This is an I-Heart podcast.

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 to my 94-year-old father every week.

He dropped out of high school in his early teens and was illiterate into his early 20s.

I was surrounded by books growing up and finished graduate school in my early 30s.

Big Mitch spent the last 44 years of his life in Alabama prisons for killing a man.

But this 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 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. Welcome to Sunday mornings with Big Mitch. Here's episode one, my conversation on January 14th,

2024, where I learned where Big Mitch grew up and how.

This is a free call from... Mitchell Rutledge.

An incarcerated individual at Alabama Department of Corrections.

This call is not private.

It will be recorded and may be monitored to accept this free call press one to

refuse this free call press two thank you for using securus you may start the conversation now

my name is mitchell rudley everybody called me big mitch i born in 1959, October 80.

In a well, I think between Phoenix City and Columbus, Georgia, somewhere there.

...