ABC24 is bringing you an updated story of redemption and taking advantage of a second chance.
After a pardon by Gov. Bill Lee made Memphian Charles Hall a free man, he's using that second chance to inspire change and lead at-risk youth down a different path away from crime.
When Hall spoke exclusively with ABC24 in February 2022, he promised people will hear about him and all the stuff will be good stuff when he's released.
Now a free man in Memphis, Hall is keeping that promise as he plans to launch a program to help young people shine and avoid a similar path to his own youth that cost him more than 50 years without his freedom.
"I am a living example of 'don't ever give up,'" Hall said.
His appreciation still shines, two years after the Memphian unexpectedly became a free man.
"I just want to do the right thing, and I want to help somebody else to get on the right track to do the right thing," Hall said.
ABC24 first caught up with Hall in 2022 at Northwest Correctional Complex, after Gov. Lee pardoned him.
"It didn't kick in right there — I was overwhelmed, I was excited, I was in disbelief," Hall said in 2022.
"It took me a long time to really realize the damage that I was doing to the people that I hurt like my victims, my family," Hall added.
He's now turning that past regret into future, positive action.
"Crime has gotten real bad now, we got people doing stuff that just really doesn't make sense to me," Hall said.
That frustration is why the 75-year-old plans to launch a new program for at-risk young people in Memphis.
"We want to start recruiting people on this level to be an example to the other kids," Hall said.
The program will tentatively be called "Do The Right Thing." Hall wants to start small in the Bluff City's most crime challenged neighborhoods and is recruiting volunteers with similar stories of struggle and redemption to resonate.
"I have some things I want to say and I can talk to these people on a level where they understand," Hall said, "I just wish I had someone back then who could have turned me around."
"He can speak to that authentically to teenagers, which I think is huge," Colonial Park UMC Director of Outreach Amy Emerson said.
Emerson is helping Hall get his vision off the ground.
"He's spent the majority of his life in prison and to realize that he does have a second lease on life and he can do something productive and wants to do something productive and is insistent on doing something productive, encouraging," Emerson added.
While the specifics and details of his program remain in their infant stages, Hall's focus to inspire change is "laser focused."
"Governor Lee — if this message gets to him — I really appreciate him doing what he did to let me out of prison, and I promise then that I wouldn't disappoint him.," Hall said. "I promised him then that I would come here and try to do something as far as these kids and this crime and stuff that's going on in Memphis."
Tuesday, May1, Hall and other advocates will take part in an anti-gun violence forum at Colonial Park UMC. This evening event is said to give him a first chance to lay out his goals for change to the broader community.