How One “Golden Moment” Can Transform Your Entire Life

You know, I would love to hear more about the Innocence Project and what you learned from this work.

When I was a young lawyer, I saw this obituary one day in The New York Times about this guy who had obviously just died, and he was very much like me, same age, same, uh, neck of the woods, same region, and he came within five days of being executed in Oklahoma.

And I thought, "How could this guy go to death row and be, and be innocent?" And I was just, I was just, just stunned by the story.

I took off to Oklahoma.

I took off, and I met with his family, and I said, "I'm gonna write this book." And they said, "Well, great." They were still mourning his death.

Writing that book took me into the world of wrongful convictions, and once I realized there are thousands of innocent people in prison, it was a big wake-up call for me, and that was 20 years ago.

And so I'm still writing about them, still published a book two years ago about wrongful convictions, still angry at how they happened, still, uh, advocate for criminal justice reform.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, still frustrated by the lack of reform, uh, so it's something I'm caught up in.

Um, I admire that in you, um, especially having been a public defender and having Bryan Stevenson as one of my, like, most, uh, inspiring mentors.

For sure, we've had him here on the show.

He's, his work's incredible.

He's, uh, he's, he's, uh, one of a kind.

What he has accomplished is, is, uh, is truly amazing, and his book was, uh, very inspirational.

We visited his, uh, museums in Montgomery and were just, um, really, uh, overcome.

How do you stay hopeful when the world is overwhelming and when you're in these cases and grappling with issues of justice in your work? How do you stay hopeful?

I tell myself, "Okay, go back to the basics.

Worry about the things you can control." You can wake up each morning and see the news and just fret and worry yourself into a deep funk and stay there all day.

Or you can say, "Okay, I'm not...

Yeah, the world's a mess, okay? What can I do today to make it a little better? How, how can I help someone today to make it a little bit better? And that's what I do.

Huh.

That's al- almost every day.

Obviously, I can escape in my own world and go write some fiction, which is what I do, I still do, and I can also work with a lot of nonprofits and things like that to try to make the world better, and get a lot of gratification from that.

My wife and I are active with childhood hunger issues, homelessness, and wrongful convictions.

We stay pretty busy working with nonprofits, and that's extremely gratifying.