Life After Death: The Shocking True Story of a Innocent Man on Death Row

exactly like the man I’d seen all those years before in the dark apartment.
    When I was seven or eight, I saw a man shot in the head. We had moved recently to a two-family house in Memphis. One summer afternoon we left the front door open so a breeze could blow through the house. I was standing right at the threshold looking out at my father, who was standing in the front yard. His hands were in his pockets and he was staring at the ground but not really seeing it. I’d been watching him for a good amount of time and he’d never blinked even once. In his mind he was a million miles away, doing who-knows-what. He did this quite often, but it was different this time. Like an omen.
    We heard a small, distant-sounding popping noise, nothing like the gunfire on television. My father later said he first thought it was a car backfiring on the next block. We both looked up at the same time to see a man crossing the street, coming toward us. His hands were holding his head and he was covered in blood.
    My father turned toward me and started barking like a Marine drill instructor—“Go! Go! Go! Move your ass!” I retreated into the house with my father right behind me. No sooner had he closed and locked the door than the man hit it running full force. There was a tremendous impact, then nothing. All was quiet. My father stood looking at the door while my mother ran into the room with a scared but questioning look on her face. When he told her what had happened, they stood around trying to figure out what to do next.
    We didn’t have a phone, so it was decided that my mother would run out the back door and over to the neighbors’ house where she would ask to use theirs. The only problem was that the neighbors wouldn’t answer the door. My mother stood on the porch hammering and yelling, “We need help! Please let me use your phone!” It was all to no avail, as the neighbors refused to respond. After the cops arrived, the neighbors said it was because they thought my mother had shot my father and was trying to get in to them.
    In the meantime, the man smeared blood everywhere. By the time the cops showed up with an ambulance, the man had collapsed on our steps. There were bloody handprints all over the front door and all over our white station wagon. The ambulance drove away with the man in the back while the cops questioned my mom and dad. My paternal grandmother and grandfather, Doris and Ed Hutchison, arrived to take my sister and me away for the night, and tried to keep us from seeing as much of the mess as possible.
    My young mind bounced back from the incident without a mark on it. The next day I was able to go back to playing childhood games with all the other kids. There was zero lasting trauma. However, if I were to undergo the exact same experience at my present age I would need counseling for the rest of my life. The nightmares would rob me of precious sleep, and my nerves would be frazzled.
    I can’t pinpoint exactly when I began to lose my flexibility, my ability to bounce back from an unsettling incident; I can only look back and see that it’s gone. Going on trial for a crime I didn’t commit screwed me up a bit, no doubt. But I survived it intact, more or less. Don’t get me wrong—my heart, soul, body, and mind all have scars that will never properly heal. Still, I survived. I’m not so sure I could do that if the whole thing had happened to me later in life. I believe it would have been entirely possible for me to drop dead of shock and trauma right in the courtroom.
    If I hadn’t been sent to prison at such a young age there’s no way I could ever have adapted to it. Prison is bad enough, but it’s a million times worse when you know you did nothing to be here for. That fact magnifies and amplifies the shock and trauma. As it is, I grew up in this place. Perhaps that’s what robbed me of my inner flexibility.
    I no longer approach each situation in life with an open heart, ready to learn. Instead I come like a wary old man scared of being knocked on his ass again. An old man knows that at his age those bruises don’t heal as quickly as they used to. I used to learn as a youth because I was curious. I didn’t necessarily even think about learning; it was more like being one of those baby animals you see on the nature shows. They almost learn by accident, just from being wide-eyed and playful. Now I hoard knowledge out of fear. I figure the more I know, the more I’ll be able to control