Every Sunday, Our American Stories host Lee Habeeb speaks with Mitchel “Big Mitch” Rutledge, who has spent more than forty years serving a life sentence in Alabama. Each call traces the shape of faith, regret, and forgiveness inside a place built for punishment.
When Mitch first arrived on death row, he couldn’t read or write. He was given a Bible but had no way to understand it on his own. Other inmates began teaching him, one word at a time, until the stories he learned became a kind of lifeline. Then Time magazine ran a cruel story about him, and the ridicule that followed cut deep. But from that same article came a letter from Sister Lillian, a woman who saw past the headlines. Her kindness offered Mitch a sense of direction and dignity that prison had nearly taken away.
📖 Read the Episode Transcript
Speaker 1: This is Lee Habib, and this is our American stories. His next story is about a friend of mine. We’re close in age, but have little else in common. Mitchell Rutledge aka Big Mitch, was born black and poor in Georgia. I was born kind of brown and middle class in New Jersey. He never met his father. I still talk to my ninety four year old father every week. He dropped out of high school in his early teens and was illiterate into his early twenties. I was surrounded by books growing up and finished graduate school in my early thirties. Big Mitch spent the last forty four years of his life in Alabama prisons for killing a man. But this is not a story about an innocent man sentenced to prison for a crime he didn’t commit. Big Mitch never denied the crime or made excuses for it. This is the story of my friend’s spiritual transformation while serving his life sentence. It’s also about a friendship. Only God could have engineered a friendship that began with a single Sunday morning call. Through these weekly conversations, I hope you come to know and love him as much as I do. Welcome to Sunday Mornings with Big Mitch. Here’s episode three, My Conversation on January twenty eighth, twenty twenty four, where Mitch recounts first finding out about his charges, not understanding them, and having no one to call for help.
00:01:45
Speaker 2: This is a free call from an.
00:01:50
Speaker 1: Incarcerated individual at Alabama Department of Corrections.
00:01:54
Speaker 2: To accept this pre call press one to refuse this pre call press too. Thank you for using It’s curious.
00:02:01
Speaker 3: You may start the conversation. Now. I had just got out of prison, so I hadn’t been out for eight months. So I telled the captain I was drawn, I was high, I was on cocaine and so on and so on, and I committed a murder, so saying that it’s just like released me at least some stress off me. Anyway, So he woke with murder and robber. So uh. Later the next day they came back, they said, well, we want to hear everything on record, so that like I said, you know, I didn’t know anything about a lawyer. I didn’t know anything about the reading and writing, and so I couldn’t read and write. So he was reading something to me, but be honest, I couldn’t comprehend what he was reading and Uh. At that time, I couldn’t even realize to spell my last name correctly. But it’s true. I was really illiterated. So I signed over all the rights and I confessed, so they got everything on paper. He took me back upstairs, and I didn’t have anybody to call. I gonna try to call my aunt to an eventually I need to call him, but I didn’t have couldn’t call my grandmother because I don’t think my grandmother had a telephone.
00:03:27
Speaker 1: Not quite understanding what the electric chair was and what being on death row actually meant, Mitch was longing for help.
00:03:37
Speaker 3: I’d been up there about a week and black officer came up. He said, hey, young man, he said, come here. I went up to him and he said, do you know he talking about putting you in an electric chair? And at that time, I never I had no idea what the electored chair were.
00:03:56
Speaker 2: You know, I said, elmer chair? I said, he said, man, he tell my kid that you’re young man. And when he told me that, I went around in the bull pain and where everywhere it was, I was acting, guy, how to buy it?
00:04:09
Speaker 3: Man? What does he left the chair? What is it you do? And because I had no idea that it was his delta.
00:04:17
Speaker 1: Big Mitch’s life was upside down. He had that Bible, but he couldn’t read it. He learned to start memorizing words he told me, and the guys around him started reading words to him and for him.
00:04:32
Speaker 3: I got me a Bible, but I can’t read, so I said, man, I need to learn how to read so I could read the Bible. So I got on the knees. Thank God to help me to learn how to read, so I could read the Bible. I had a good memory. So they would let us go out to the law library every week. The whole kid can go out. But that once they went to the law light Burier, that was the time to air differences. You know, you go out there and fight, make gamble. You know, most of them did do legal work. That gave them an opportunity to get out to sell the social line with each other, because normally you by yourself all the time, but just the only time that you can mingle with each other, and we really just more people each other anyway. But they didn’t have enough time to really try to get everybody out there like this, so they just send the whole tier out there, who want to go? And the fourteen sails, So everybody went to get out the sale. Because we stayed out there five or six hours. You have one minute left. So once I got out there, you asked the more guys that was, you know, into the Bible, and I told him at that time right there, you know, I let the guys know, hey, many I can’t read. So so the guys started to like read certain words and stuff. I’m watching it and I’m learning it. And then I started to like, once I’m watching TV, I started looking at it from mercers and stuff, like they had taken words from that. Like I said, good memory. So I’m loared, I’m cousing brain. I still ain’t got nobody come to see me. St you didn’t got no better to do that in plund me.
00:06:14
Speaker 1: And you’ve been listening to Mitchell Rutledge, whom I affectionately call Big Mitch and who has become a close friend. But boy, you’re hearing about the early stages of his prison life. And he had indeed just taken the life of another human being. And as you’ll hear in coming segments and episodes, he had deep regrets, bad dreams about this and the kind of man he was that could do such a thing, had tremendous remorse, a tremendous guilt over it, and had a true conscience, which in the end was so much a part of his humanity. He didn’t make excuses for this crime, as I said earlier and we’ll say again and again, and didn’t ever claim his innocence or not getting his due process or legal rights. Attend to all of those things happen when we come back more of the rest of the story of Big Mitch’s early days in prison, knowing that he was about to be on death row in his early twenties. This is Our American Stories, Lee Hubib here, and I’d like to encourage you to subscribe to Our American Stories on Apple Podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, Spotify, or wherever you get our podcasts. Any story you missed or want to hear again can be found there daily again. Please subscribe to the Our American Stories podcast on Apple Podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, or anywhere you get your podcasts. It helps us keep these great American stories coming. And we continue with our American Stories and Sunday Mornings with Big Mitch our third episode and we talk now about an article in Time magazine about Big Mitch that changed his life, bringing him friends he could have never imagined, friends he’d never known, friends he’d never had.
00:08:30
Speaker 3: Time magazine was doing articles in each state, web d and death city in I’m sure how God worked in my life.
00:08:38
Speaker 2: Now, when they get.
00:08:40
Speaker 3: To the state Alabama, the Southern Partty Law Center, they contacted them and asked them to recommend a road inmate to be interviewed with this interview on death road in the state Alabama. Now, at this time you had we more intellectual, well known individuals on death row then myself. But then his bosket, which is my attorney. He represented the Southern father of the Law Center represented about twenty five guys on death row. But anyway, he picked me out of all the folks in the world, he picked me, and I told him yes, So I went out there, we talked and everything, and so the article came out. Jane, we’re twenty third, nineteen eighty one, and at the time magazine said that the death row is at the same side in the state of Alabama where we have a twenty three year old and Mitchell Religion IQ eighty nine rat above retardation. He did committed murder individuals like him, a gun shooting young talk who cares forget about him, let him sit. It’s true. In his eight by five in Alabama death Row, that’s pretty much with Dollier said. You know, guys on death row, they would make a card of the man you read above, reparding you know you. I Q eight it, you know. So at that time I had found Jesus so and I had more confidence in myself, and I felt better about myself, So I really didn’t that that bothered me.
00:10:26
Speaker 1: The Time Magazine article changed many things for Big Mitch, and the biggest change of all was his first real encounter with a stranger who would end up loving him, and that began with the first letter he received from Sister Lillian.
00:10:44
Speaker 3: About a week later, Time Magazine sent me a lot of with their monogram on me, and I thought it was just something about art of the magazine. But it was a letter in there from a sister Lillian Oliver from Santa Monica, California, amaca with hard community, and when I started living there, I couldn’t read it. So what I did I opened up the hive loop. I gave the letter to walk. At this time we didn’t have the chicken walk over the front of the sales. So I said, well, reading this from me man, So he began to read it from me, and as he read it, he said, my name is sister Lulie and Oliver. I’m from the Mica with hard community, and God sent me in your life. You’re not alone anymore. So she was reading especially, Ain’t that amazing? So I had been tinkling around with writing from watching the commercials and stuff, writing stuff. Now I had a good memory. I messed around and uh I had copy words town, so I knew what thank you meant from guys telling me what it is for me saying you know what have you on TV? I knew what it was. I remember what it was. So what I did I couldn’t write cursing now the only could print, and I had a bad, ugly print. But I sat down and uh I got me an im aloaf and I comfit the address and put my address on the air and I put thank you and uh trying my name send it back out and that we started to h she’s sending me a like alphabets and stuff like that, And then uh I got the Bible open, and I’m getting words out of the Bible, because because if a God read something to me, I can remember what the word pretty much is. But I see, so I began to just do the best again to correspond back with her by using like her letters. She would print it to me, and some of the words that you used in there once it got read, and I used those same words back in the letter to her in a sense. And eventually she’s sitting on her phone number. So we were being to talk and she was I ain’t your God. She was God’s sin, if you can recall, But I told you how to kind of kill. And I asked the little dude up on the table with God real and he told me she man, you know, my mama says, you want no God, really ask God to touch you. So I pray God touch me. And after that, if you can recall, I told you that I asked God to send somebody in my life to be there for me. Well, that’s with her.
00:13:33
Speaker 1: So the question still remained, how did Big Mitch manage his own life, manage his own conscience knowing he’s taking the life of another man.
00:13:44
Speaker 3: I lean on God, lean on GE’s crash and keep faith alive, keep open eyes, and know that at the end or the day, regardless, we’ll go on. And God in charge. He’s Christ and one that I pray. And uh, that’s why I’m still here. I’m starting on my forty four year I started h January speaker one on forty four years. So a lot of guys in there say, well, man, how you do that? Man? To stay positive and stay upbeat and still have your right mind. So they try to give me a lot of accurate ads. R give me a lot of credit. But I tell them, I said, jeez, Christ, and I’m not joking. I’m I’m living witness. It’s Christ Esus that still have me here and not angry and bitter and and what have you. And then I also tell the individual’s accountability, responsibility and owning up to the wrong you d you know, and you go out, no God to forgive me, you know. So God forgave myself and other people just gave me. But that’s the most important thing. So that’s one of the reasons I tell him. I said, well, man, I’m not better than angry. I’m not angry with design, I ain’t ready with anyone owning up to what I did. You know, a lot of people in priers ain’t gonna do that.
00:15:08
Speaker 2: You know.
00:15:09
Speaker 3: So I’m just a unique cage right there, and I thank God for that, and it gives me a lot of freedom. I’m a lot more frill than a lot of dudes that dark gill can’t claim it can’t take responsibility of good, it ain’t own up to it. And so that gives me a lot more freedom to be able to. I ain’t mad with nobody, but I tell guys that all the time. You know, I got a pH d in prisonology. I tell him that all the time, as long as happens after So I got a doctorate in psychology for being institutionalized learned by experience. But that’s all going on with me. I’m gonna let you go to church and I talk for you thirst.
00:15:53
Speaker 1: I look forward to it.
00:15:54
Speaker 3: Let you go go, Ravens. Yeah, okay, all right now, think yeah, lovelass.
00:16:03
Speaker 1: And you’ve been listening to Mitchell Rutledge, aka Big Mitch, And from now on that’s all I’m gonna call him this Big Mitch twenty three years old. And there it is, that article in Time magazine the death penalty had just been reinstated, and Time magazine went around the country interviewing and or learning about various inmates, and my goodness, the words they wrote about Mitch IQ of eighty eight or eighty nine, just slightly above the IQ of a retarded person in pardon for using that phrase that’s time’s not mine. Let him stew it is eight x five in Alabama. They also had a line that said something like some people aren’t worth killing. They talked about how much money it would cost on appeal to kill him. Everyone in prison made fun of him, but this Jesus experience had changed his life. And then he got that angel that he’d been praying for, and that was Sister Lilian. God sent me in your life. She wrote, you are not alone, my goodness, Sister Lily, and eventually sent her phone number, and she was indeed an angel sent from God. Big Mitch said, I prayed God would touch me, and I asked God to send me somebody. Big Mitch said, how did he handle taking the life of another man. I leaned on God. I gave it to God.
00:17:25
Speaker 3: How do you do it?
00:17:26
Speaker 1: How do you stay positive? He said, Well, I give credit to Jesus first, but I emphasize accountability, personal responsibility, and owning up to what you did. I am not angry. In fact, I’m free because of Jesus and because I owned up. I have a doctorate in being institutionalized. The story of Big Mitch episode three. Here on our American Stories
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