(4/11) “It was all over for Walter Miller. The judge sentenced...

(4/11)  “It was all over for Walter Miller.  The judge sentenced me to twenty-five to thirty years.  I held out hope for awhile.  I was doing appeals.  I kept hoping to win on a technicality, or at least get a new trial with a better lawyer.  But I kept hitting dead ends.  And reality soon set in,  I was going away for a very long time.  They sent me to a maximum security facility called Central Prison.  Gun towers and everything.  There was no way out, so I sorta got used to it.  My mama died during this time, and that really shook me up.  Because my entire life she’d been praying for me to turn my life around.  And she never got to see it happen.  So I committed myself to doing better.  I became the perfect inmate.  I never had a mark on my record.   My behavior was so good that they transferred me down the hill to a minimum security facility.  This place was more like a camp.  They still had gun towers and everything, but there was a lot of freedom.  They let us walk around the yard.  We could make phone calls.  I even had my own radio show.  It was a lot of fun.  I recorded it every Wednesday, and they played it on the local college station.  I was relaxed.  I was feeling good.  I had no plans to escape.”