How God snatched me from Death Row!
Although he attended church as a child, Michael Heath did not develop a personal relationship with Christ until he was on death row for a murder he committed during his teen years.
He has seen how God has done the miraculous in his life, and as a minister of the gospel and an artiste, he shares his message of God’s redemptive power with anyone who will listen. He is very passionate about mentoring youths and often opens up about his past in order to steer them clear of the path he took.
In a one-on-one interview with Freedom Come Rain, Heath shared about his 20 years in prison and how God brought him out so he can now proclaim His name. In sharing his journey to death row, Heath said he was uneducated, as he went through the school system, basic and primary, and could not even spell his own name. He attended the then JAMAL and still didn’t learn anything.
“I was the whole package, fully dunce,” he said humorously about his situation back then. Acknowledging that it was no joking matter, he said what contributed to it was that his father died when he was about eight years old, and with two other siblings and a mother who wasn’t ‘fully there’ (mental illness), it left him without the support he needed.
Heath eventually found solace as a dancer and a DJ, and it was in this setting that things went haywire for him.
A friction developed between him and a guy he termed as a ‘troublemaker’.
“And that friction continued for actually a week. I had to end up at the police station on four different occasions, and nothing was done.”
It finally played out with the troublemaker and three of his friends attacking Heath, one with a gun. With only a machete in his hand, he went after the one with the gun, who died on the spot from the inflicted wounds.
How God snatched me from Death Row!
“I turned myself in to the police at the age of 17, and I was sentenced to death,” he related.
Heath was on death row for 10 years, and for three and a half years, he did not feel the sun’s rays on his skin as he was placed in isolation.
Not able to read, he asked someone to help him to read; the only thing they did was get him a Bible. Since he didn’t even know the first letter that started his name, he thought it a silly idea and ended up being cursed out and called a ‘country boy and a fool’.
Heath said he attended church a few times in his youthful days, so he was aware there is a God. Feeling at his lowest point, he reached out to Him.
‘I said, God, if you help me to read and write, I will serve you for the rest of my life while I’m on death row. And then I… And then I went down into the cell. Because when you’re in the cell, you’re locked away from everything, even the sun. So, I went down into the cell and looked at this sponge that they gave me. So, when I opened the Bible, I asked God to help me to read and write,” he shared.
It was then Heath said he heard a voice saying, ‘John 14’, and then the voice started speaking to him, ‘Let not your heart be troubled’, reading the words to him. The whole chapter was read out to him; it was the first time in his life he had ever read anything!
Heath said he looked around to see who was talking to him, and there was no one. He went to the same prisoner who was cursing him out and told him he read the Bible; however, when called on to do it, he could not.
He went back to his cell, and again the Holy Spirit visited him, allowing him to read once more.
Heath continued building his relationship with God until he became ‘the cell preacher’, and other inmates started turning to him for counselling. He also started to pen letters on prisoners’ behalf and held classes, becoming the ‘prison lawyer’.
“I checked out some of their cases and wrote to the Bar Association and got them off death row.”
Heath admitted to trying to help himself get off death row as well. He shared that he contacted a worker at a top media house, who contacted a judge at the Appeal Court who told her his case fell in that category by mistake. He was then taken off death row, and his sentence was converted to life imprisonment, with a mandate to serve 15 years before being eligible for parole.
Released on instruction of the Queen
After being transferred to Gun Court, he put himself in school, doing civics, theology, history, and English in the Jamaica School Certificate, and was able to pass them.
Heath can’t give enough glory to the Lord, as he was never formally trained before those classes – the Holy Spirit was his teacher.
Sharing about his release, he said he wrote to the Queen of England, going against what everyone said – that it would never work and the Queen would never read his letter. He followed up on his conviction and sent the letter.
It was a big success for Heath as the Queen ordered the Governor General – Sir Howard Cooke at the time – to release him immediately from his custody.
“So I was released on the instruction of the Queen. I was released from prison. So I went to prison with a conviction and came out with one of the highest honours in the country, which is the Governor General’s seal,” he noted.
Now married with children – ‘two beautiful daughters and a four-year-old son’ – Heath said he does his best to point them to the right path. He is a baptised member of the Faith Temple Pentecostal Church.
He was promised compensation after being released, but to date, that has not happened. However, with God as his source, Heath devoted himself to ministry, targeting youths who were committing crimes He makes himself available at crusades all over the country to give motivational talks.
With no compensation and no money, God sent help through the late Rev Carmen Stewart, who took him on a construction site and got him a job. He left there and got jobs on other construction sites. He then started to do landscaping with his aunt until he got a weed whacker from Food For the Poor.
“I worked that weedwacker. I bought a bigger one and a weed cutter as well, opening a landscaping business,” he said with satisfaction. He said that today, he is known as one of the most professional in the business, as he cuts yards ‘super clean’.
“Most people react in a different way when it comes to violence or certain situations. If I did have somebody to mentor me at the age of 17, after we had this friction, to tell me, say, ‘Well, just make bygone be bygone’ or ‘Just try to work it out,’ I probably wouldn’t end up in my situation,” the ex-convict reflected.
If there is one lesson he can learn from his experience, it is that “without God, you are nothing.”
