"Lifting weights was my passion before basketball," writes Lyle May, an inmate on Death Row in North Carolina. "Neither were activities I had ever once considered before the judge declared, 'This court hereby sentences you to death. May God have mercy on your soul.' But in a place where we have been sent to die for the damage we have done, a chance at a half-life has emerged out here on the rec yard."
From the Marshall Project:
I'd first gotten started with the activities on the yard when Harvey, a middle-aged black man with a gap between his front teeth, got me lifting weights twice a week. ... One day, Harvey and I were doing squats on the yard when he was called to the office. He returned nearly an hour later, his movements jerky, eyes glazed. Mumbling something about getting a date, he grabbed his towel from the bench and left. It took a moment for me to realize that my friend's final days had come. When the guards came for him, they wheeled an empty handcart with squeaky wheels onto the silent cell block. He placed two white plastic bags of personal property onto the cart, full of letters and pictures from loved ones, a Bible, and some artwork, to be collected by his family when they came to witness the execution. Harvey turned to the warden. “Give me a minute?” he said. Men in red jumpsuits, the inmates he had come to know out on the rec yard, gathered to shake his hand and give him a hug. When it was my turn, I stuttered a goodbye and saw the tears in his eyes.
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