Sunday Mornings with Big Mitch: Ep. 11
Our American Stories
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 817 Ratings
🗓️ 1 February 2026
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of Our American Stories, every Sunday, Our American Stories host Lee Habeeb speaks with Mitchel "Big Mitch" Rutledge, who has spent more than forty years serving a life sentence in Alabama. Each call traces the shape of faith, regret, and forgiveness inside a place built for punishment.
When Mitch first entered prison, he couldn't read or write. He had dropped out of school early and tested just above the threshold that once marked intellectual disability. But that was only where the story just began. Over time, he learned to read, earned multiple degrees, and became a teacher to other prisoners.
On this particular Easter Sunday, Mitch shared what he saw as his resurrection story—one shaped by faith, discipline, and the belief that change is always within reach.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.5 | Guaranteed Human. |
| 0:14.0 | This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories. |
| 0:19.1 | This next story is about a friend of mine. We're close in age, but have |
| 0:23.9 | little else in common. Mitchell Rutledge, aka Big Mitch, was born black and poor in Georgia. |
| 0:31.0 | I was born kind of brown and middle class in New Jersey. He never met his father. I still talked to my 94-year-old father every week. |
| 0:41.0 | He dropped out of high school in his early teens and was illiterate into his early 20s. |
| 0:46.3 | I was surrounded by books growing up and finished graduate school in my early 30s. |
| 0:52.6 | Big Mitch spent the last 44 years of his life in Alabama prisons for killing a man. |
| 0:59.0 | But this is not a story about an innocent man sentenced to prison for a crime he didn't commit. |
| 1:06.0 | Big Mitch never denied the crime or made excuses for it. |
| 1:16.8 | This is the story of my friend's spiritual transformation while serving his life sentence. |
| 1:20.6 | It's also about a friendship only God could have engineered, |
| 1:24.5 | a friendship that began with a single Sunday morning call. |
| 1:29.3 | Through these weekly conversations, I hope you come to know and love him as much as I do. Here's episode 11, our conversation on Easter Sunday, March 31st, 2024, where Mitch |
| 1:37.8 | shares the story, have how even he, an inmate who scored just below what is considered to be mental retardation on an IQ |
| 1:46.8 | test, can still achieve educational success. |
| 1:51.5 | Let's take a listen. |
| 1:53.3 | This is a free call from Mitchell Rutnich. |
| 1:57.3 | An incarcerated individual at Alabama Department of Corrections to accept this free call press. |
| 2:03.7 | One, to refuse this pre-call press. |
| 2:06.2 | Two, thank you for using Securus. |
... |
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