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Mar 05, 2015 | Jeanie Garrett

Sentenced to Life: An Innocent Man Finds Forgiveness

Photo courtesy of Texas Monthly

Michal Morton was arrested on his doorstep as someone pulled his 3-year-old son from his arms. He was charged with the vicious beating death of his wife, Christine, who was found in the couple’s bed in their Williamson County home. Morton claimed his innocence from the beginning. He hired good lawyers. But after a 10-day trial, he was sentenced to life in prison.

 

It was 1987. He was 33-years-old. Ronald Reagan was in the White House. Starbucks and the internet didn’t exist. The self-described “average” man who spent his days working as a supermarket manager would spend his next 25 years as inmate 445394 in the Texas penal system.

 

“The first loss was my son, the second was my freedom,” Morton told a crowd of more than 300 people who gathered at St. Matthew’s in Austin where he began the church’s Lenten speaker series. Morton’s story is a long journey that encompasses anger, fear, faith and, ultimately, forgiveness.

 

“The anger and even hatred that boils inside us when we have unresolved hurt or shame in a relationship hurts us more than the person we cannot forgive,” said the Rev. Merrill Wade, rector of St. Matthew’s. “Much of Jesus’ spiritual direction to his followers was focused on the insidious nature of unforgiven sin. It is more than a good Lenten theme; it is essential to life.”

 

Morton tells how he spent his first decade in prison plotting the systematic killing of everyone who helped put him there: the prosecutor, the judge, even the neighbor who testified against him. All his appeals failed. His son stopped visiting.

 

Then one night as he began to drift off to sleep, his life changed again. He describes the feeling as instantly being bathed in a warm, golden light.

 

“I knew what I experienced,” Morton said. “I didn’t have to be told. I didn’t have to ask. I knew I was in the presence of God. I’d give up anything to be back in that light.”

 

At that point, no hope of freedom even seemed possible, but Morton began the process of forgiving each of the people who had put him there.

 

“The work of the Spirit was clearly evident in Michael’s journey,” Wade observed. “He wanted to be whole again and knew that forgiveness was critical to his own healing. It resonated with me that he said forgiveness has been a process that has moved at a different speed with different persons involved in the death of his first wife and those responsible for his incarceration.”

 

In 2005, with the help of the Innocence Project, a motion was filed for DNA testing on a bloody bandana that was found near the crime scene but never investigated or introduced into evidence. It would take six years for that motion to be ordered and enforced by a judge.

 

In 2011, on Morton’s 57th birthday, the results came back with a DNA match from Christine Morton and a man who had been a drifter in the area. Through more investigating, it was found that the then sheriff and prosecutor failed to provide other key evidence and crucial statements made by Morton’s son, who was home at the time of the murder, to Morton’s defense attorney. The additional evidence all sat in a file for 25 years.

 

Photo courtesy of Texas Monthly.

Images of Morton’s release were shown around the world. His eyes closed and his face tilted towards the sun as he stepped outside a free man for the first time in a quarter of a century.

 

“There was no pleasure, no self-righteousness, not even a glimmer of self-satisfaction, just this peace. And I knew that he knew the Source of that peace,” said Kathleen Niendorff, who followed Morton’s case and helped organize the Lenten series.

 

Morton’s case inspired Texas’ Michael Morton Act, designed to create more transparency in the evidence-sharing process. It was signed into law in 2013. Since his release, Morton has re-married, reunited with his son and lives in East Texas. He is no longer inmate 445394.

 

“If I can get through this,” Morton concluded with a warm smile, “you can get through your stuff. God exists. He is wise. And He loves you.”

 

Mark Norwood was convicted of Christine Morton’s death and will soon go on trial for the murder Debra Baker, who was also found beaten in her bed. You can read more about Morton’s journey, life in prison and release in his new book Getting Life: An Innocent Man’s 25-year Journey from Prison to Peace.


Garrett is the communication’s director at St. David’s in Austin.