Henry Hays was cheated all his life. He was cheated by his father who taught him to hate. His community taught him to hate. My mom told me, no matter what one does in life, he or she deserves some compassion, and I knew Hays deserved compassion more than anybody.
What kind of system do we have when innocent people can sit on death row for 30 years?
I want you to know there is a God. He sits high, but he looks low. He will destroy, but yet he will defend - and he defended me.
Justice should be one of the things that's colorblind.
The last time I saw my mom was in 1997. My mom started getting sick, and my mom finally passed away in 2002. My mom was my world. My mom was everything to me. We didn't have money. We didn't have a whole lot of materialistic things, but one thing I can truly say, that my mother loved me and all of her children unconditionally.
I have too much to live for to allow a bunch of cowards to take my joy. I refuse to give them my joy.
On September 22, 2002, my mama, Buhlar Hinton, died. When the guards told me, I gave up. She'd been deteriorating for a long time - I believe she died of a broken heart.
It's hard to explain exactly what it feels like to be judged. There's a shame to it. Even when you know you're innocent. It still feels like you are coated in something dirty and evil.
I just didn't believe the God that I served would allow me to die for something I didn't do.
They took my 30s, my 40s, my 50s, but what they couldn't take was my joy. I couldn't do nothing about the years, but I could control my joy... I kept a smile on my face; I kept love in my heart.
I'm just trying to be a little tiny light in God's world.
When every court was saying 'no,' I believe God was still saying yes. I had to somehow find that faith and reach deep down in my soul and believe in the teaching that my mother taught me as a young boy, that God can do everything but fail.
When the very people that you been taught to believe in - the police, the D.A., these are the people that are supposed to stand for justice - and when you know that they lied to you, it's hard for you to have trust in anybody.
When it seems like the whole world thinks you're bad, it's hard to hang on to your goodness.
To me, America need to clean up their own home before they tell another country about human rights. I'm a primary example. America don't care nothing about human rights.
Believe me, when you're sitting on death row, you want the appeal process to take time; as long as you're going through it, you're going to be alive.
You never think of your freedom until it's taken away from you, and once it's taken... So, it means everything to me. You couldn't put a price tag on it.
I have no respect for the prosecutors, the judges. And I say that not with malice in my heart. I say it because they took 30 years from me.
I often say that if I had one wish in this world, I would wish that every child could have a mother the way my mother were. And I never went without clothes, I never went without food... I never went without anything that a child needs. But above all of that, she gave me unconditional love.
I loved to read books in the free world, and there was a lot of time to sit around and do nothing in prison. When you read, it opens up your mind; it helped us take our minds away from where we were.
