COUNT TIME with Emmett Tatter

Thank you Rising Through Ruin, Life Inside My Mind, AmyBramble, Damien, Laura T 💉 RN BSN, rachel key, and many others for tuning into my live video with Bill Kissinger! A special thank you goes out to Bill for making this first-time experience easy, informative, enjoyable, and an all-around great time. We made it count! You're an amazing person Bill. Thank you for taking the time to speak with me.

Last night I sat down with Bill Kissinger for my first podcast episode. It was incredible, and you can find COUNT TIME with Emmett Tatter on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and Spotify.

Bill served 47 years on a life-without-parole sentence in Louisiana, including decades in Angola. He’s a Vietnam veteran, and inside he worked as an inmate counsel on death row. He walked out on March 30, 2023, at 70, after the Supreme Court’s ruling in Ramos v. Louisiana reopened his case. Now he writes Death Penalty Corner on Substack, writes for Inquest, and sits on the board of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.

We talked about his service in Vietnam, how he came to receive a life-without-parole sentence, his years at Angola, the men on death row whose stories he carries, what changed in him over 47 years, what hope meant to him inside, and what freedom’s been like since 2023. He also told me why his upcoming memoir is called 47 Winters, and it’s amazing!

You can read Bill’s writing at Death Penalty Corner:

A little about me:

Over eight and a half years in Florida prisons, I was counted 15,523 times as state inventory. At my sentencing in 2010, I told the judge I’d be the rose that grows from the concrete. Books saved my life in prison, and they’re how I found yoga, or how yoga found me. Now I’m home and a certified yoga teacher. I write about Florida’s prisons for CounterPunch, two of my essays are forthcoming in Inquest, and my memoir, COUNT TIME, is represented by Kristen Terrette at Martin-Newens Literary Management. This show is about the human truths that happen between those counts.

These stories are shared to inspire hope, and to educate others about the criminal justice system.

Make your time count. 🌹