up in one cell for 31 years. He said he does not want to be inside anymore and when he gets out he does not want a house or an apartment. He wants a car where he can drive everywhere.He said with certainty, I want to be free. After learning his petition was denied again, Myers wrote in a letter that he knows he might live in prison until he dies. But he wrote that he hopes and prays for something more. Myers is a father of four.His son, LeAndrew Hood, told CNN that Myers had a lawyer who did not care about him. The case against Myers rested on circumstantial evidence and testimony from witnesses his lawyers called unreliable. There was no DNA evidence tying him to the scene, where Tucker was stabbed in the heart, according to court documents. One witness later recanted his testimony.A nearly all-White jury recommended life without parole, but the judge overrode them and imposed a death sentence. In 2025, with his execution approaching, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey granted him clemency, commuting his death sentence to life without parole. Ivey, a Republican and staunch supporter of the death penalty, said there was enough uncertainty surrounding Myers guilt that she could not allow the execution to go forward.Klan Ties Raise Questions About JusticeBut clemency did not resolve whether Alabama is prepared to let a man die in prison for a crime he maintains he did not commit. Among the men who publicly defended the Klan in the 1970s and 1980s was an attorney named John Edmond Mays. In 1987, the United Klans of America was ordered to pay 7 million dollars for the 1981 murder of Michael Donald, a Black teenager found hanging from a tree in Mobile, Alabama.Donald had been kidnapped, beaten and killed by klansmen in retaliation for the killing of a police officer, a crime he had no involvement in, and to intimidate Black jurors. Mays defended the Klan in that case, according to Richard Cohen, president of the Southern Poverty Law Center and one of the lawyers who represented Donald family.In court, Mays called Donald murder a gross and horrible atrocity but argued the organization itself should not be held responsible, according to a 1987 article in The Buffalo News. Robert Shelton, the United Klans of America imperial wizard, told the jury that White supremacy is a political goal, nothing more. In 1992, Mays became Myers lawyer. He was appointed by the Circuit Court of Morgan County.Mays declined to speak to CNN, but a friend and fellow lawyer, Richard Jaffe, passed along a statement. Mays said he took Rocky case because he hates the death penalty and felt he could provide effective representation. Jaffe, who said he has Mays permission to speak with CNN, believes Mays previous representation of the Klan does not diminish the effective and passionate advocacy he provided for Myers or other Black clients throughout his career.Legal Team Demands New Trial For InmateJaffe said it was not a popular thing for Mays to do in that small town, comparing it to To Kill a Mockingbird. He added that Rocky deserves a new trial, but not because of John. For decades, activists and Myers legal team have dug through the wreckage of his case. Kacey Keeton, one of Myers attorneys in his federal habeas proceedings, said they found not one isolated mistake but a trail of failures, including his representation.Keeton, who represented Myers from 2007 to 2025, said a Black person on trial for their life would not make that choice for that to be their lawyer. She said that when you are poor and Black in Alabama, you get what the state gives you, and that is what they gave Rocky Myers. When Myers was arrested and tried, America was only a generation removed from the formal end of Jim Crow.The ghosts of segregation still walked the streets, and the Ku Klux Klan, though diminished, had not disappeared. It was still rallying and preaching racial hatred. The legal fight continues as Myers waits for the appeals court to decide whether he will get another chance to prove his innocence.