From Death Row to Writing
I committed a crime that I’m still paying for and for that I was given the ultimate penalty: a trip to death row. I eventually made it off after 20 years and I felt that that alone was something worth sharing. [...]
I committed a crime that I’m still paying for and for that I was given the ultimate penalty: a trip to death row. I eventually made it off after 20 years and I felt that that alone was something worth sharing. [...]
In 2000, I was 23 and struggling to find myself in a sea of death row madness. The madness wasn't just from the inmates there, and their stories, but from the situation itself. Basically, you grew or you stagnated. To grow [...]
Some people knew her as Arlene Mohammed, but her name was Mo and she brought people together. Mo was a strong black woman from another era, the one that followed Jim Crow but preceded Civil Rights, the one when black men [...]
The last great book I read made me cry and grind my teeth and pace my cell. It was written by a Harvard Law School graduate. It was Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy. With the best education in America, Mr. Stevenson [...]
Dear Prison, I’m writing this letter to thank you, to let you know how much I've come to appreciate you in my life. This might sound bizarre coming from a prisoner like me, but during our twelve-year relationship, I've learned [...]
In 1992, summer in Brooklyn, New York came early. We had “permanent beef” with a West Indian crew, which meant trying to terminate each other on sight. Gunshots sparked so often that Flatbush residents didn’t have to wait for the [...]
I kind of figured I was destined for prison. I'm dead serious. I was born a realist and knew that the life I was born into meant there was little to no hope for a prosperous future. When I was [...]
For the past two decades, up until April 27, 2015, I was living in solitary confinement at the only federal Supermax prison in America, ADX Florence in Colorado. I was housed and handled under the high-max custody level. No less than three [...]
It took twenty-two years of hard time in prison for me to get how deep gratitude is. I've found it to be a force in the universe spawned in the interior forests, rivers, and seas of a person's soul. It pours [...]
On April 4th, 2011 I was pulled over for a taillight being burnt out. No big deal, right? Usually no, however I was “methin’ around” (high on meth) at the time and my kids were with me in the vehicle. I [...]
From December 17,2003 to February 9, 2004, the prison guards and administration at this modem day plantation changed me, rearranged me, oppressed me, regressed me, repressed me, depressed me and undressed me in order to murder me. They had me bend [...]
I came up around people that lived the street life. And in that setting, you learn a set of skills that helps you survive. If you go to a jungle, you learn a set of skills. Likewise with a desert, the [...]