In Just Mercy, Stevenson's first book, he recounts a situation he encountered early in his career.  It was during his fourth year with the SPDC that the young lawyer became embroiled in a real-life To Kill a Mockingbird-esque case that would teach him truths so startling and profound he would never forget them.  While visiting a prison in Alabama—a state that had a large incarcerated population and no public defender system, meaning many of its death row inmates had no legal representation at all—Stevenson met Walter McMillian, a middle-aged African-American man from, ironically enough, Monroe County, Alabama.  Like the fictional Tom Robinson, McMillian was accused of harming a young white woman.  In McMillian's case, it was a murder charge—Ronda Morrison, an 18-year-old store clerk, had been shot during what appeared to be a robbery at her place of employment.  While Morrison upheld an unblemished reputation, McMillian's was undeniably spotty.  Though married, he was a notorious ladies' man (who had just ended a troublesome relationship with his white, married lover), who was also rumored to be part of the "Dixie mafia" and a drug dealer.  Still, McMillian emphatically maintained his innocence in Morrison's killing.  Although he had an alibi for the night the crime was committed, one verified by a dozen people, police pursued the matter, which eventually landed McMillian on death row.