'I survived death row in Texas - this is my message for Manchester's prisoners'

Clinton Young was 19-years-old when he was convicted of killing two people.At an age when most are making their first steps into adult life, his days were a grim countdown.

As a convicted murderer in Texas, Young was sentenced to death. Almost his entire adult life has been spent waiting for the day of execution.

Then something remarkable happened that would make him one of an extremely lucky few. He was just eight days from being executed when new evidence emerged that threw doubt upon his guilt.

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Weeks ago, after 18 years living in its shadow, Clinton Young, escaped death row.A court ruled that he was denied a fair trial, and vacated his conviction. It means he faces a new trial, where he will argue his innocence.

Following the international campaign to secure a new trial, the 38-year-old spoke with the M.E.N's Saffron Otter about what it's like to be a condemned man in that most notorious of places - a maximum-security prison in America's Deep South.

“In there, everything is so canned up, you only get what a person shows you,” Clinton says. He's talking about life on death row, at Texas' Allan B. Polunsky Unit.

“What you’d learn about a person in a few days on the outside would take two or three months in there," he continues. A lot of people put on a false face, everyone is trying to be Mr. Tough Guy, no one wants to show weaknesses so you don’t really get to see a person and the full complexity of their nature.”

He added: “The sad truth of it is that it [execution] happens so much you get numb to it, sometimes we’ll be sitting and talking and someone will say, ‘hey where is so and so?’