November 2, 2025 • 30 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, every Sunday, Our American Stories host Lee Habeeb speaks with Mitchel Rutledge, an inmate serving life in Alabama, over the phone about life, faith, and redemption behind bars. This is the second installment of our ongoing series with him.
Support the show (https://www.ouramericanstories.com/donate)
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib, and this is our American stories.
This 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
(00:34):
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
(00:56):
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
(01:16):
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 one,
my conversation on January fourteenth, twenty twenty four, where I
(01:37):
learned where Big Mitch grew up and how. This is
our second conversation on January twenty first, twenty twenty four,
which just happened to be my birthday. Today. We start
off with Big Mitch talking about his early adulthood and
his struggle to make good choices. Let's take much.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
This is a free call from Vitual Ruts.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
An incarcerated individual.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
At Alabama Department of Corrections. This call is not private,
It will be recorded and maybe monitored.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
To accept this pree call, press one to refuse this
pre call, Press two. Thank you for using securis. You
may start the conversation now. It didn't work anywhere. So
my grandmother and my step grandfather, they was up in age,
so they didn't want to put up with nobody like
that because you know, they come in and out of
(02:36):
the house all the time of the night. So my
grandmother and everybody told me said, 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 tie, which is my mother's
sofa sheet, went and paid the first rant and signed
and leached for the apartment and I tuk it from there.
(02:58):
I pay an age of dollars a month. And so
I was in the streets out there hustling, UH, stealing,
setting drugs, setting fake drugs and what have you, and
UH to survive, try to make it from one day
till the next day. Try to do that, ken and UH.
(03:22):
While being on the streets back then, I run into
a lot of bad situations. I though a lot of
bad situations.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
He was Big mich talking about an early encounter with God.
Let's saved his life.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
I saw a lot of young young kids out there
like myself, young girls and young men's that was on
the streets like I wor got in the family and everything,
and they fand the best they could. They did the
best they could to survive. And I can recall one
night I had been selling drugs to fake drugs to
(04:03):
soldier boys. You know when the black black military guys,
like once they get drunk and they're in the strip
clubs and stuff like that, they already high, so they
don't really know what they're buying. I I let them
tage still real drugs, let them sample the real drugs,
and when I get ready to sell them something, I
(04:23):
pass them to fake drugs and so make a long
story shop. They caught up with me one night uh
on h Street at uh late night hunt where they
hang out at and stuff like that. Well, our of
prostitutes was a lot of prostitutes was hanging out and everything.
So I took off running and I uh coming up
(04:49):
on see the road about I don't know about at
two o'clock in the morning, and uh it was a
car pull up. Uh. And it's the same time that
the killers was going on at Atlanta. And the guy
pulled up on Hell at two o'clock in the morning
and said.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
You won't ride.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
And I looked at him, and I had saw it
was a red Thunderbird that used to hang out in
the community drive through and we had saw it. We
were fascinated with the car because you know, he was
a nice car. And he said, what you doing out
this time and night? At this time my mother was
still living, you know, but about fifteen. So anyway, I
get in the car and as he's driving, he asked me,
(05:34):
he said, do you have to go home right now. Well,
when he said that, man teller stood up on my
head and so I get him to come off the
main road. Some tell me, said, 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
(05:56):
was coming up with a pistol, and I guess we're
going about thirty five miles an hour. So I just
jumped out the car, but I was in. I had
took 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
(06:19):
out of the car, he stopped and tried to come back,
but I went to streaming and hollering and yell and
then life came on. He took off. So my life
was saving red there. I don't know what he did
to me, I don't know, but so God saving mer
Red there. But it's a lot of things that happened
in the street when I was out there.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
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.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
They arrested me from gambit of murder, put me in
and got of jail. So I get up there and
I didn't I didn't even know what I was really
charge with. You know, I had no idea that it
was such thing as Captain Mura. You know, like I said,
I couldn't read write and uh, I said, Uh, I'm
(07:13):
in a kind of jail. I don't have anybody in
the call. I was just you know, I had no
I was twenty one years old and uh going on
twenty two and uh so many kind of 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 shy in the area that.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
We ate in.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
We had our mattresses in there on the floor in
the daytime. We would roll them up and give the
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 tailor, he come to me. He said, hey,
young man. I said, yeah, I said, how you doing?
He said, do you know that uh they're telling you
(08:02):
with Captain murder? I said, what is that? He said, Uh,
they're talking about putting you in an elected chair. I said,
elected chair, you know, and that's that's that's kind of
like said, they're gonna try to kill you. So that
really just freaked out right there. So I I really
(08:24):
didn't know what to do. And uh, like I said,
I really didn't have anybody in the call. I had
no lawyer, I had nothing. I'm just so once you
tell me at I just you know, go to asking guys,
coursemens and what have you, and didn't get no answer.
The other thing I know now is that guy told
(08:45):
me that they was.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
Gonna kill me. You know.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
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, change the trajectory of his
entire life. And again, this is a story that happened
in the very first week he was in prison.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
So when the bull pining, you got a guy he's
walking around, he's about twenty years old, got his shirt off,
real much about it. He'd been in prison with folks.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
Just like I have.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
And it was a young guy up under the table
where we eat, because that's where he had his bankers
at he was out of the weed and he stayed
up on it. That read all the time, and it
was the Bible. I come to find that later was
the Bible.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
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
(10:12):
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 crawled underneath the
table on his mattress reading the Bible. Let's pick up
when we last left off with Big Mitch.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
He was nineteen out of twenty one, but we was
different and the older guy had been a prison about
twenty years old. He was trying to turn the young
guy out into a female.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
What hand you you know what I'm talking about? And prison,
we gotta rule.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
If you won't fight for yourself, Dan, 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.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
Tell me.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
He said, stop that, mitch, and like I said, nominally,
you don't do that because I don't know the guy.
You know, he got to fight his own balloce and
uh but it was off his head. Stop that mitche
stopped that.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
So I told the dude.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
I said, hey, man, I said, leave me alone. I said,
don't blank blank with him no more. So uh he said, well, uh,
don't nobody care nothing about you being up here for
murdering so on. I said, well, I'm through with it.
I said, don't don't don't in with him no more,
and I went to the other side of the bullpen.
(11:43):
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 you
reading over here?
Speaker 3 (12:00):
He said, I'm reading the Bible. I said, I said, well,
how you know is real?
Speaker 2 (12:06):
And uh he said, well you can.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
Read it now.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
I'm gonna show you how I know God was in this.
I was so embarrassed about the fact that I couldn't read.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
And write that. I wouldn't tell nobody.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
But I told this guy, I said, man, I can't
read the right Man, I never did that before. So
I said, man, how you know God real? So he said, man,
my mama said, if you want to know God, if
you want to know God is real, asked God to
touch you. So I never prayed in my life. So
(12:41):
I got down on my knees where I waited. Everybody
went to sleep that night, because at that time, getting
on your knees and praying in public display and prisoness
and so on, it was a sign of weakness and
it's crazy, but that's the way you looked at So
I waited, everybody went to sleep, and I got on
(13:01):
my knees. You know, I never prayed him life. And uh,
I said God, I remember the prayer jes as playing
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 know God, it's really had
God to touch you. I said, said, I'm asking you
(13:22):
to touch me God, And I tell you no word
or lie. I never something came all over me. I
never experiened nothing like that in my life, and I
had been a whole kind.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
Of drugs and everything from.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
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 Prism and did something that was.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
Good and right.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
And I got rewarded by getting introduced to Jesus Christ.
And my life ain't been the same chesse.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Then here's Big Mitch on the prayer he prayed after
fighting out he was facing the death penalty, the.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
Change 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 jess getting to know God. So
I got on the knee and I prayed. I said, God,
I ain't got nobody in the world, I said, I'm
by myself. I said, they talking about kidding me. I said,
(14:36):
please send somebody in my life. They're gonna love me
so who I am, and media for me and I.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
Anything like that.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
Here's Big Mitch telling me about his first impressions of
Death Row.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Death Row was the last unit and the area back there,
and it was in the summer time, and like I said,
I have heard about Holman. You know, back in the day,
it was like considered the slaughter.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
I was cause they called it the bottom.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
It was the last stop, and uh for various reasons,
you know. Uh. One reason it called the bottom because
it was at Mo, Alabama and it was uh at
the end of Alabama state line. And another reason they
called it the bottom is because that's where the hardest
(15:33):
o the hardest went, the one with the longest sentence,
the ones that hard cold come mix or what have you. Uh,
if you committed murder and another praison, you'll go to
hole and locker up or what have 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.
(15:54):
So you know, out here when you're coming in, everybody
looking at you, and I'm looking at these guys. I
tell you, these guys looked at real, real hard. And
there wasn't no young guys. He was older guys, you know,
And uh, they asked God, all them I'm talking about,
(16:15):
you know, Yeah, you can tell they hain't been in
all kind of nine fights and everything. You know, Like
I said in the summer time and uh, so I
get through that. So I'm looking so they was looking
at me. I'm looking at them, you know, and uh,
I'm I'm I'm I'm trying to look like I'm not afraid.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
But like I said, I.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
Was intimidated going into the livey 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 the way
the death row, and they put me in. Uh, they
put me in, uh put me in my cell. So
when they put me in the cell, uh, I look
around and locked the doors. So this eight by five seven.
(17:03):
I'm twenty one years old. I live in the greatest
country in the world and I'm over there throw so
I have to use the bathroom. So I knock on
the wall next door. I tell the guy, I say, hey, man,
I said, where is the bathroom? Man? And so he
told me. He said, look in the back of he said,
(17:26):
in the back of the said you see him this
seamen brick running from the wall.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
I said, yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
He said, it's a small hole in the middle of
the seament brick.
Speaker 3 (17:35):
He said, that's the bathroom. That's the card.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
I said, what And I look and that's where it was,
you know.
Speaker 3 (17:43):
A little small hole in the cement break.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
And I said, Lord, now, cheese, 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 detection.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
I would have gotten next go to me on his side.
So they came around with the general, so I really
didn't feel like he so I actually got next go
as a man, you won't the trade, he said, yeah,
And they called him swamp there. He really name with
all that you use it. And uh so, uh he said,
he called me swamp there.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
I said, okay.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
As a way, he called me a big Mitch.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
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
(18:47):
in his life, confesses that he's never read the Bible.
He can't because he's a literate. He'd never told anyone
that before. And then that prayer he prayed, he wanted
to know if God was real, and he went till
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,
(19:10):
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,
(19:38):
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.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
I got in to see you 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 get a trade
to him again. So at lunchtime when the guys who
bring the trades around, he didn't even wait till it
get in my door. He just automatically told the man, say, hey,
(20:19):
give me that trade, and so you know, I had
to put a.
Speaker 3 (20:22):
Stop of that.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
So I so I hit on the wall and I
told him, I said, hey, swamp back, I said, a swamp.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
He said yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
I said, listen, don't ask for my trade or tell
the man to put my tree in your door. And
I said, I tell you.
Speaker 3 (20:40):
On my band.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
I ain't mean I said no, I'm just saying, you know,
don't don't don't take my food. Said. I had to
stop him because if I wouldn't have stopped him, it
would have led to something else. So, uh, I get
up there, I got a 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
(21:03):
in a prison like this, and this is a different
thing right here. So what I did, I just got
on my knees right there inside that say couldn't nobody
see me? And I just prayed and I asked because
I was smoking cigarettes and I know I didn't have
no way to get no more cigarettes because when nobody
(21:26):
gonna send me no money. And I knew from being
in prison before that you don't walk around and ask
nobody for nothing, because you ask guys for cigarettes and
stuff like that, and then guys don't want something from you.
So I asked God to take the taste a cigarette
out of my mouth, to ask God to protect.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
Me and know, just praise.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
So when I got through praying, I got up, and
so I'm sitting around and I'm listening. So I hear
guy's name. I hear Jumper, beell here swamp bell, hear
black Jack, I hear I hear being him, and hear wolf.
You know, I'm hearing all these names and trying to
(22:07):
put a phase with him. And eventually all these guys
became my friends as time went on.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
And here is Big Mitch on his illiteracy and pleading
with anyone who listened about asking for God's help before
it's too late.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
I couldn't read and write. I was illiterate, and uh.
As I got older and began to grow and development
and a whole different area and being able to make
a transition in my life from an insecure, negative, uneducated
(22:49):
and the visualt more self educated, self esteem and what
have you.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
I began to look back.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
On my life and I saw the fact that I
was so ashamed of me not being able to read
and write. It stopped me from really seeking.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
Help in that area.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
And early on in life, when you're not able to
read and write, you know, when I was coming up,
going six or four years old, we was called dummies.
But anyway, when I got old enough and so I
just I just said, well, it wasn't no use to
going to school. And that's one of the reason I
to go to school. However, it hinders me later in
(23:35):
life too, because that was I had jobs where people's
originally trying to help me. I'm not gonna sit there
and say that didn't anyone trying to help me. I
had individuals gave me jobs and everything. But one of
the jobs I had was one time at the Bard's
Club cleaning up, cutting grass.
Speaker 3 (23:54):
Painting or what have you?
Speaker 2 (23:56):
Lined in the baseball field football field for ak Aim
that day or what have you. But he would leading
notes in the morning because I would open up the
boy's club. So when I get there, he have a
note and I couldn't read. So I used to call
my auntie and she said, boy, you need to learn
(24:16):
how to read and write.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
You know.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
It's just so difficult that I had to leave that job.
But if I would have just talked to my supervisor,
told him that I couldn't read it.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
Write and he would have helped me. He would have
worked with me.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
He wouldn't have find me, but me being embarrassed, me
being ashamed, me being not able to recognize the need
for help, and people's do that. You got people out
there there, they need him, but for various reasons, they
won't recognize.
Speaker 3 (24:49):
And then reach out to get it.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
And they got to stop that. You know, I'm gonna
tell anybody you have to take charge of that situation,
whatever area that's handicapping you, whatever area that's holding you back,
where its drugs, alcohol, anything, child abuse, wife abuse, husband,
(25:13):
whatever it may be. If you see that, if you
can get past this, I can move forward and I
could accomplish something better than whatever accomplished now. Whatever you do,
take the responsibility to recognize the heat need for help,
because if you don't take your handicap you in life
to where you find yourself in a situation later on
(25:35):
in life, like myself, where I've been locked up over
forty some years and I see a little trivial things
that if I would have just made an effort to
ask somebody to help me, with this such as reading
and write. I don't think I would have been in
presson because it gave me another direction to go ahead.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
And then we closed out week number two talking about
what talk about in January. Football in football in prison,
football season.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Is the most really lively when football season come around.
It really amped things up. You just create a different atmosphere.
It created more like a positive atmosphere when football season
is in. When football is over with, then you got basketball,
and you got guys still like basketball as well. Now
(26:31):
then basketball will be the next favorite, then baseball. They
watched tennis, got a few watch golf, so they watch
all varieties of sports, but football is the favorite. It
also allows a lot of more you know, just prison
(26:53):
traded and bater They do a lot of that done
football season because guys would be willing to, uh, you know,
you have the party bowls, you have the h you
have the tickets where you can pick you know, the games.
It just created a lot more different atmosphere. And then
guys have their teams. Then they have the logos of
the teams, you know, on their personal clothes and hats
(27:17):
and stuff. So they give them something to talk about
every week.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
They give them.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
Something to you know, to debate it, give them something
to brag about. It, give them something to be proud about. It,
give them something.
Speaker 3 (27:28):
You know.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
It does a lot of that, and in college football
it does it more so than the pro because everybody
pretty much got a college team, but a lot of
guys don't have pro teams. So but it's really interesting.
It just and then you know, uh, it sets peoples down.
(27:50):
It just created different atmosphere. It gives them something to
do over the weekend and give them something to look
forward to. And that's what you know, and in here
that's what you really need, you know, because if you
really don't have anything, just forward to the end. You
(28:11):
I only ask you. He's just the most difficult path
to try to maintain and stay focused.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
And what have you.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
Is an American game and a terrific job on the
production editing and storytelling by our own Greg Hengler and
Reagan Hadiv And you've been listening to Big Mitch Rutledge,
our second installment, our second conversation. It was my birthday
January twenty first, twenty twenty four, and each week as
the storytelling continued, we just found ourselves getting closer and closer.
(28:45):
If you notice, I'm sort of cutting me out. I'm
not the subject of this story in the end, Mitches.
But through these conversations we became very close, and now
we're close close friends. I love the part about him
talking about asking God to protect him. He didn't know
God long, but he was asking God for things, and
that's good. That's a great place to start. Asking God
(29:06):
to protect me, he said, to take the taste of
cigarettes out of my life, because boy, once you need cigarettes,
you got to trade him, and that means you owe
people favors. And once you owe people favors in prison,
that's where trouble begins. And of course he got to
know some of the people there with nicknames like Wolf
and Blackjack and swamp Bear. They would become his friends.
(29:28):
And then that whole point he made about just that
pride he had in not asking for help. If he
had asked for help and learned how to read, simply
learned how to read, I'm certain bick Mitch would not
be in prison today. But his pride got in the way.
He didn't ask for help. God had probably put all
kinds of people in his path, but.
Speaker 3 (29:50):
His pride got in the way.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
And of course football, and that would be a running
thing for Big Mitch and I. We root for different teams,
we hector each other, and he talked about the calming
effect that football brings to the prison each season, the debating,
the betting, the parley bets. You've been listening to our
second installment of Sunday Mornings with Big Mitch. Here on
(30:14):
our American Stories
This is Lee Habib, and this is our American stories.
This 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
(00:34):
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
(00:56):
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
(01:16):
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 one,
my conversation on January fourteenth, twenty twenty four, where I
(01:37):
learned where Big Mitch grew up and how. This is
our second conversation on January twenty first, twenty twenty four,
which just happened to be my birthday. Today. We start
off with Big Mitch talking about his early adulthood and
his struggle to make good choices. Let's take much.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
This is a free call from Vitual Ruts.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
An incarcerated individual.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
At Alabama Department of Corrections. This call is not private,
It will be recorded and maybe monitored.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
To accept this pree call, press one to refuse this
pre call, Press two. Thank you for using securis. You
may start the conversation now. It didn't work anywhere. So
my grandmother and my step grandfather, they was up in age,
so they didn't want to put up with nobody like
that because you know, they come in and out of
(02:36):
the house all the time of the night. So my
grandmother and everybody told me said, 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 tie, which is my mother's
sofa sheet, went and paid the first rant and signed
and leached for the apartment and I tuk it from there.
(02:58):
I pay an age of dollars a month. And so
I was in the streets out there hustling, UH, stealing,
setting drugs, setting fake drugs and what have you, and
UH to survive, try to make it from one day
till the next day. Try to do that, ken and UH.
(03:22):
While being on the streets back then, I run into
a lot of bad situations. I though a lot of
bad situations.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
He was Big mich talking about an early encounter with God.
Let's saved his life.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
I saw a lot of young young kids out there
like myself, young girls and young men's that was on
the streets like I wor got in the family and everything,
and they fand the best they could. They did the
best they could to survive. And I can recall one
night I had been selling drugs to fake drugs to
(04:03):
soldier boys. You know when the black black military guys,
like once they get drunk and they're in the strip
clubs and stuff like that, they already high, so they
don't really know what they're buying. I I let them
tage still real drugs, let them sample the real drugs,
and when I get ready to sell them something, I
(04:23):
pass them to fake drugs and so make a long
story shop. They caught up with me one night uh
on h Street at uh late night hunt where they
hang out at and stuff like that. Well, our of
prostitutes was a lot of prostitutes was hanging out and everything.
So I took off running and I uh coming up
(04:49):
on see the road about I don't know about at
two o'clock in the morning, and uh it was a
car pull up. Uh. And it's the same time that
the killers was going on at Atlanta. And the guy
pulled up on Hell at two o'clock in the morning
and said.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
You won't ride.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
And I looked at him, and I had saw it
was a red Thunderbird that used to hang out in
the community drive through and we had saw it. We
were fascinated with the car because you know, he was
a nice car. And he said, what you doing out
this time and night? At this time my mother was
still living, you know, but about fifteen. So anyway, I
get in the car and as he's driving, he asked me,
(05:34):
he said, do you have to go home right now. Well,
when he said that, man teller stood up on my
head and so I get him to come off the
main road. Some tell me, said, 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
(05:56):
was coming up with a pistol, and I guess we're
going about thirty five miles an hour. So I just
jumped out the car, but I was in. I had
took 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
(06:19):
out of the car, he stopped and tried to come back,
but I went to streaming and hollering and yell and
then life came on. He took off. So my life
was saving red there. I don't know what he did
to me, I don't know, but so God saving mer
Red there. But it's a lot of things that happened
in the street when I was out there.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
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.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
They arrested me from gambit of murder, put me in
and got of jail. So I get up there and
I didn't I didn't even know what I was really
charge with. You know, I had no idea that it
was such thing as Captain Mura. You know, like I said,
I couldn't read write and uh, I said, Uh, I'm
(07:13):
in a kind of jail. I don't have anybody in
the call. I was just you know, I had no
I was twenty one years old and uh going on
twenty two and uh so many kind of 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 shy in the area that.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
We ate in.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
We had our mattresses in there on the floor in
the daytime. We would roll them up and give the
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 tailor, he come to me. He said, hey,
young man. I said, yeah, I said, how you doing?
He said, do you know that uh they're telling you
(08:02):
with Captain murder? I said, what is that? He said, Uh,
they're talking about putting you in an elected chair. I said,
elected chair, you know, and that's that's that's kind of
like said, they're gonna try to kill you. So that
really just freaked out right there. So I I really
(08:24):
didn't know what to do. And uh, like I said,
I really didn't have anybody in the call. I had
no lawyer, I had nothing. I'm just so once you
tell me at I just you know, go to asking guys,
coursemens and what have you, and didn't get no answer.
The other thing I know now is that guy told
(08:45):
me that they was.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
Gonna kill me. You know.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
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, change the trajectory of his
entire life. And again, this is a story that happened
in the very first week he was in prison.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
So when the bull pining, you got a guy he's
walking around, he's about twenty years old, got his shirt off,
real much about it. He'd been in prison with folks.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
Just like I have.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
And it was a young guy up under the table
where we eat, because that's where he had his bankers
at he was out of the weed and he stayed
up on it. That read all the time, and it
was the Bible. I come to find that later was
the Bible.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
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
(10:12):
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 crawled underneath the
table on his mattress reading the Bible. Let's pick up
when we last left off with Big Mitch.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
He was nineteen out of twenty one, but we was
different and the older guy had been a prison about
twenty years old. He was trying to turn the young
guy out into a female.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
What hand you you know what I'm talking about? And prison,
we gotta rule.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
If you won't fight for yourself, Dan, 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.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
Tell me.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
He said, stop that, mitch, and like I said, nominally,
you don't do that because I don't know the guy.
You know, he got to fight his own balloce and
uh but it was off his head. Stop that mitche
stopped that.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
So I told the dude.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
I said, hey, man, I said, leave me alone. I said,
don't blank blank with him no more. So uh he said, well, uh,
don't nobody care nothing about you being up here for
murdering so on. I said, well, I'm through with it.
I said, don't don't don't in with him no more,
and I went to the other side of the bullpen.
(11:43):
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 you
reading over here?
Speaker 3 (12:00):
He said, I'm reading the Bible. I said, I said, well,
how you know is real?
Speaker 2 (12:06):
And uh he said, well you can.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
Read it now.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
I'm gonna show you how I know God was in this.
I was so embarrassed about the fact that I couldn't read.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
And write that. I wouldn't tell nobody.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
But I told this guy, I said, man, I can't
read the right Man, I never did that before. So
I said, man, how you know God real? So he said, man,
my mama said, if you want to know God, if
you want to know God is real, asked God to
touch you. So I never prayed in my life. So
(12:41):
I got down on my knees where I waited. Everybody
went to sleep that night, because at that time, getting
on your knees and praying in public display and prisoness
and so on, it was a sign of weakness and
it's crazy, but that's the way you looked at So
I waited, everybody went to sleep, and I got on
(13:01):
my knees. You know, I never prayed him life. And uh,
I said God, I remember the prayer jes as playing
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 know God, it's really had
God to touch you. I said, said, I'm asking you
(13:22):
to touch me God, And I tell you no word
or lie. I never something came all over me. I
never experiened nothing like that in my life, and I
had been a whole kind.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
Of drugs and everything from.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
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 Prism and did something that was.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
Good and right.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
And I got rewarded by getting introduced to Jesus Christ.
And my life ain't been the same chesse.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Then here's Big Mitch on the prayer he prayed after
fighting out he was facing the death penalty, the.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
Change 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 jess getting to know God. So
I got on the knee and I prayed. I said, God,
I ain't got nobody in the world, I said, I'm
by myself. I said, they talking about kidding me. I said,
(14:36):
please send somebody in my life. They're gonna love me
so who I am, and media for me and I.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
Anything like that.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
Here's Big Mitch telling me about his first impressions of
Death Row.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Death Row was the last unit and the area back there,
and it was in the summer time, and like I said,
I have heard about Holman. You know, back in the day,
it was like considered the slaughter.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
I was cause they called it the bottom.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
It was the last stop, and uh for various reasons,
you know. Uh. One reason it called the bottom because
it was at Mo, Alabama and it was uh at
the end of Alabama state line. And another reason they
called it the bottom is because that's where the hardest
(15:33):
o the hardest went, the one with the longest sentence,
the ones that hard cold come mix or what have you. Uh,
if you committed murder and another praison, you'll go to
hole and locker up or what have 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.
(15:54):
So you know, out here when you're coming in, everybody
looking at you, and I'm looking at these guys. I
tell you, these guys looked at real, real hard. And
there wasn't no young guys. He was older guys, you know,
And uh, they asked God, all them I'm talking about,
(16:15):
you know, Yeah, you can tell they hain't been in
all kind of nine fights and everything. You know, Like
I said in the summer time and uh, so I
get through that. So I'm looking so they was looking
at me. I'm looking at them, you know, and uh,
I'm I'm I'm I'm trying to look like I'm not afraid.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
But like I said, I.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
Was intimidated going into the livey 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 the way
the death row, and they put me in. Uh, they
put me in, uh put me in my cell. So
when they put me in the cell, uh, I look
around and locked the doors. So this eight by five seven.
(17:03):
I'm twenty one years old. I live in the greatest
country in the world and I'm over there throw so
I have to use the bathroom. So I knock on
the wall next door. I tell the guy, I say, hey, man,
I said, where is the bathroom? Man? And so he
told me. He said, look in the back of he said,
(17:26):
in the back of the said you see him this
seamen brick running from the wall.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
I said, yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
He said, it's a small hole in the middle of
the seament brick.
Speaker 3 (17:35):
He said, that's the bathroom. That's the card.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
I said, what And I look and that's where it was,
you know.
Speaker 3 (17:43):
A little small hole in the cement break.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
And I said, Lord, now, cheese, 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 detection.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
I would have gotten next go to me on his side.
So they came around with the general, so I really
didn't feel like he so I actually got next go
as a man, you won't the trade, he said, yeah,
And they called him swamp there. He really name with
all that you use it. And uh so, uh he said,
he called me swamp there.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
I said, okay.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
As a way, he called me a big Mitch.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
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
(18:47):
in his life, confesses that he's never read the Bible.
He can't because he's a literate. He'd never told anyone
that before. And then that prayer he prayed, he wanted
to know if God was real, and he went till
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,
(19:10):
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,
(19:38):
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.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
I got in to see you 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 get a trade
to him again. So at lunchtime when the guys who
bring the trades around, he didn't even wait till it
get in my door. He just automatically told the man, say, hey,
(20:19):
give me that trade, and so you know, I had
to put a.
Speaker 3 (20:22):
Stop of that.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
So I so I hit on the wall and I
told him, I said, hey, swamp back, I said, a swamp.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
He said yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
I said, listen, don't ask for my trade or tell
the man to put my tree in your door. And
I said, I tell you.
Speaker 3 (20:40):
On my band.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
I ain't mean I said no, I'm just saying, you know,
don't don't don't take my food. Said. I had to
stop him because if I wouldn't have stopped him, it
would have led to something else. So, uh, I get
up there, I got a 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
(21:03):
in a prison like this, and this is a different
thing right here. So what I did, I just got
on my knees right there inside that say couldn't nobody
see me? And I just prayed and I asked because
I was smoking cigarettes and I know I didn't have
no way to get no more cigarettes because when nobody
(21:26):
gonna send me no money. And I knew from being
in prison before that you don't walk around and ask
nobody for nothing, because you ask guys for cigarettes and
stuff like that, and then guys don't want something from you.
So I asked God to take the taste a cigarette
out of my mouth, to ask God to protect.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
Me and know, just praise.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
So when I got through praying, I got up, and
so I'm sitting around and I'm listening. So I hear
guy's name. I hear Jumper, beell here swamp bell, hear
black Jack, I hear I hear being him, and hear wolf.
You know, I'm hearing all these names and trying to
(22:07):
put a phase with him. And eventually all these guys
became my friends as time went on.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
And here is Big Mitch on his illiteracy and pleading
with anyone who listened about asking for God's help before
it's too late.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
I couldn't read and write. I was illiterate, and uh.
As I got older and began to grow and development
and a whole different area and being able to make
a transition in my life from an insecure, negative, uneducated
(22:49):
and the visualt more self educated, self esteem and what
have you.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
I began to look back.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
On my life and I saw the fact that I
was so ashamed of me not being able to read
and write. It stopped me from really seeking.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
Help in that area.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
And early on in life, when you're not able to
read and write, you know, when I was coming up,
going six or four years old, we was called dummies.
But anyway, when I got old enough and so I
just I just said, well, it wasn't no use to
going to school. And that's one of the reason I
to go to school. However, it hinders me later in
(23:35):
life too, because that was I had jobs where people's
originally trying to help me. I'm not gonna sit there
and say that didn't anyone trying to help me. I
had individuals gave me jobs and everything. But one of
the jobs I had was one time at the Bard's
Club cleaning up, cutting grass.
Speaker 3 (23:54):
Painting or what have you?
Speaker 2 (23:56):
Lined in the baseball field football field for ak Aim
that day or what have you. But he would leading
notes in the morning because I would open up the
boy's club. So when I get there, he have a
note and I couldn't read. So I used to call
my auntie and she said, boy, you need to learn
(24:16):
how to read and write.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
You know.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
It's just so difficult that I had to leave that job.
But if I would have just talked to my supervisor,
told him that I couldn't read it.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
Write and he would have helped me. He would have
worked with me.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
He wouldn't have find me, but me being embarrassed, me
being ashamed, me being not able to recognize the need
for help, and people's do that. You got people out
there there, they need him, but for various reasons, they
won't recognize.
Speaker 3 (24:49):
And then reach out to get it.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
And they got to stop that. You know, I'm gonna
tell anybody you have to take charge of that situation,
whatever area that's handicapping you, whatever area that's holding you back,
where its drugs, alcohol, anything, child abuse, wife abuse, husband,
(25:13):
whatever it may be. If you see that, if you
can get past this, I can move forward and I
could accomplish something better than whatever accomplished now. Whatever you do,
take the responsibility to recognize the heat need for help,
because if you don't take your handicap you in life
to where you find yourself in a situation later on
(25:35):
in life, like myself, where I've been locked up over
forty some years and I see a little trivial things
that if I would have just made an effort to
ask somebody to help me, with this such as reading
and write. I don't think I would have been in
presson because it gave me another direction to go ahead.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
And then we closed out week number two talking about
what talk about in January. Football in football in prison,
football season.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Is the most really lively when football season come around.
It really amped things up. You just create a different atmosphere.
It created more like a positive atmosphere when football season
is in. When football is over with, then you got basketball,
and you got guys still like basketball as well. Now
(26:31):
then basketball will be the next favorite, then baseball. They
watched tennis, got a few watch golf, so they watch
all varieties of sports, but football is the favorite. It
also allows a lot of more you know, just prison
(26:53):
traded and bater They do a lot of that done
football season because guys would be willing to, uh, you know,
you have the party bowls, you have the h you
have the tickets where you can pick you know, the games.
It just created a lot more different atmosphere. And then
guys have their teams. Then they have the logos of
the teams, you know, on their personal clothes and hats
(27:17):
and stuff. So they give them something to talk about
every week.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
They give them.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
Something to you know, to debate it, give them something
to brag about. It, give them something to be proud about. It,
give them something.
Speaker 3 (27:28):
You know.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
It does a lot of that, and in college football
it does it more so than the pro because everybody
pretty much got a college team, but a lot of
guys don't have pro teams. So but it's really interesting.
It just and then you know, uh, it sets peoples down.
(27:50):
It just created different atmosphere. It gives them something to
do over the weekend and give them something to look
forward to. And that's what you know, and in here
that's what you really need, you know, because if you
really don't have anything, just forward to the end. You
(28:11):
I only ask you. He's just the most difficult path
to try to maintain and stay focused.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
And what have you.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
Is an American game and a terrific job on the
production editing and storytelling by our own Greg Hengler and
Reagan Hadiv And you've been listening to Big Mitch Rutledge,
our second installment, our second conversation. It was my birthday
January twenty first, twenty twenty four, and each week as
the storytelling continued, we just found ourselves getting closer and closer.
(28:45):
If you notice, I'm sort of cutting me out. I'm
not the subject of this story in the end, Mitches.
But through these conversations we became very close, and now
we're close close friends. I love the part about him
talking about asking God to protect him. He didn't know
God long, but he was asking God for things, and
that's good. That's a great place to start. Asking God
(29:06):
to protect me, he said, to take the taste of
cigarettes out of my life, because boy, once you need cigarettes,
you got to trade him, and that means you owe
people favors. And once you owe people favors in prison,
that's where trouble begins. And of course he got to
know some of the people there with nicknames like Wolf
and Blackjack and swamp Bear. They would become his friends.
(29:28):
And then that whole point he made about just that
pride he had in not asking for help. If he
had asked for help and learned how to read, simply
learned how to read, I'm certain bick Mitch would not
be in prison today. But his pride got in the way.
He didn't ask for help. God had probably put all
kinds of people in his path, but.
Speaker 3 (29:50):
His pride got in the way.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
And of course football, and that would be a running
thing for Big Mitch and I. We root for different teams,
we hector each other, and he talked about the calming
effect that football brings to the prison each season, the debating,
the betting, the parley bets. You've been listening to our
second installment of Sunday Mornings with Big Mitch. Here on
(30:14):
our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!