Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee

At the 1968 Democratic National Convention, Radney vocally supported Ted Kennedy for president. Radney went on a national TV program and claimed the South could get behind a candidate like Ted Kennedy, a statement that offended segregation-loving Southerners. The reaction to Radney’s statement was swift and violent. Radney, his wife, and his children became the targets of a campaign of harassment and attacks on his home and property. Radney took the threats seriously. He announced that he would not run for reelection or any other political office upon completion of his term as a state senator. The threats subsided.

Despite this public statement and his wife’s objections, Radney decided to run for Alabama lieutenant governor in 1970 as a Democrat. He faced many barriers to winning. He was no civil rights activist, but his support for civil rights and integration in his personal life and his public statements doomed him. The demographic reality was that whites, many of them opposed to integration, still outnumbered African Americans in the party. He lost the race and gave up his political aspirations.

By the 1970s, Radney had transformed himself into “Big Tom,” a good old boy and lawyer with flashy clothes and law offices that grew bigger and bigger as he put his social skills to work to win cases. People noticed his success and credited the financial part of it to the many lawsuits Radney waged on behalf of Willie Maxwell. In fact, while Radney called his booming practice the Zoo, the community called his law offices the Maxwell House. His opponents did not care for him, but they secured his services if they got into the right kind of trouble. When Willie Maxwell's murderer needed a lawyer, naturally, his family chose Big Tom.

The case promised to be a blockbuster. The district attorney was an experienced lawyer named Tom Young, who had opposed from Tom Radney many times. Robert Burns’s defense also promised to be the source of much drama. Burns pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, a plea that was still allowed in Alabama during the 1970s but has since fallen out of favor because it was so subject to abuse.

Radney decided to paint Willie Maxwell as a terrifying voodoo priest who drove Burns, Shirley Ellington’s uncle, insane. Young’s goal was to ensure the confessions made it into the record alongside Burns’s prior criminal record of shoplifting, assault, and the suspicion that he’d killed before. The case came to trial in September and received heavy, sensationalized coverage.

The trial opened on September 26, 1977, and it was just as dramatic as expected. Radney and Young battled over every issue, including whether cameras should be allowed in (they were not), the make-up of the jury, Burns’s prior criminal record, and the question of the confessions. In the end Radney got almost everything he wanted. Once the trial began, Radney used witnesses that Young called to cast Maxwell as a voodoo priest and Robert Burns as a hero driven to murder by Maxwell’s actions. Young lost almost every objection. After a long day of listening to constant objections and emotional arguments, Judge James Avary dismissed the jury, which was sequestered in a local motel for the night.

The next day of the trial’s biggest development was the testimony of Jimmy Burns, a son of Ophelia Burns. He testified that he had learned at Shirley Ellington’s wake that Willie Maxwell tried to secure the help of Alfonzo Murphy, a man from nearby Eclectic, to murder Shirley. When Murphy testified later, the theory of the case shifted for everyone. All talk of voodoo ceased, and “[e]vil acts that for seven years had seemed supernatural now suddenly seemed all too human” (133). The testimony of ABI agent James Hebbett, who had worked on the James Hicks investigation, corroborated Murphy’s testimony. Radney and Young rested their cases that afternoon, with each leaning into their central points. Radney argued Burns had been driven to murder by the victim, while Young argued that what Burns had done was murder regardless of the victim’s actions.

The jury returned a verdict of not guilty by reason of temporary insanity. Cep contends that this outcome reflected a primitive Southern “belief in the supernatural and belief in vigilante justice” (145). The law had failed the community in allowing Willie Maxwell to go unpunished, so the jury had been forced to deliver what justice they could by letting Burns walk free. Burns’s acquittal was legally sanctioned retribution. The staff at Bryce Hospital evaluated Burns, and he was free just weeks later. Over time the case files and people’s memories and testimony blurred and shifted. No one wanted to remember the case.