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

give in, not to give up hope, to keep fighting no matter what. He described living conditions in the general prison population—everything you’ve read about prison is true, only more so. The violence is incomprehensible, and Jason was brutalized in unspeakable ways. Among other things, he suffered a fractured skull and had to be hospitalized after he was thrown headfirst onto the concrete floor by another inmate. He told me he never saw his attacker. He’d been my closest friend and I missed him during those years, though he lived just nearby. The guards and wardens were obsessed with making sure we never spoke; when a letter was discovered, Jason was threatened and so we didn’t try communicating often.
    I was still a child when I was sent to Death Row. I grew into adulthood, both mentally and physically, in this hellhole. I came into this situation wide-eyed and naïve. Now I view most everything and everyone with narrow-eyed suspicion. I’ve learned the hard way that the world is not my friend. I thought that pretty much the entire human race wanted me to die a slow, painful death, until a miracle occurred. It seems my hopes of receiving divine intervention weren’t completely ignored.
    One thing I’ve noticed time and time again in prison is how quickly people in the outside world forget you. Their lives do not stop simply because yours does. Sooner or later they get over the grieving process and move on. Even your family. Two years is a very long time for someone to stick by your side once you’re in prison. Most don’t even last that long. Domini moved on with her life; she’s now married, has a beautiful daughter, and lives all the way on the other side of the country. I haven’t seen my father in many, many years. He has another family to worry about and care for now. There’s not much he could have done for me anyway.
    Between October 2009 and September 2010, we filed a motion to make an oral argument in front of the Arkansas Supreme Court requesting a new trial based on all of the new evidence and DNA findings we’d accumulated over the past ten years. A hearing isn’t guaranteed, and by this point Lorri and I were both worn down by the process. We had exhausted every possibility in terms of uncovering new proof of my innocence, and none of it had worked. We had all of the elements we needed in this battle—we simply could not get the court system to pay attention and we were running out of time. In fact, it looked to us like we would spend the rest of our lives in pursuit of something just out of reach.
    All around me were people who had been abandoned to their fates. No one came to see them or offer encouragement. No one wrote them long letters with news from home. They had no one to call when they were so sad or scared they felt they couldn’t go on. No one sent them a few dollars so they wouldn’t have to eat the rancid prison food.
    They are the true living dead. The world has moved on, and they are forgotten. The thought that I could have so easily been one of them fills my heart with terror. I’m fortunate beyond my ability to describe because I’ve had a few friends who have stuck by my side since almost the beginning.
    *  *  *
    M
orphic field. That’s what it’s called when a certain kind of energy pattern is repeated over and over until it creates something like an aura. This prison, for example. All of the hatred, ignorance, pain, humiliation, and greed constantly being put out by everyone in here has created one hell of a negative morphic field. The thing about morphic fields is that they behave like magnets. Like attracts like. It draws more of the same energy to itself, and it touches everyone who comes here. The people who come to see me immediately feel disgust, anger, and repugnance for the kind of people they have to deal with here. It also explains why every new batch of guards who come to work here are a little more brutal and ignorant than the last. As the morphic field grows increasingly worse, it draws in the kind of people who resonate with it.
    Even the best-laid plans seem to go bad in a split second. All you can do is stand there in a state of shock, wondering what went wrong. It’s one of the worst feelings possible, to helplessly watch as the world slips through your fingers like sand. Your heart seems to run out with it.
    What happened to me was a great disruption. It was the violent shuddering jerk of something that has slipped horribly off track. I