transcript

Speaker 1:
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Speaker 2:
[00:45] I'm Oprah Winfrey. Welcome to Super Soul Conversations, the podcast. I believe that one of the most valuable gifts you can give yourself is time. Taking time to be more fully present. Your journey to become more inspired and connected to the deeper world around us starts right now. Welcome to part two of our conversation. So your case, those of you who are going to read The Sun Does Shine, you'll see that you tried to appeal, appeal, appeal, appeal, appeal. And it's like they had decided that no matter what, they were going to keep you behind bars.

Speaker 3:
[01:26] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[01:26] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[01:27] A lot of people don't understand the justice system.

Speaker 2:
[01:31] Yes.

Speaker 3:
[01:32] In the appeal process, they ask you what takes so long. And on death penalty cases, the Alabama Criminal Court Appeal would rule every four years on your case. And once they rule either for you or against you, if they rule against you, they send it to the Alabama Supreme Court. It takes them approximately four to five years before they rule.

Speaker 2:
[01:54] But at least is there some relief for as long as you are appealing, at least you know you can't be fried.

Speaker 3:
[02:01] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[02:01] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[02:02] At least you know that. That is the dessert of it.

Speaker 2:
[02:06] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[02:06] Because they cannot set you a date, they cannot give you a date.

Speaker 2:
[02:10] As long as you're appealing.

Speaker 3:
[02:11] Yeah. As long as you're appealing. And once you appeal, it's completely exhausted. It's when the state of Alabama goes to the Alabama Supreme Court and they actually do it.

Speaker 2:
[02:20] How often were you thinking about, because I don't know how you survive every day thinking, I didn't do it, I didn't do it, I didn't do it. Is there a point where you have to let that go?

Speaker 3:
[02:31] I did.

Speaker 2:
[02:33] And resign yourself, just surrender to whatever is happening now.

Speaker 3:
[02:38] I did. You have to, first and foremost, you have to, the life that you used to, you have to let it go, because you cannot live that life anymore. And so somehow you got to get that out of your brain. And the fact that you have an appeal process, you have to learn to adjust and learn the lawyer talk with that. And so what I did was I started enjoying life. I started playing basketball. I played with the Knicks. They won the championship. I played Wimbledon in my mind. I won five times Wimbledon, Graham Slant.

Speaker 2:
[03:13] Had you ever played, you played basketball before when you were out. Had you played tennis before you were out? So all these things, so you went to Wimbledon in your mind. You won Wimbledon.

Speaker 3:
[03:24] I won it five times.

Speaker 2:
[03:28] No need to go if you're not going to win. You won it five times in your mind.

Speaker 3:
[03:33] Yes, and you know it wasn't until Mr. Bronson, he had invited me over to his private island and me and him played a game of tennis. And he said, Ray, you played tennis on death row? I said, yes, sir. I won it Wimbledon five times on death row. And he looked at me, he said, you do have a sense of humor. But I did play tennis before I went and in my mind, everything I did, I was pretty good in sports. And I just kept going.

Speaker 2:
[03:59] And this would occupy you for hours?

Speaker 3:
[04:01] Hours. Oh, yes.

Speaker 2:
[04:03] Hours, days and days and hours.

Speaker 3:
[04:05] Yes. And during the baseball season, the Yankees, we was tired. We needed a home run who was at the bat. I was.

Speaker 2:
[04:14] And so in your imagination, you would just walk through the whole game?

Speaker 3:
[04:17] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[04:18] Every inning?

Speaker 3:
[04:18] Every inning. I would call a timeout and I would go up there and talk to the pitcher and I was the coach.

Speaker 2:
[04:25] That first night when there was somebody crying on death row and then you ended up making a joke and recognizing that they lost their mom and had compassion and then the men started speaking to each other for the first time, right? And then you later found out that one of the people that you had been speaking to and had befriended was a man named Henry.

Speaker 3:
[04:46] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[04:47] Can you tell me about Henry?

Speaker 3:
[04:49] Well, Henry was a Klu Klux Klan's son. His daddy was a Grand Wizard in the Klan's organization. And after I got to learn the story, Henry's father was upset that a black man had got found not guilty in a murder trial. And he ordered him to go out and kill the first black man that they came across. And they came across a 19-year-old, I think it was 19. And they befriended him, got him somehow, tricked him in the car, and they hung him and cut his genitals off. And I, when Henry was...

Speaker 2:
[05:22] This is in 1980-something, right?

Speaker 3:
[05:24] Yes. And so, but when Henry came to death row...

Speaker 2:
[05:28] He was the first white man convicted of...

Speaker 3:
[05:32] A lynching.

Speaker 2:
[05:33] A lynching in 85 years.

Speaker 3:
[05:35] Yes. And as I got to know Henry and realized I didn't know who I was talking to, and...

Speaker 2:
[05:43] So, you all are just voices in the day and night?

Speaker 3:
[05:46] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[05:46] Because nobody can see anybody on the row.

Speaker 3:
[05:49] Put you in a little cage, and that's it. You got a wall between you, and a wall between you, and got a match wire in front of you, and that's it. But...

Speaker 2:
[05:56] But after a while, you get to know that this voice coming from here, and you identify the names and the voices.

Speaker 3:
[06:01] Yes. And what I learned about Henry is that Henry had been taught to hate all his life. And myself along with some other blacks, we didn't judge Henry because everybody was there for accused of killing someone. And so Henry and I became friends, and I kept wondering.

Speaker 2:
[06:24] Was it difficult to become friends with a man who you knew had been accused and found guilty, not just accused, but is on death row for lynching a young black man? It was not. Why was it not?

Speaker 3:
[06:36] It was not because I personally didn't know had Henry done that. I was there on death row for something I know I didn't do. So I couldn't just judge by him being guilty. And I never did ask him, did you do it?

Speaker 2:
[06:48] You didn't?

Speaker 3:
[06:49] I never did ask him that. I just feel that wasn't my business. And if you did it, that's between you and your God. All I knew I was there for something I didn't do.

Speaker 2:
[06:59] Isn't it true that that's sort of the code of respect on the road? That nobody asks anybody, did you really do it?

Speaker 3:
[07:07] Right. And not only that, what you have in so many prosecutions that will come back and ask somebody to snitch and say they said something, it's best you don't say nothing. And so I didn't ask Henry, well, did he did it? I really got to know Henry for Henry. And Henry...

Speaker 2:
[07:27] Wasn't there a point where Henry said my mom and my mom and pa were wrong? They were wrong.

Speaker 3:
[07:33] Yes, on the night of the execution, we had told Henry about love and respect for one another. And let me say before I end this, death row is the only place that I will be in where I didn't never witness racism. And then I often thought about that. Why is it that I never witnessed racism here? It's because all of us had the same sense, sense to death. We went to bed with the death sentence over our head, we woke up with the death sentence over our head. We all wore the same clothes, the same tennis shoes, the same whatever. We all ate the same thing, so it wasn't no difference. It wasn't no need to be jealous, it wasn't no need to be racist. We all was there to die. And we all had to become and somehow become each other's support system.

Speaker 2:
[08:19] So much so that you created a book club.

Speaker 3:
[08:23] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[08:24] I'm very proud of my book club.

Speaker 3:
[08:25] I'm very proud of mine.

Speaker 2:
[08:27] You had your own book club. What gave you the idea for the book club? The fact that you were able to, in your own mind, go anywhere you wanted to, right? And you wanted those men to be able to have the same experience of traveling the world, expanding the way they see themselves in the world. And you could do it in your own mind, but you thought books would help them do it.

Speaker 3:
[08:52] Absolutely. And not only that, I felt that society had let them down. I never forget, I used to ask, what grade did you drop out of school? If you don't mind me asking. Everyone was the seventh and eighth grade. And I'm saying, how did y'all drop out at the seventh and eighth grade? If I missed a day, the teacher would find my mom and say, Anthony didn't come to school. Did you know it? And most of all, the answer was, man, didn't nobody really care about going to school. They didn't care whether we came or not, so I dropped out. So I felt the society had let them down in that regard. They didn't make them go to school, and so therefore they didn't learn. And so I knew that books would open up your mind and make you be in a place that you never thought you could be. And so I first had to ask the warden about a book club. And I go up there and I ask him about, and he said, well, what's in it for you? I said, nothing in it for me. I said, warden, wouldn't you prefer these men to be reading a book and having their time spent on something else than to be thinking about and spending out on your officer and throwing feces out on them? Wouldn't it be better if we could just read a book? And he said, let me think about it. He thought about it and sent me word that we could. And I chose James Baldwin. And I had read James Baldwin before.

Speaker 2:
[10:12] So you have the white, racist, KKK people.

Speaker 3:
[10:15] I had two of them, you know.

Speaker 2:
[10:17] On your book club reading James Baldwin.

Speaker 3:
[10:19] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[10:19] And I heard you all read James Baldwin.

Speaker 3:
[10:22] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[10:22] Go tell it on the mountain.

Speaker 3:
[10:23] Yes. I loved James Baldwin, but I also read other books like Your Blues Ain't Like Mine. I read The Killer Markenberg.

Speaker 2:
[10:31] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[10:31] And not to cut, but The Killer Markenberg was me. Yes. Exactly.

Speaker 2:
[10:37] You were Tom. Oh, yes.

Speaker 3:
[10:40] And people say, well, how could you read it? I said, they even gave me a better site while I was there. I said, The Killer Markenberg is one of the south most embraced books, but that book is true. I was told me. I really was told me if you read the book. And so, this particular book, I wanted Henry to read it and see what he would really think about his father. I really wanted Henry to think about how black men and women in this country have paid waves and we are authors and read about them some. And Henry had a profound respect for...

Speaker 2:
[11:20] To Killer Markenberg.

Speaker 3:
[11:21] To Killer Markenberg.

Speaker 2:
[11:22] You wrote that, We are all slowly dying from our own fear, our minds killing us quicker than the state of Alabama ever could.

Speaker 3:
[11:29] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[11:30] That's why you wanted them to have the books. Men would do all kinds of crazy things rather than spend another night with their own thoughts. Bring in the books, I thought. Let every man on the row have a week away inside the world of a book. I knew if the mind could open, the heart would follow. It had happened to Henry. Look at him sitting here in a lock room with five black men who had nothing to lose. He'd been taught to hate us and fear us so much that he had thought it was in his rights to go and find a teenage boy and beat and stab and lynch him just because of the color of his skin. I had no anger toward Henry. He had been taught to fear blacks. He had been trained to hate. Death row had been good for Henry. Death row had saved his soul. Death row had taught him that his hate was wrong.

Speaker 3:
[12:22] Yes, and you know.

Speaker 2:
[12:26] He died knowing that.

Speaker 3:
[12:27] He died, and what I loved on the night of his execution, they asked you two things. What you want for your last meal, and do you have anything you want to say? And I was told that Henry said, all of my life, my father, my mother, my community had taught me to hate. The very people that they taught me to hate are the very people that taught me how to love. And tonight, as I leave this world, I leave this world knowing what love feels like. And I often say that if we can teach people to hate, we should be able to teach them to love. And I fought society. I fought this, it take a village to raise a child. And I often ask, what was this village when this young boy was being taught to hate? What was this village when he needed them the most? And so, that book club and the fact that we treated Henry no different, I really believe Henry left this world, a better man than he came in.

Speaker 2:
[13:41] So, you've been out now, what, two years? Three years? Death Row taught Henry to love. What did it teach you?

Speaker 3:
[13:50] Death Row taught me that either you love or you hate. Death Row taught me you either help or you harm. Death Row taught me you never know the moment, the second your life will change forever. And you can't see it coming. You don't know when it's coming. And so, Death Row taught me no matter where we are, we still can love and we still can help one another. And although all of us was there together, we didn't know each other, but we came together as a bunch of men that the world said that the world would be better if we wasn't in it. And I tried to bring to them that no matter where we are, we can make this the home. It may not be where we want to be. It may not be where some of us should be. But let's love one another and let's do what we can for one another.

Speaker 2:
[14:41] What is remarkable in this story, The Sun Does Shine, is that your friend Lester, you all were friends who had been friends since you were what?

Speaker 3:
[14:53] Four years old.

Speaker 2:
[14:54] Four years old.

Speaker 3:
[14:54] He was four and I was six.

Speaker 2:
[14:56] Four and six. That your friend Lester, he was in that courtroom the day you were sentenced to death, and he came to visit you in prison every single week without fail.

Speaker 3:
[15:12] Didn't ask for anything. He...

Speaker 2:
[15:14] For 30 years.

Speaker 3:
[15:17] Yes. They don't make him like that anymore. They don't come like that anymore.

Speaker 2:
[15:23] Where he'd have to drive for hours?

Speaker 3:
[15:26] It was... If I'm not mistaken, it's about 268 miles or better, one way.

Speaker 2:
[15:34] Oh, my God.

Speaker 3:
[15:34] And he was working 11 to 7. He would get off on a Friday and drive all the way. And I would tell him, listen, you don't work all night, don't come down here. But at 9.15, he was there, clockwork. They would roll my door and revisit and I knew who it was. Lester made me, if this make any sense to anybody, all my life, I thought I knew what friendship meant. But Lester didn't show me what it meant. Lester didn't ask me how it was done. He came to see how it was done. Lester didn't say, write me, he always said, call me. And no matter what the prison would allow us to have, Lester didn't want me to ask anyone but him. And that way he knew that I would get it. And so, Lester just showed me what real friendship is all about. And he didn't come expecting anything because none of us could really say I would be here where I am today. And so, I knew he did it out of love and the friendship that we have always had for one another. Lester and I have had some close calls walking from school and having a duck in the woods and all kinds of stuff.

Speaker 2:
[16:56] And white men would drive by and you were young boys. You'd go jump in the ditch because illegal just to be on the road. Or certainly not illegal but dangerous.

Speaker 3:
[17:07] Very dangerous.

Speaker 2:
[17:07] Dangerous to be two black boys on a road. Regardless of where you were going or where you'd come from.

Speaker 3:
[17:14] Absolutely. And Lester, you know, just was a God sent. He didn't want me to feel alone. And I can't even begin to express to people how important that is when you are confined and in a cell to know that you have someone that cares about you that much to come see you. And not only that, it keeps the guards from beating you and whooping you because they know you got somebody that's going to come see you. And something had been wrong with me. Lester was going to say, how Ray get those scratches and bruises on his face? And well, I'm going to go and see a lawyer. And so Lester was just, oh, Lester's god sent him. I often tell him, even when we was in our mother wound, God knew you would be my realm in the bush. And so he just, everything to me. And I love him as a friend. I love him as a brother. And I just wish the world, everybody could have a friend like Lester.

Speaker 2:
[18:17] Like Lester.

Speaker 3:
[18:17] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[18:18] The night that broke you, that you thought for a moment that you weren't going to recover from was when they came to tell you that your mother had died. And you know, I know for you, and certainly as I read the book, one of the deepest sorrows is that your mother didn't get to see you free. And that the last time she saw you and every time she heard your voice, she said, son, when are you coming home?

Speaker 3:
[18:40] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[18:40] When are you coming home?

Speaker 3:
[18:41] She would ask me that. And I lied to her every time she asked me. Mom, are they working on it? Are they just going to take some time? And at some point, I didn't know what my mother was trying to protect me. I knew I was trying to protect her in the truth. And I couldn't say, mom, next year or next month. And the night I found out that my mom had died, I really didn't give a damn whether I live or not, because I truly believe that my mom died of a broken heart.

Speaker 2:
[19:24] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[19:26] And I guess in some way, I feel like she, I often say she got tired of waiting.

Speaker 2:
[19:33] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[19:35] And she left this world. And that night, I had called Mr. Stevenson. And I told Mr. Stevenson. I said, I don't give a damn about this case. And I said, my mom gone and I don't see myself in this world without my mom. And without saying thank you, without saying I appreciate, I just hung up. And that night as I tried to sleep, it was as though my mom came in the cell and stayed in my ear all night long. And I could hear her saying, I did not bring you up to be a quarter. I did not bring you up to stop. I want you to fight. I taught you to fight when you have to fight. And it wasn't until my mom, I could hear my mom saying, I'm disappointed in you. Because every baseball game, every thing I was in, my mom was my biggest cheerleader. And when I would strike out, she was there to say, you're hit it the next time. And my mom would always hug me and tell me how good and how proud she was of me. And that night, I could hear my mom telling me that she would disappointed me.

Speaker 2:
[21:01] Because you were thinking about killing yourself. You were thinking about killing yourself.

Speaker 3:
[21:04] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[21:05] After finding out that she had died.

Speaker 3:
[21:09] And early that morning, I called Mr. Stevenson and I said, Mr. Stevenson, I want to apologize for hanging up, but I had a moment of weakness. I want you to give the state of Alabama all the hell you can give them.

Speaker 2:
[21:28] By that time, Bryan Stevenson had already been on your case for how many years?

Speaker 3:
[21:35] About five or six, I think.

Speaker 2:
[21:37] The twists and turns, and even Bryan Stevenson on the case, trying, trying, pushing, pushing, and everybody can see that there's been a miscarriage of justice here. Still, the state of Alabama would not.

Speaker 3:
[21:52] No, Bryan Stevenson went out and got the best experts.

Speaker 2:
[21:56] The best experts who said those bullets could not possibly been fired from that gun.

Speaker 3:
[22:02] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[22:03] And they still would not do anything. Would not reopen the case. At that point, though, were you ready to give up? Because once you've got the ballistics experts, you've got the new FBI, and it's almost what? It's over 20 years later. They find the gun. First, they lost the gun, then accused Bryan Stevenson of stealing the gun.

Speaker 3:
[22:22] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[22:23] They find the gun, and they realize beyond a shadow of a doubt, those bullets could not have come from the gun. And that the whole thing was a sham.

Speaker 3:
[22:32] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[22:33] They still refused to reopen the case. Yes.

Speaker 3:
[22:36] And it took the United States Supreme Court, but I know we'll forget, he came down to the prison, and he said, Ray, the judges in Alabama is not going to do the right thing. And he said, I'm going to have to take this case to the United States Supreme Court. But he said, I'll need to tell you something. And he said, if they rule against you, the state of Alabama will execute you within two years. And believe it or not, hearing that was somewhat of a relief.

Speaker 2:
[23:11] Because it could be over.

Speaker 3:
[23:12] I was tired of sitting out, tired of being in this cage. And I said, Mr. Stevenson, file my case.

Speaker 2:
[23:19] And at one point, there was a lawyer who had offered you the opportunity to take a...

Speaker 3:
[23:25] Life without parole.

Speaker 2:
[23:26] Life without parole.

Speaker 3:
[23:27] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[23:27] And you said, I don't want life without parole.

Speaker 3:
[23:30] I said, life without parole is for guilty people. I said, I'm finna tell you something that you may not understand. I said, 12 years old, I never will forget this. My mom told me, she said, if you man enough to bend down and pick up a rock, and if you man enough to throw that rock, always be man enough to say I throw that rock. I said, this is one rock I didn't throw. Therefore, I could never stand up and say, I throw this rock when I didn't. And I said, since you don't believe in me, I have no choice but to fire you. But he was trying to get me a life without parole, and I said, life without parole is forgive to people. I'd rather die for something that the state of Alabama know that I didn't do, than to stay in prison for the rest of my life. That's not a life. That's why I'd rather not be in this world, if so be it, and that's why I don't.

Speaker 2:
[24:31] Finally, after Bryan Stevenson and the Equal Justice Initiative taking on this case, 16 years later after they took on the case, you finally are released after he goes to the Supreme Court.

Speaker 3:
[24:47] Yes, ma'am.

Speaker 2:
[24:48] And he was just asking the Supreme Court to review it.

Speaker 3:
[24:51] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[24:53] And in their review, they made a decision.

Speaker 3:
[24:56] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[24:56] What did you feel like that day?

Speaker 3:
[24:59] Oh, we had came up for a hearing. He was in New York. And one of the lawyer had just left. And he came back real quick. He said, you need to call Bryan. And I called Mr. Stevenson. And Mr. Stevenson was telling me, Ray, you're not going to believe this. And I sat down. And he told me, he said, Ray, the United States Supreme Court have ruled 9 to 0 in your favor. Ray, you're going home. I said, Mr. Stevenson, no use. This is April Fool. Then I thought about who Bryan Stevenson was. He's not like a joster. And I took the phone away from him. And I cried like a baby right there in front of all the other guy, the inmates that I didn't know. And I got back on the phone. And I said, when? He said, I'm headed back to Birmingham. And I can't tell you exact, but I'm going to find out and we'll know. And he said, I'm going to talk to the judge. And he did. And the judge wanted to keep me in one day longer. He said, no, I want him out as soon as possible. And I got out on Good Friday. And hadn't been to like a regular church in 30 years. And that Sunday, I was able to go to my first Easter service. And every Good Friday is my anniversary. And so while, had it not been for Bryan Stevenson, God sending me his best attorney, I wouldn't be sitting here. I wouldn't be in this world. The state of Alabama knew that I was not the person. They knew that going didn't match. And to this day, no one in the state of Alabama have had the decency to apologize to me.

Speaker 2:
[26:40] Would it mean something if they did?

Speaker 3:
[26:43] It would, for this reason. It matters to me that the victim family think that I'm still the person that killed their loved one. I think they deserve truth as well. And it would mean to mean that for a society that believe in the death penalty, we do send innocent men and women to death row. And just to hear the authority, the system say we made a mistake, would mean a lot to me. And it won't give me back what I lost, but it would mean a great deal to me for them to say, we're sorry, we made a mistake and we promise that we will not do this again.

Speaker 2:
[27:22] So early on you talked about when you'd been held for a year and a half before trial and thinking that you were going to get out after the trial, that you just wanted to smell something other than the sweat and the musk and the mold and the, and that you just wanted to be able to feel some rain on your face and you wanted to be able to see the sunshine. What was it like once you finally were released 30 years later and you felt rain on your face for the first time?

Speaker 3:
[27:56] It was wonderful. I mean, I could just stayed in the rain the whole day if I could have. And everybody kept saying get out of the rain, you get sick. I said I haven't had rain on my body for 30 years. And my little niece was with me and she popped some little umbrella and she said come on Uncle Ray, get up on the umbrella with me. And I said no, I'm a walk in the rain. And she said Uncle Ray, it's not natural for anybody to walk in the rain the way you do. And I looked at her and I said you know, for 30 years not a drop of rain was allowed to fall on my body. I said so let me enjoy this rain. And to this day I still walk in the rain as though I just came out of it yesterday. I just love to feel of it. I don't care about the clothes. I just love to feel it's so cool and refreshing. And it's the only thing I know that having been contaminated, it comes from God. And so I just love it.

Speaker 2:
[28:59] I can't imagine. I was trying to think about 1989. We didn't even have those, I think we just started those big brick cell phones, right? The cell phones that look like bricks. Were they still dialing? Were they still dialing? Your mama probably still had a dial phone, right? Phone on the wall. In the kitchen. Phone on the wall in the kitchen.

Speaker 3:
[29:19] Absolutely.

Speaker 2:
[29:20] So, when you come out, and it's cell phones, and it's social media, after all, it's Lester, your friend who's been there every single week, who picks you up in prison, and you come out, and you're in Lester's car.

Speaker 3:
[29:33] Yes. He asked me, he said, where the first place you wanted to go? And I really believe Lester thought I was going to say, let's go get something to eat, because I always complain about the food. But I said, I want you to take me where they laid my mother body. I said, I know she's not there, but I want to just see where they laid her body. And he said, okay. I put on the seatbelt. He put on his, and he cranks the car up, and I'm seeing him messing with the radio dial. I don't think he's trying to find a radio station. He put it in drive, and we go down the road, and about a little distant, this white lady come on. And she said, one-tenth of a mile to the right. And I jumped, I said, what the hell? And he's laughing now, cause I'm thinking a white woman is in the back. And I know them but two of us get in this car, and I'm afraid to look back. And I'm saying, white lady back there. And he's laughing, so he, I said, and he can't take it no longer. He pulls over to the sides of the road, and he said, this is a GPS track. I said, what is that? I said, you heard the white lady? He said, she's in here. I said, how she get in there? You know? So, I'm thinking, a real human being is one that they don't own up the passenger side, and somehow she can lay in there or whatever, and tell, you know, something. And he said, explain it to me, go over.

Speaker 2:
[31:07] He's laying down under the seat, telling you which way to go.

Speaker 3:
[31:10] And he said, all you have to do is punch in the address. And she'll tell you exactly how to go in, where to turn, and everything. And I said, you mean to tell me you don't have to stop at the Philly station?

Speaker 2:
[31:22] You don't stop at the Philly station.

Speaker 3:
[31:23] And get the direction no more?

Speaker 2:
[31:25] No more.

Speaker 3:
[31:25] And it made me realize I've been locked up a long time.

Speaker 2:
[31:30] Yes.

Speaker 3:
[31:31] I don't say it. I realize I've been locked up a long time. The world have changed. They had Walmart. And I'm saying this is a one-stop place.

Speaker 2:
[31:44] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[31:45] You know?

Speaker 2:
[31:46] Walmart. And Amazon Prime.

Speaker 3:
[31:49] It's amazing.

Speaker 2:
[31:50] What have been the other incredible discoveries for you?

Speaker 3:
[31:54] The infrastructure.

Speaker 2:
[31:55] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[31:56] Where I used to live is no longer exists. They don't make an interstate. Through there, you can actually come from out of Atlanta all the way into Memphis, Tennessee, without stopping. And it's to mean modern technology and the infrastructure habit, how it have changed. And you don't see self-service, filling station anymore where people come out and pump your gas. And you have these things now called credit cards and everything. There's a swipe and you're gone. And when I first got home, I stayed froze. Les and I went to a restaurant and I had some sweet tea in my hand. And I didn't see him having any money. And I'm so thinking that I'm going back to jail. You didn't pay. I don't have any money. And he forgot and he turned around and he realized that he hadn't explained this to me. He said, come on. I said, I don't have any money to pay for my tea. He said, I paid for it already. I said, you didn't get it later. No money. I'm watching you. And he said, I'm sorry. He said, this is a credit card. And I swiped it in and it's paid for. So life, all of that, you know, happened.

Speaker 2:
[33:09] Cell phones, all of it.

Speaker 3:
[33:11] And to this day, I'm still not familiar with the cell phone. I can do certain things. I don't know how to download. I can email you back. I can text you back. I can take a picture. But that's it.

Speaker 2:
[33:24] And you can talk.

Speaker 3:
[33:25] Yeah, I can talk. Yes.

Speaker 2:
[33:27] That's good. You're good to go.

Speaker 3:
[33:28] But now if you call me and say, Mr. Stevenson, one of you are going to have to hang up because I don't know how to put you on hold and go back and get him. And so people keep trying and I get it confused.

Speaker 2:
[33:42] And I say, it's okay. You're doing just fine. You really are doing just fine.

Speaker 3:
[33:46] Thank you.

Speaker 2:
[33:47] Do you spend a lot of time thinking about what you lost?

Speaker 3:
[33:50] I do sometimes and the greatest of it all is the years that I lost with my mother. There's nothing in this world that I feel I lost more than those years with her. Again, you have to know where I come from and our life. But my mom have always been there for me and I would just love to have been there to give her some cold water or make her some soup and feed it to her like she would do me if I was sick. But I didn't get the opportunity, but get me more than anything I didn't get. I didn't get to say goodbye. So they took more than just 30 years for me and I could never ever get that out of my mind that I didn't say goodbye like my other brothers and sisters did. And I feel that I was cheated, but.

Speaker 2:
[34:51] You said that there's not a day or there's not a night now even that you don't pull out her picture and say, good night, mama. Do you feel the presence of her with you now?

Speaker 3:
[35:03] I do sometimes. I really feel when I have got up and made a speech or something. Yeah, it's like I can hear her saying, I'm proud of you. You've done good. And I think the thing that my mom always have spoiled me whenever I did something good, got an A or whatever, she would always cook me a nice peach carbonara, blackberry pie. And I don't have nobody to do that now. So I just miss my mom in the way that I had a great relationship with her. I couldn't tell you anyone I respect more than I did. My mother was always yes ma'am and no ma'am. And whatever she said, I obeyed her because she gave me her all.

Speaker 2:
[35:49] I feel like she's still giving it to you. I feel like that she's guiding you in places that you never even imagined, even you, who's been to see the Queen of England.

Speaker 3:
[36:01] Yes. Oh yes.

Speaker 2:
[36:04] It's been my pleasure and my honor to speak to you.

Speaker 3:
[36:07] Thank you so much.

Speaker 2:
[36:08] You're a good man.

Speaker 3:
[36:09] Thank you. Thank you.

Speaker 2:
[36:10] Good man. Thank you.

Speaker 3:
[36:12] Thank you so much.

Speaker 2:
[36:13] The Sun Does Shine, How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row. Beautiful. I'm Oprah Winfrey and you've been listening to Super Soul Conversations, the podcast. You can follow Super Soul on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. If you haven't yet, go to Apple Podcasts and subscribe, rate, and review this podcast. Join me next week for another Super Soul Conversation. Thank you for listening.