By MICHAEL GRACZYK
Associated Press Writer


HOUSTON — The new bed was heavenly. The cheeseburger was good and
greasy. The hot bath was his first in 18 years.

A day after he was released from death row, Ernest Willis said Thursday
it's the simple pleasures he's already come to appreciate.

"It's not the real big things," Willis said. "It's the small things
everybody takes for granted. And when that's taken away from you, it's
hard."

Life in the free world began sinking in for Willis, 59, whose capital
murder charges were dismissed earlier this week.

Pecos County authorities said they believed he wasn't involved in a
1986 house fire in which two sleeping women died. Prosecutors decided
not to re-try the case after a federal judge threw out his conviction
in July, saying authorities concealed evidence and needlessly drugged
him during his trial.

On Wednesday, Willis burst through the front doors of the Texas
Department of Criminal Justice Huntsville Unit, hopped down the steps
and into the embrace of his wife, Verilyn, before driving south toward
Houston.

The couple met on death row, where her brother was an inmate, and
married by proxy in 2000. But because death row prisoners are isolated,
Wednesday was the first time Willis and his wife touched.

According to the Washington-based Death Penalty Information Center,
Willis became the eighth Texas prisoner freed from death row since the
U.S. Supreme Court in 1976 allowed capital punishment to resume.

"We went shopping real quick," Willis said.

The former oilfield worker and native of Fairfield County, N.M., was so
embarrassed by how he looked in the prison-issue garb — an ill-fitting
plaid shirt and green pants — that he sent his wife into a store alone
to pick out some new duds.

"We didn't eat nothing until we got here," he said from Houston, where
the couple spent the night of their fourth anniversary at a hotel.
"About 10 p.m., we got room service — a big old greasy cheeseburger and
french fries. That's what I'd been hungry for for the past two weeks.

"The first time I laid down on the bed, I thought I was going to sink
plumb down to the floor. It was like heaven."

And very different from the 6-by-9-foot cell with the thin mattress
over a steel bunk, where breakfast may be served at 3 a.m. and where a
trip down the cell row to the shower involves being led in handcuffs by
officers.

"A hot bath — I hadn't had a bath in 18 years. It was all showers,"
Willis said. "And you don't have to hurry up and get out of the shower.
You can stay as long as you want to. It's great."

The only immediate plan was to accompany his wife back to her home in
Mississippi — and not return to Texas.

"I ain't going to look in the rearview mirror," he said. "When we cross
that state line, I won't look back. It's not because of the people here
in Texas. There's a lot of good people in Texas. It's the system.

"There's a lot of good people here in Texas that believe in the death
penalty but does not know anything about it. They need to educate
theirself about it. They need to start checking into some of these
cases and paying attention to what's really going on instead of just
believing what the prosecutor says.

"The system does not work."

Willis said a lone regret was not being able to say goodbye to all the
friends he left behind on death row.

"I'd like to say: So long for now, for everybody to hang in there. I'll
be praying for them," he said.