Join Lee Habib on Our American Stories as he introduces you to an extraordinary man, Mitchell Rutledge, affectionately known as Big Mitch. Born into poverty in Georgia, illiterate for years, and spending decades in Alabama prisons for a crime he never denied, Big Mitch’s life seems worlds apart from Lee’s. Yet, a friendship forged through weekly phone calls reveals a profound story of spiritual transformation, human connection, and the power of redemption even in the most challenging circumstances. This powerful narrative of an unlikely friendship invites you to explore how faith can blossom anywhere.
In this moving series, “Sunday Mornings with Big Mitch,” we journey through Big Mitch’s early adulthood, exploring his struggles with difficult choices and the path that led him to prison. Hear his raw, honest account of surviving the streets, facing danger, and even an early, life-saving encounter that he attributes to divine intervention. This isn’t just a story about incarceration; it’s a testament to personal growth, an inspiring look at how one man found hope, purpose, and a deep spiritual connection while serving a life sentence. Prepare to be moved by a true story of resilience and finding light in the darkest places.
đź“– Read the Episode Transcript
00:02:03 Speaker 2: This is a free call from Mitchell Rutledge.
00:02:07 Speaker 3: An incarcerated individual.
00:02:09 Speaker 1: At the Alabama Department of Corrections. This call is not private. It will be recorded and may be monitored.
00:02:16 Speaker 2: To accept this free call, press one. To refuse this free call, press two. Thank you for using Securus. You may start the conversation now. It didn’t work anywhere. So my grandmother and my step-grandfather, they were up in age, so they didn’t want to put up with nobody like that because, you know, they’d come in and out of the house all the time of the night. So my grandmother and everybody told me, “Well, you got to get your own place. You don’t want to work anywhere. You don’t want to go to school.” And so at sixteen, going on seventeen, my Aunt Ty, which is my mother’s sister, went and paid the first rent and signed the lease for the apartment, and I took it from there. I paid eighty dollars a month. And so I was in the streets out there hustling, uh, stealing, selling drugs, selling fake drugs, and what have you, uh, to survive, to try to make it from one day ’til the next day. Try to do that, can. And, uh, while being on the streets back then, I ran into a lot of bad situations. I saw a lot of bad situations.
00:03:31 Speaker 1: Here’s Big Mitch talking about an early encounter with God that saved his life.
00:03:37 Speaker 2: I saw a lot of young kids out there like myself, young girls and young men that were on the streets like I was. They didn’t have any family and everything, and they found the best they could. They did the best they could to survive. And I can recall one night I had been selling drugs, fake drugs, to soldier boys. You know, when the Black military guys, like once they get drunk and they’re in the strip clubs and stuff like that, they’re already high, so they don’t really know what they’re buying. I’d let them taste the real drugs, let them sample the real drugs, and when I’d get ready to sell them something, I’d pass them the fake drugs. And so, to make a long story short, they caught up with me one night, uh, on H Street, at uh, a late-night haunt where they’d hang out and stuff like that. A lot of prostitutes were hanging out and everything. So I took off running, and I was coming up on Cedar Road about, I don’t know, about two o’clock in the morning, and, uh, a car pulled up. Uh, and it was at the same time that the killers were going on in Atlanta. And the guy pulled up on me at two o’clock in the morning and said,
00:05:08 Speaker 3: “You want a ride?”
00:05:10 Speaker 2: And I looked at him, and I had seen it was a red Thunderbird that used to hang out in the community, drive through, and we had seen it. We were fascinated with the car because, you know, it was a nice car. And he said, “What are you doing out at this time of night?” At this time, my mother was still living, you know, but I was about fifteen. So anyway, I got in the car, and as he’s driving, he asked me, he said, “Do you have to go home right now?” Well, when he said that, my hair stood up on my head, and so I got him to come off the main road. Something told me, “Mitch, tell him to turn off here.” So I said, “We’ll turn off here.” And when he got ready to turn off there, he was coming up with a pistol, and I guess we were going about thirty-five miles an hour. So I just jumped out of the car, but I was in. I had taken him off the main road and put him on a residential road where you had houses on both sides, and this was in—you had one minute—and this was in a predominant white neighborhood. So when I jumped out of the car, he stopped and tried to come back, but I went to screaming and hollering and yelling, and then lights came on. He took off. So my life was saved right there. I don’t know what he did to me, I don’t know, but God saved me right there. But there are a lot of things that happened in the street when I was out there.
00:06:40 Speaker 1: And here’s Big Mitch talking about the day he found out he was being charged with capital murder after killing a man with whom he’d committed a crime.
00:06:51 Speaker 2: They arrested me for capital murder, put me in county jail. So I get up there, and I didn’t—I didn’t even know what I was really charged with. You know, I had no idea that there was such a thing as capital murder. You know, like I said, I couldn’t read or write, and, uh, I said, “Uh, I’m in county jail.” I don’t have anybody to call. I was just, you know, I had no—I was twenty-one years old and, uh, going on twenty-two. So I’m in county jail. I’m in a bullpen, uh, crowded, you know, every—you know, so many individuals in there at that time. It’s that the area where we, uh, uh, showered in, the area that
00:07:37 Speaker 3: we ate in.
00:07:38 Speaker 2: We had our mattresses in there on the floor in the daytime. We would roll them up and get to walk, and what have you. So, uh, I’m walking around in there. So after about three days, the older Black guy—he was a trustee—he came to me. He said, “Hey, young man.” I said, “Yeah.” I said, “How are you doing?” He said, “Do you know that, uh, they’re charging you with capital murder?” I said, “What is that?” He said, “Uh, they’re talking about putting you in an electric chair.” I said, “Electric chair?” You know, and that’s—that’s—that’s kind of like, he said, “They’re going to try to kill you.” So that really just freaked me out right there. So I—I really didn’t know what to do. And, uh, like I said, I really didn’t have anybody to call. I had no lawyer, I had nothing. I’m just—so once you told me that, I just, you know, went to asking guys, co-defendants, and what have you, and didn’t get no answer. The only thing I know now is that guy told me that they were
00:08:46 Speaker 3: going to kill me, you know.
00:08:48 Speaker 1: Uh, here’s Big Mitch telling the story of how doing something very improbable in prison—putting your neck out on the line for a stranger—changed the trajectory of his entire life. And again, this is a story that happened in the very first week he was in prison.
00:09:09 Speaker 2: So in the bullpen, you’ve got a guy; he’s walking around. He’s about twenty years old, got his shirt off, really buff about it. He’d been in prison with folks,
00:09:21 Speaker 3: just like I have.
00:09:23 Speaker 2: And there was a young guy up under the table where we ate, because that’s where he had his bunk. He was out of the way, and he stayed up on it. He read all the time, and it was the Bible. I came to find that later was the Bible.
00:09:37 Speaker 1: And you’ve been listening to Mitch Rutledge, aka Big Mitch, telling his story. When we come back, you’ll hear about what happens next with that young guy and Big Mitch, here on Our American Stories, our Sunday Mornings with Big Mitch Second Installment. And we continue with Our American Stories and our Second Installment of Sunday Mornings with Big Mitch. When we last left off, there was a big guy, a muscular guy, bullying a little guy who’d crawled underneath the table on his mattress reading the Bible. Let’s pick up where we last left off with Big Mitch.
00:10:31 Speaker 2: He was nineteen or twenty-one, but we were different, and the older guy had been in prison about twenty years. He was trying to turn the young guy out into a female.
00:10:44 Speaker 3: What have you, you know what I’m talking about? In prison, we’ve got a rule:
00:10:49 Speaker 2: if you won’t fight for yourself, then can’t nobody fight for you. So I saw it going on. You know, the young guy was scared. But anyway, this particular day, I heard a voice, I heard something
00:11:05 Speaker 3: tell me.
00:11:05 Speaker 2: He said, “Stop that, Mitch,” and, like I said, normally, you don’t do that because I don’t know the guy. You know, he’s got to fight his own battles. And, uh, but it was in his head: “Stop that, Mitch, stop that!”
00:11:20 Speaker 3: So I told the dude.
00:11:22 Speaker 2: I said, “Hey, man,” I said, “Leave him alone.” I said, “Don’t blank blank with him no more.” So, uh, he said, “Well, uh, nobody cares anything about you being up here for murdering, and so on.” I said, “Well, I’m through with it.” I said, “Don’t—don’t—don’t interfere with him no more,” and I went to the other side of the bullpen. He went to the other side of the bullpen, but he didn’t mess with him no more. Thank God for that. Thank God for that. And, uh, so later on that day, that night, I got up under the table where the dude was, and, uh, I said, “Man, what are you reading over here?”
00:12:00 Speaker 3: He said, “I’m reading the Bible.” I said, “Well, how do you know it’s real?”
00:12:06 Speaker 2: And, uh, he said, “Well, you can.”
00:12:08 Speaker 3: “Read it now.”
00:12:08 Speaker 2: I’m going to show you how I know God was in this. I was so embarrassed about the fact that I couldn’t read
00:12:15 Speaker 3: and write that I wouldn’t tell anybody.
00:12:18 Speaker 2: But I told this guy, I said, “Man, I can’t read or write.” Man, I never did that before. So I said, “Man, how do you know God is real?” So he said, “Man, my mama said if you want to know God—if you want to know God is real—ask God to touch you.” So I never prayed in my life. So I got down on my knees. I waited. Everybody went to sleep that night, because at that time, getting on your knees and praying in public display in prison and so on, it was a sign of weakness, and it’s crazy, but that’s the way it was looked at. So I waited, everybody went to sleep, and I got on my knees. You know, I never prayed in my life. And, uh, I said, “God,” I remember the prayer just as plain as yesterday. That was forty-some years ago. I said, “God, this little dude up under the table said, uh, his mama said if you want to know God is real, ask God to touch you.” I said, “I’m asking you to touch me, God,” and I tell you, no word of a lie, I’d never—something came all over me. I never experienced anything like that in my life, and I had been into all kinds
00:13:34 Speaker 3: of drugs and everything from
00:13:36 Speaker 2: the bottom of my feet all the way to the top of my head. I’m serious. I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe it. So I stepped outside of the norm, rules of prison, and did something that was
00:13:52 Speaker 3: good and right.
00:13:55 Speaker 2: And I got rewarded by getting introduced to Jesus Christ, and my life hasn’t been the same since.
00:14:02 Speaker 1: Then here’s Big Mitch on the prayer he prayed after finding out he was facing the death penalty.
00:14:15 Speaker 2: Change was coming in there. But I’m still going back and forth with, you know what I mean? I’m coming in and out because I’m just getting to know God. So I got on my knees and I prayed. I said, “God, I haven’t got anybody in the world,” I said, “I’m by myself.” I said, “They’re talking about killing me.” I said, “Please send somebody in my life. They’re going to love me for who I am, and media for me, and I…”
00:14:47 Speaker 3: “…anything like that.”
00:14:49 Speaker 1: Here’s Big Mitch telling me about his first impressions of Death Row.
00:14:55 Speaker 2: Death Row was the last unit in the area back there, and it was in the summertime, and, like I said, I had heard about Holman. You know, back in the day, it was like considered the slaughterhouse.
00:15:10 Speaker 3: …it was because they called it the Bottom.
00:15:12 Speaker 2: It was the last stop, and, uh, for various reasons, you know. Uh, one reason they called it the Bottom was because it was at Monroeville, Alabama, and it was, uh, at the end of the Alabama state line. And another reason they called it the Bottom is because that’s where the hardest of the hardest went, the ones with the longest sentences, the ones that were hard-core convicts, or what have you. Uh, if you committed murder in another prison, you’d go to Holman and get locked up, or what have you. So when I’m walking up towards Death Row unit, I’m twenty-one years old, and I’m looking on—I’m looking at the guys. So, you know, out here when you’re coming in, everybody’s looking at you, and I’m looking at these guys. I tell you, these guys looked real, real hard. And there weren’t no young guys. They were older guys, you know. And, uh, they all—all of them—I’m talking about, you know, yeah, you can tell they’d been in all kinds of knife fights and everything. You know, like I said, in the summertime, and, uh, so I got through that. So I’m looking, so they were looking at me. I’m looking at them, you know, and, uh, I’m—I’m—I’m trying to look like I’m not afraid.
00:16:37 Speaker 3: But like I said, I…
00:16:39 Speaker 2: …was intimidated going into the area like that, because I never saw that aspect of it, you know, prison life. So I’m—I’m—I’m going on around by way of Death Row, and they put me in. Uh, they put me in, uh, they put me in my cell. So when they put me in the cell, uh, I looked around, and they locked the doors. So this is eight by five by seven. I’m twenty-one years old. I live in the greatest country in the world, and I’m on Death Row. So I had to use the bathroom. So I knocked on the wall next door. I told the guy, I said, “Hey, man,” I said, “Where is the bathroom, man?” And so he told me. He said, “Look in the back of—” He said, “In the back of the cell, you see that cement brick running from the wall?”
00:17:30 Speaker 3: I said, “Yeah.”
00:17:31 Speaker 2: He said, “It’s a small hole in the middle of the cement brick.”
00:17:35 Speaker 3: He said, “That’s the bathroom. That’s the commode.”
00:17:38 Speaker 2: I said, “What?” And I looked, and that’s where it was, you know.
00:17:43 Speaker 3: …a little small hole in the cement brick.
00:17:46 Speaker 1: And I said, “Lord, now, Jesus!” Here’s Big Mitch telling me about making friends in prison and setting boundaries in prison, and asking God to heal his addiction and give him direction.
00:18:01 Speaker 2: I had a cellmate next door to me on his side. So they came around with the general, so I really didn’t feel like eating, so I asked my next-door neighbor, “Hey, man, you want this tray?”
00:18:21 Speaker 3: He said, “Yeah.”
00:18:22 Speaker 2: And so, he called me Big Mitch.
00:18:26 Speaker 1: And you’ve been listening to Big Mitch tell the story of his first few days in prison, and my goodness, that encounter with that young guy—him hearing a voice and wanting to protect him in a place where you don’t put your neck out for anybody. And there’s that kid reading the Bible, and Mitch, for the first time in his life, confesses that he’s never read the Bible. He can’t, because he’s illiterate. He’d never told anyone that before. And then that prayer he prayed: he wanted to know if God was real, and he waited until everyone was asleep before he prayed that prayer. And then we learned about that first walk down Death Row: a twenty-one-year-old with all the seasoned old-timers, guys who’d done heinous things. There he is meeting Swamp Bear and the cast of characters you’ll get to meet as we continue this series, more with Sunday Mornings with Big Mitch, our second conversation here on Our American Stories. And we continue with Our American Stories and our Second Installment of Sunday Mornings with Big Mitch. We’d last left off with Mitch talking about the bathroom situation in his cell on Death Row. Now we’re about to hear about the food situation and so much more.
00:19:57 Speaker 2: I got in the cell, and I’m looking around, so I’m sitting down. I can’t believe it, and, uh, I’m trying to put everything up. The next morning, I didn’t feel like eating again, so I gave a tray to him again. So at lunchtime, when the guys would bring the trays around, he didn’t even wait ’til it got in my door. He just automatically told the man, “Say, hey, give me that tray,” and so, you know, I had to put a
00:20:22 Speaker 3: stop to that.
00:20:23 Speaker 2: So I—so I hit on the wall, and I told him, I said, “Hey, Swamp Bear,” I said, “Uh, Swamp…”
00:20:30 Speaker 3: He said, “Yeah?”
00:20:30 Speaker 2: I said, “Listen, don’t ask for my tray or tell the man to put my tray in your door.” And I said, “I’m telling you…”
00:20:40 Speaker 3: “…on my behalf.”
00:20:41 Speaker 2: “I didn’t mean, I said, ‘No,’ I’m just saying, you know, ‘Don’t—don’t—don’t take my food.'” I said, “I had to stop him because if I wouldn’t have stopped him, it would have led to something else.” So, uh, I got up there, I got to asking the guys what’s going on and trying to figure my way out right now, because I’ve been in prison before, but I’ve never been in a prison like
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