Johnnie Lindsey is clad in navy pajamas, resting up to play his beloved keyboard for what could be the last time.

Music has always been his connection to life, first as a kid in the church choir and then during the 26 years he spent in prison for a crime that DNA tests later proved he didn’t commit. And now, not quite a decade since he was released from prison, in hospice as liver cancer takes over his body.

Doctors say he doesn't have much time left. Lying in bed, Johnnie, 65, talks of “fighting back with all I’ve got.”

Sherita Lindsey, wife of Johnnie Lindsey, a Dallas County exoneree who spent 26 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit, quietly cries while embracing her husband as he rests at their home in Dallas on Tuesday. Lindsey is in hospice at his home and is dying of liver cancer. (Rose Baca / Staff Photographer)

The will is there; the strength is not.

“I want to do more, but I can’t,” Johnnie says later, his usual sing-song booming voice dulled by medications and disease. “I’m satisfied.”

He hopes to play “You Are So Beautiful,” the Joe Cocker version. Johnnie didn’t learn to play piano until after he was released in 2008. A piano was the first thing he bought with his $2.2 million payout from the state for his wrongful conviction.

Johnnie was wrongly arrested at age 30 after a series of rapes in the early 1980s at White Rock Lake. He’d previously spent three years in prison for robbery after a series of bad decisions that began when he was a student at Southern Methodist University on a track scholarship. That prison stint probably made him an easy target when police saw him at the lake after one of the attacks. He was working at a commercial laundry and had stayed out of trouble — until police picked up the wrong man.

He was freed in 2008, but not before he was diagnosed with colon cancer in prison and nearly died. He was healthy until a doctor found a mass on his liver in August.

His life is the stuff movies and TV shows are made of. He was featured in an episode of an Investigation Discovery show in 2009 called Dallas DNA. A documentary, True Conviction, that debuted last year at the Tribeca Film Festival highlighted the work of Johnnie and two other exonerees investigating possible wrongful convictions. CBS is also developing a fictional TV show based on the three men.

Johnnie Lindsey, a Texas exoneree who spent 26 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit, laughs with Dorothy Budd, author of Tested: How Twelve Wrongly Imprisoned Men Held Onto Hope, at his home in Dallas on Jan. 24, 2018. Lindsey is in hospice at his home for liver cancer and is one of the men featured in the book. (Rose Baca / Staff Photographer)

Johnnie says the end of his life comes with "no regrets." Life after his release in prison was difficult as he tried to adjust to a changed world and family. He has often said he has not been bitter about the time he lost, choosing instead to make the most of what he had.

But his family can't help feeling that he's being cheated once again — first by the justice system and now by cancer.

"He lost so much, but I think he did everything he wanted," said his sister, Pearline Waldrop. "He certainly lived a life."

‘He’s got a lot of favorite people’

His wife, Sherita, flutters in and out of the room. She makes sure guests aren’t standing on the tube carrying oxygen to his nose. She encourages him to take a sip of water. She reminds him of the importance of keeping his legs elevated.

Cancer is affecting his kidneys. His legs and feet are swollen, probably a sign that his organs are starting to fail.

Relatives and friends flocked to the Lindseys’ house in the Buckner Terrace neighborhood of Dallas after he entered hospice under the care of his wife, his sister who flew in from Washington, D.C., and nurses who come and go.

Johnnie Lindsey rests at home in Dallas. He's under home hospice care and is dying of liver cancer. (Rose Baca / Staff Photographer)

They talk about good times and hope as jazz drifts into the bedroom while the Jaguars lose to the Patriots on mute in the other room.

Sherita momentarily lounges on the four-poster bed, not really taking a break. Just sitting down to care for Johnnie.

“He’s got a lot of favorite people,” Sherita says of those who’ve stopped by. “A lot of people praying.”

A cousin brings a minister by and they pray with Sherita and Johnnie. They pray for healing and they pray for strength. Then they recite the 23rd Psalm, partially from memory, partially with the help of an iPhone.

... Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me ...

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

Johnnie Lindsey plays the keyboard at his home in Dallas. (Rose Baca / Staff Photographer)

‘Give unconditionally’

The prayer appears to relax him. He quits fiddling with the bottom button of his pajama top that keeps coming undone.

Happiness in his life, he says, has come when he was not selfish.

“I just wanted a difference in other people’s lives,” he says. “Whether it’s a big change or a little change. If I could change somebody’s life, that’s what I did.”

He donated keyboards to his piano teacher so she could teach students at a church. He testified before the Legislature about criminal justice reform. Along with two fellow exonerees, he investigated other possible wrongful conditions and sentences that seemed too long for the crime. When a man was released from prison because of questions about his conviction, Johnnie sang the Sam Cooke song "A Change Is Gonna Come" at the grave of the man's mother.

She had died while he was locked up, and he had missed the funeral.

“The best part, I guess, is I wasn’t looking for nothing in return. I just liked helping other people,” Johnnie says.

“Give unconditionally.”

Johnnie Lindsey (far left), a Texas exoneree who spent 26 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit, visited Saturday with fellow exonerees Christopher Scott (middle) and Thomas McGowan (foreground, right) at Lindsey's home in Dallas. (Rose Baca / Staff Photographer)

He's still thinking about others even after a nurse on Saturday tells him to take medication more frequently for the pain in his right side.

Christopher Scott, who was wrongly convicted of a Dallas murder, and Johnnie sit next to each other on the couch. They tell a fellow exoneree, Thomas McGowan, and attorney Michelle Moore about a case they've been working on. Michelle helped free several Dallas County exonerees, who now number more than 30.

Christopher mostly fills in the details and Johnnie closes his eyes and listens, chiming in every so often. As talk turns to the merits of the argument for overturning the man's conviction, Johnnie chimes in: "It's a good case. A good case, if there ever was one."

Johnnie fist-bumps Christopher and smiles before leaning back and closing his eyes.

He's packed a lot into life since his release.

He got out in time to spend time with his mother before she died, see his daughter get married and meet his three grandkids. His daughter is expecting her second child, a boy, in March.

“I found love,” Johnnie says of Sherita.

“I put my little charm down,” he says, smiling and laughing softly. “She liked me and I liked her.”

They were married in June 2013 and then honeymooned in Jamaica.

1 / 5Johnnie Lindsey left the 292nd District Court a free man in 2008. He spent 26 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit. Lindsey is flanked by Dr. John Stickels and attorney Michelle Moore.(File Photo / The Dallas Morning News) 2 / 5Johnnie Lindsey shakes hands with then-Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins, after Lindsey was declared a free man in 2008. (File Photo / The Dallas Morning News) 3 / 5Johnnie Lindsey (seated center), at Metroplex Piano with owner Darren Speir (top left) and Debbie Beach in 2014. Lindsey gave some of the money he received from the state of Texas for his wrongful conviction to Beach to purchase instruments for a music school she was starting. (Evans Caglage / Staff Photographer) 4 / 5Exoneree Johnnie Lindsey hugged Dorothy Budd, author of Tested: How Twelve Wrongly Imprisoned Men Held Onto Hope, alongside fellow exonerees Steven Phillips (left) and Christopher Scott before a screening of True Conviction, a documentary film featuring the three men, at Alamo Drafthouse in Dallas last March.(Rose Baca / Staff Photographer) 5 / 5Exonerees Johnnie Lindsey (right) and Christopher Scott watched a screening of True Conviction last March.(Rose Baca / Staff Photographer)

Money problems

Sherita has more to worry about than Johnnie's care and what will happen in the coming days.

Like all Texas exonerees, part of Johnnie's payout from the state for his wrongful conviction comes in monthly checks. Payments are scheduled to continue throughout the exoneree's typical life expectancy. But if they die, the money stops.

Johnnie could have opted to take less each month from the check and have it set aside for Sherita. But he didn't because that would have meant less money each month and it was unclear to several exonerees what happens to the money if a spouse dies first or if there's a divorce.

Soon, Sherita won't have an income unless the state changes the law.

"The state is cutting off money that is supposed to be theirs," Sherita said. "The wives have to go on, and some have kids."

But for Sherita, that's a problem that will have to wait.

Michelle Moore, the attorney who helped exonerate Johnnie Lindsey gave him a back rub at his home in Dallas on Saturday. (Rose Baca / Staff Photographer)

A love song

On a recent day, when the house was full of visitors, Johnnie sat at the keyboard and played.

“It was beautiful,” says Pearline, who clutches her hands to her chest as if in prayer. “The house was filled with music.”

But "You Are So Beautiful" just wouldn’t come to him.

“I wasn’t feeling it in my head,” Johnnie says the next day, as his pet chihuahua, Cisco, stands on his lap. “I can’t believe I played at all. I don’t know where I got the energy.”

He sits at the keyboard again, dressed in a gray robe, the oxygen tube trailing behind him. He plays a few notes and presses buttons so synthesized music accompanies him.

“I just can’t hear it,” he says.

Later, he dozes on the couch and Sherita cries quietly as she kisses him lightly and presses her forehead against his shoulder.

She pats his chest as he clutches a black cherry wood cross, a gift from a friend.

Sherita closes her eyes and walks out the back door to cry alone.

“You Are So Beautiful” is always seen as a song about a great love.

And it is. But for Johnnie, it is a song about life and all that it brings.

You're everything I hope for

You're everything I need

You are so beautiful to me

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Correction: Story corrected at 12:30 p.m. to correct Pearline Waldrop's last name.

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