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

of satisfaction that comes from knowing you’ve put all you have into getting something done.
    M ARCH 21
    The hearing has now been pushed back all the way to December. I guess they haven’t had enough of my blood yet. And am I the only one who thinks it’s strange that the state is fighting so hard to prevent any more DNA testing from taking place? Why wouldn’t they want the evidence tested? The whole situation is becoming more insane by the day. In no way does anything happening here fall under the rubric of “justice.”
    It’s officially spring. The wheel is turning again. The sun has entered Aries, and soon it will be April. The year is nearly a quarter over. How can you not be amazed by that? Sometimes I can feel time so vividly that I can almost reach out and touch it, like reading Braille.
    J ULY 10
    It’s been a while since I’ve written, eh? I just had to take a little time off. I felt worn-out and ragged, angry at those responsible for dragging this situation out for yet another year.
    This time of year is always hard. It seems like July and August take longer to pass than the rest of the year combined. I’m longing for those magickal autumn days with every fiber of my being. I ache for the return of October all the way into the core of my bones. I need those short days and long nights when every moment is haunted and beautiful. I want to hear Type O Negative playing “Christian Woman” while I fill the house with candlelight and jack-o’-lanterns. I want to smell cinnamon and dragon’s blood incense burning while watching
The Great Pumpkin
and eating caramel apples. I want to have a Halloween party sleepover.
    J ULY 24
    Did you know that Christopher Columbus saw mermaids? In fact, he saw them so often he treated them as nothing out of the ordinary. They don’t teach you that fact in your average public school textbook, but it’s easy enough to find. Just research his captain’s log for the date of January 9, 1493. On that single day he described sighting three of them. And in 1531 the people of a small village near Germany recorded having captured one. They called it a “bishop fish.” It was male and died of starvation after refusing to eat.
    My point? The world is full of magick and wonders, most of which are being completely ignored. People like to congratulate themselves for having the world all figured out when nothing is further from the truth. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how so many people spend their lives in front of televisions, dismissing any phenomenon that doesn’t have its own reality show as “unreal.” Think about how many places you’ve traveled to in your car—like the grocery store. But you’ve never actually gotten out and explored the spaces between your home and the store. Who knows what you could find in those “familiar” places if you were to explore them?
    A UGUST 1
    The harvest season has finally arrived. Today marks its opening. Our next stop on the wheel of the year will be the autumn equinox. I’ve always seen the opening of the harvest as a kind of stairway we walk down to reach the dark and magickal part of the year where all the good things await. The cool, comforting energy that feels more like home than any place can. Today is the landing at the top of the stairs. All we have to do is put one foot before the other, and before you know it, we’ll be watching
The Great Pumpkin
again. And then . . . the hearing in December. If you come to the hearing, we’ll be celebrating my thirty-seventh birthday together. That will be exciting, won’t it? It will be my nineteenth birthday in prison.

Twenty-eight
    T hat’s the end of my writing from Death Row. I called Lorri the morning of Saturday, August 6, 2011, and her voice when she picked up the phone was completely different. She said, “I need to talk to you about something very important.” My immediate thought was that I’d done something wrong, but in fact it was quite the opposite: Lorri told me that my lawyer Steve Braga had e-mailed her the night before, requesting to talk to her before she and I spoke. Braga and Patrick Benca (the Arkansas state attorney we were working with) had made contact with the attorney general, Dustin McDaniel, and after some negotiation, McDaniel and Scott Ellington (the county prosecutor) offered to release all three of us if we pleaded guilty. Braga refused the offer, which called for my admission of complete and total guilt, period. Braga had