Rocky Myers Seeks New Trial, Citing Innocence and Ku Klux Klan Ties of His Court-Appointed Defense Lawyer

Rocky’s legal team has now petitioned a Morgan County judge to overturn his conviction. The petition rests on two central claims: that Rocky is innocent, and that he was denied meaningful representation at trial because the lawyer appointed to defend him had close and longstanding ties to the Ku Klux Klan, a violent white supremacist organization responsible for decades of terror and murder across the South.

The filing presents extensive evidence about Rocky’s trial attorney, Decatur lawyer John Mays, and his public relationship with the Klan. According to the petition, Mays served as a featured speaker at least nine Klan rallies across Alabama, Florida, Virginia, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Tennessee between July 1977 and August 1981. The filing includes photographs appearing to show Mays speaking to a large crowd at a Klan rally in Gadsden, Alabama in 1977. Contemporary news reports described him as “Imperial Counsel” to the United Klans of America and noted that he spoke without a hood and “professed [his] allegiance openly.”

The United Klans of America was one of the largest and most violent Klan factions in the country. The group has been linked to the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, the 1965 killing of civil rights activist Viola Liuzzo, and the 1981 beating, stabbing, and strangling of Michael Donald in Mobile, widely described as the last lynching in America. According to archival reporting cited in the petition, Mays appeared alongside United Klans of America founder and Imperial Wizard Robert Shelton at a cross burning just months after Donald’s lynching, where he “exhorted Caucasians to band together in the face of an oncoming race war.”

The petition also documents Mays’s connection to The Fiery Cross, a publication produced by the United Klans of America. A July 2025 affidavit included with the filing states that Mays acknowledged writing at least one article for the publication at Shelton’s request. Although Mays denied being a formal Klan member, he told investigators in 2025 that the title he did hold was “Imperial Klonsel,” not “Imperial Counsel,” the title reported in contemporary news coverage.

According to Rocky’s legal team, Mays’s last documented association with the Klan came in 1987, when he represented the organization in a lawsuit brought by the mother of Michael Donald. The United Klans of America ultimately disbanded after losing that case.

Five years later, Mays was appointed to represent Rocky, a Black man accused of killing a white woman. Rocky’s petition includes handwritten notes from Mays’s trial-era files, including one describing a potential juror as someone who “hates niggers.” The filing also states that Mays used degrading language to describe his own client to the jury, referring to Rocky as a “crackhead” and a “criminal.”

A Morgan County judge has given the District Attorney until March 16 to respond to the petition.