After his first day out of prison in over two decades, Michael Thompson says his mind is scattered.
"I'm coming out to all of this, you know, I can walk out my room and go where I wanna go," Thompson said.
He said he called his bed a 'bunk' Thursday night and had to readjust to not having count time.
"I slept in a real bed last night, and it was so so good. I didn't want to get up out of it," the 69-year-old said with a laugh.
Thompson was released at 4 a.m. Thursday, after Gov. Gretchen Whitmer granted him clemency late last year.
He was greeted by family, friends, activists who supported his release and a documentary film crew. People cheered as he hugged first his eldest daughter Rashawnda Littles, who was a teen when he went to prison, and then his lawyer Kimberly Corral.
"It showed me there's a lot of love out there for me. A lot of people feel the same way I feel," he said.
Thompson was in prison on charges that stemmed from a marijuana sale in 1994. He had prior drug offenses, and police found guns in his home, so a judge sentenced him to 42 to 60 years — a length of time usually reserved for second degree murder charges, said Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel in a letter calling for his release.
On his first day out of prison, he got his favorite meal: fish with cucumber and tomatoes. He's also recuperating from COVID-19 still, which made him weak and made it difficult to walk. He contracted the virus in Muskegon Correctional Facility last year.
But, as he settles back into a life he hasn't known for decades in Flint, his mind keeps going back to the people he said goodbye to on Thursday. He says it's the voices of all the men he met in prison that he keeps hearing, it brings him to tears.
"They asked me to not leave them," he said. "I just hear all their voices."
"I gave my word, and my word means everything."
His plan is to push for prison reform, especially for people doing time for marijuana-related charges.
"Why, why, why are you wasting all this money on people you got locked up for marijuana? And now it's legal, and people are making millions of dollars off marijuana. Why, you still got people locked up?" he said.
"When is America gonna quit just locking people up?"
Thompson also has a plan to form a group called Standing in Defense Against Violence. He's taking his release day-by-day, but prison reform, he says, is at the top of his mind.
"All I want is the opportunity to help. I just want an opportunity to be a voice to the voiceless," he said. "The voices that I hear in my head, the voices that in all these prisons I've been in— I hear them. And so now I want to tell the people," he said.
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