Sunday Mornings with Big Mitch: Ep. 13

On this episode of Our American Stories, 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 for killing a man. Mitch has never denied his crime or offered excuses for it. Instead, their conversations focus on what responsibility, faith, and accountability look like when lived out behind prison walls.

In this episode, Mitch begins with a story about how a simple act of kindness toward an elderly man planted the seed for his belief in sharing God’s grace with others. He then shares another experience in which an act of generosity didn’t have the impact he intended but ultimately taught him an important lesson about being wise with charity and discerning where it will truly make a difference.

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Episode Transcript

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

(00:33):
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

(00:55):
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

(01:15):
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.
Here's episode thirteen. Our conversation on June twenty fourth, twenty
twenty four, where Mitch begins by sharing a story about
how a random act of kindness on his part would

(01:37):
touch another man's life in a way he could only
describe as being God sent. Take it away, Mitch.

Speaker 2 (01:46):
This is a free call from Mitch, an incarcerated individual
at Alabama Department of Corrections. To accept this pre call,
Press one to refuse this pre call, press too. Thank
you, you producing securist. You may start the conversation now. It
was in the early nineties, dumbitory wide over, guys doing everything.

(02:09):
You know, it's just a gambling You got guys gambling
right here. You got being old thing going on in
the back on one side. You got the poker game
going on here, you got the dice game. You got
the guys may be robbing somebody over here. And you know,
it's just you know, it's a big dumbitory and the
whole lot of stuff. But ain't no offices nowhere. I'm

(02:33):
walking around on the other side and I just hear
this was the old white guy in there, and he
was kind of like a country and Western single back
in the days. He would tell guys and I just
heard and just you know, kept asking people for stamped.
It wasn't nobody to get it, old man of stamp, nobody.

(02:55):
So I walked over to him and uh, and I said, well,
I said, nobody gonna give you no stamp. I said,
I got you one. So I went over there and
I gave him more than one stamp, and he told
me something. He said, you God sin. At that time,
I smiled, I said, well, okay, thank you, and I

(03:16):
walked off because I didn't consider it to be, you know,
nothing major.

Speaker 1 (03:21):
You know.

Speaker 2 (03:22):
I would have did that for anybody, you know, but
especially when you're older guy, you know, and I don't
know what's going on. And at this time stamp was
kind of like graduable because you could use it even
tray and marble with it, you know. So later on
in life I understood what he meant. And I can

(03:43):
give you a reason why. I said that, you God
sind it's the kindness in challengeable nature that God sent
somebody there to do that, you know, to help him
or to aide him in some farm or fashion. But
later on in life I understood what he meant because
there have been times where the situation have came about,

(04:06):
and someone came along and made the difference in your
life in a positive way, and they was God's sin.
You see. It was like years later when I really
understood what he meant. God just showed me and proved
to me that He's keeping me for a reason. And

(04:30):
I didn't get a lot of good in him. I
just stopped a lot of I just saved a lot
of guys lives in here, not by me being anything special,
but just by me being the type of person that
God allowed me to be, you know, by being intervening
and sometimes with you know, words or influence or person

(04:51):
likeing me or what have you. Or sometime even with money.
I've had guys come to me where the gang members
was at them. He's from California. Big guy looked like
he was black in the Spanish. Big guy anyway, he
had older the gain some money. Somebody sent him to me.

(05:14):
Somebody told him say, hey, man, go hout and Mitch Hill,
he'll probably pay him for you to keep you gonna
get you know, heard or killed or stabbed up. So
it was in nineteen ninety nine he said, Mom in
my dumbitory. And so they sub miss somebody looking for you.
So when I walked out the dumbitory of your door,
I see about sixty seven guys and I see another

(05:39):
big guy that had his shirt on, about six foot five,
two eighty muscled behind, you know, he talking crazy about
four five behind him. As I come by the cubicle,
I said, well, who won't because I don't see anyone
that I'm familiar with. So h The guy said, you
missed re this. I said yeah. He said, hey, man,

(06:02):
this dude told me, said you will help me out.
I said, what you mean? And he said, man, I
owe some money. And by this time the big guy
stepped up and he said, hey, you gonna pay that
debt for him, because if you not, then we finish.
Just go ahead on and man and tell him on

(06:22):
up or what have you. You know. So I said,
we'll Man. I said, I don't even know what's going on, brother,
So they explained to me what was going on. About
this time, the guy that I know came up. He said, bitch,
I sent him to you. Man said he ain't no
bad dude, man, he just got messed up. Man, owe
some money. If you don't him no money, man, they

(06:44):
gonna mess him up. So by this time right here.
The big dude, he's impatient. Hey, either if you gonna
do it or you ain't gonna do it. Man, we
ain't got time for all this. And I said, well,
how much is it? So dude said about fifty dollars.
I said, well, man, I probably can round that up.
I said, well, I don't even know the man, you know,

(07:06):
So he said, please, brother, do that for me. I
end up going to my box and going to another
guy and we paid him, paid the big guy. The
big guy walked then he told him said, you bet
not never sitting there to me, disrepect do nothing no more,
said a man, save your life and make a long
story show. The guy that I paid the money said,

(07:29):
help get him out of dead, save him black. He
ended up he didn't appreciated. He ended up going back
and then getting in trouble anyway. And the big guy,
which they called him nudey, and I end up to
be real cool because after that situation, about six days later,

(07:49):
I was coming out in one of the areas of
the prison. I saw him. I said, man, everything cool
that He said, yeah, he said, you don't even know
the man. I said no. He said, man, that was
a good thing you did, he said, a lot of
dudes when he did that. I said, well, hey, man,
I said, I just tried to do the right thing. Man.
I didn't want to see the guy get hurt. The kills, uh,

(08:12):
you know, if I could stop it. And he said, well, man,
that was a good deed you did. You did good man,
He said, I respect that. And from there we began
to speak to each other and so on. But the
guy that I helped it even and then showing up
for he ended up getting more trouble and more trouble,
more trumble. So that's just who he worked. So the
guy that sent him to me, I said, man, you

(08:33):
told me this dude was okay. Man, this dude stay
in trouble. He owes some moment. So he ended up
getting stabbed up anyway. Later on, behind the same pain.
He tried to come to me again, so out to
find out by his reputation, and I said, man, you
just and I didn't have it, and I just didn't
won't deal with him anymore because it was kind of

(08:54):
like what the Bible said, you know, you throwing pearls
to swine and other words, you and the love that
you have to field to someone, don't be to someone that,
don't turn around us speeding your faith. That's just like
doing burls this line. If you do something to hip
someone and they cut around and speeding your faith and

(09:16):
so to speak, and that it happened to me several times.
But if you do and the person show the appreciation
of it and grow and move forward and do positive
and good and being, that's what giving is all about.
That what love is all about.

Speaker 1 (09:35):
And a terrific job on the production editing and storytelling
by your own Greg Hengler and Reagan Habib, and my goodness,
as weeks and weeks past, more insight from Big Mitch,
and in some ways, in many ways, prison life not
that much different than our lives in the sense that well,
we deal with human beings every day, flawed and good

(09:57):
and a mixture of both. And what he says about
offering up your gifts and being discerning with them, oh,
my goodness, don't we all have to be discerning when
it comes to giving our love and our treasure. Episode
thirteen of Sunday Mornings with Big Mitch. Here on our
American Stories