Bloody Murder

murder and sentenced to death row. The reason why I end up getting death row is because I didn't try to defend myself. I thought that these guys are in trouble, not me, you know. Oh hell no, I won't try to defend myself. I say it to my lawyers. You could not say anything because this is to do with us. Do don't have nothing to do with us because these guys they already know I didn't do it, Parry, No

I did. Those don't worry about it. Then if I if I get involved in their business, they don't get mad at me, and they may try to do something to me, you know. And these guys are telling modern lawyers this is none of you guys business, this of us. He knows. We know Jarleston doing everyone knows Jarvis wasn't involved. I mean, we had no idea. The murder happened on

the second tier right below me. That with the south block in C section on the fourth tier and sell to light above the office area before tears up of the guards. They said that I sharpened the weapon and sent it down to the guy who then made it into a poll and spared the guard. That's how they

explained my involvement in it. When they got the opportunity, they had prepared what we referred to as they San Quentin spear, which is a newspapers and magazines that are rolled very very tightly into a shaft, so tight and so heavy that if it hits you on the head, it would leave a boat under head. Daniel Vasquez was warden and chief executioner in charge of San Quentin Security Housing Unit when Sergeant Birchfield was murdered in nineteen Here he is reflecting on his memory of the crime. They

had saw it off. I don't know how they did that, but they saw off a piece of the bunk and they fashioned it into a spear spear point and they attached it to this uh shaft, you know, magazines and newspapers, and they stabbed him through the cell bars. They hit him in the heart. Jervis's memory on the night of the murder, I remember hearing the alarm. It's the alarming

side set. He was right there that we all heard alarm in the morning, and um, it only was a few more hours before daylight left thinking one I think one guard came up. I was walking his tears and they said he passed away. Have you known Sergeant brush Field before he died? You know, I've seen him a lot. You know what, I've seen him a lot. I don't think I never we never got at you any words. No, I he worked in that unit. And had you known that that there was a conspiracy that was being coordinated

to kill him? Were you aware of that? No? I wasn't a part of any of that. There was a lot of violence. There was a lot of violence and sad quitn at that time. Can you speak to the Black Guerrilla Family because I know that they ultimately were a signed with masterminding it. Who were they and what was your association with them? I do not want to

speak about there, Okay, okay. According to court, documents. This case involved a conspiracy by members of the prison gang known as the Black Guerrilla Family to assault and kill San Quentin prison staff and ultimately to foment war with

the other prison gangs. The conspiracy culminated in the murder of Sergeant Birchfield, Black Guerrilla member, prison snitch and witness for the state, Rufus Willis provided prosecutors with incriminating notes also known as prison kites, confirmed to be in the handwriting of Jarvis. Jarvis wrote the kite for Rufus, which ultimately implicated him. Why do you think he did that? Do you have a theory? I don't know that he did.

Jeffrey Rockline, lead defense attorney for Jarvis's murder trial. That was a big issue during during the trial. Weren't certain about that. I think we took a position at the trial that he wrote it, but he was asked basically to copy somebody else's information onto what they call a kite, you know, a note. Jarvis on his involvement in the prison kite. What got me in trouble was the fact that I copy a note what we call a kite a prison for someone who was involved in the in

the murder. He was deeply involved. He was one of the ones who made a deal with law enforcement, and law enforcement said, hey, if you go down there and you get something in Master's hand, right, we will promise you that you know another dame prison. So he says me a no, and he says, I need you to copy this because us I don't want it in my handwriting.

And two things hit me before I said yes. The first thing was that I was not in good standing with the group because toldy against what they were thinking about, and I was just for sure what they decided what they were thinking about, you know. Secondly, the online signed it was because I wanted to know what it said. I was just plenty four year okay or something like that, and a guard had just been killed and he's given

me the right to copy something. Now. To me, that was a privilege to me, and my way of thinking that was like, Wow, he trusts me to do this, He trusts me to all this stuff, and for me to keep my mouth shit about it. I thought it was a privilege. I thought it was a good idea. I thought he he chose me because he trusted me more than anyone else. What did he have me right.

It was the full toil of everything that happened. Four detail is everything that happened, from the way it was decided, from the planning, from the weapon being moved from one place to another, the whole BBC all the way up to the DEATHO Sergeant first Field up next Jarvis on what would compel him to copy the kites of another inmate. Marine County Superior Court Judge Lynn Drury was appointed as referee to review questions raised in jarvis Master's habeas petition.

At the thirteen day hearing, the referee heard expert testimony from a prominent and esteemed forensic linguist, Dr Robert Leonard, who argued that the kites that had been used against Jarvis had been authored by someone other than Jarvis. He said, quote the language of the kites, admittedly copied by Jarvis, were not congruent with spelling and laying which he used in numerous other notes and letters at the time. In other words, they were copied by Jarvis verbatim from the

actual author. After hearing Dr Leonard's expert testimony, the referee conceded that his evidence was compelling. Jarvis maintains that copying kites in prison was commonplace for inmates back then. So I asked warden Vasquez, is it common practice that that inmate copy kites for other inmates copy kites? Yes, and and also passed them to the other inmates. It could

be It could be either way. Either the the inmate who originator of the kite, you know, would have it uh delivered to the inmate he intended to have it delivered too, or you know, sometimes uh an inmate would copy it. How did they pass the kite? How does one kite get from one cell to another? It's usually done by what they call a fish line. You know, they'll they'll have a way of you know, swinging through the seal bar and and having it sitched out to

the next inmate. Is that why it's called the kite because it has a fish line? No, No, it's just it's just called the kite because it's a it's an unofficial communication between inmates, and for some reason, they've always called it a kite. What our copy was that? Um? He said that I was a good member of the game. And when I read that then I thought, wow, he really trust me, because he said I lived up to my part and you know, I was thinking straight up,

good soldier. And you know, when I read that part, I just felt like, Wow, he's really supporting, he's really caring about me. I honestly thought that the reason why he asked me to copy it was because he trusts me. And the comments he wrote in there was He even said, when you read this, you'll see that I'm giving you major props. So that shows you how much I care about, how much I like you. I'm giving you major problems.

And I felt, wow, you know, I mean I was I was like, I was like the happiest guy to be join this for someone who had all the information of what just happened. He could have given it anybody to you know, it was not like, you know, it was a food for me to copy. Anybody would copy that thing because everybody wanted to know exactly what happened. Everyone wanted to know the details, and he gave me

a chance to earn the details. Anyway. I didn't know he had already made a deal with law enforcement and they sent him up there to get a note copy from me, a detailed note. He was smart enough to write the note, write the detail, and get me to copy it. Because I copied it. I copied it, and he turns it in to the law enforcement, and that's the physical effidence they have against me. I was stupid. I didn't know. I was totally on a whole another

different page than what his intentions were. I had no idea what was happening. But that said, that said, everybody who was accused thought of rumored about. We're taken out of that unit and placed in solitary confinement and the adjustment center. And when the adjustment center was filled up, they sent them to Folsom State Prison to isolate them. They took a hole tire everybody in that area, anyone

they thought was involved in it. They took out of that building and placed them in solitary confinement, deep in the whole. Some places, they were so deep you can barely hear the other guy. It was hollowed. He was behind not just one door, but another door and then another door. You were isolated completely. They took everyone out, but they left me there. The man who posts had

a sharpened the weapon. The guy who posts they had assented down to Johnson, the guy who's supposed to have wrote a plan, a detailed plan of everything that happened, everything that happened from A to Z in my handwriting, and left me in that same cell. They left me in that self for six months. And this guy supposed to be the bad dude keep sposed to be the one that start thempments, who were ready to kill guards, who was ready to attack guards any minute now. They

yet they left me in that same sound. They let me go to the yard that in that note that they said it was planning that. They let me go to the commissary, They let me get my visits, They let me walk among the guards, They let me shower on a cheer. In fact, they did nothing that they didn't give to the rest of the population. Two people, three hundred people in that building. I was among everybody.

I went to the yard with everybody. Their whole response to that type that I copied to them believing that I shop in the weapon that Joe the guard, And who's to say that I was going to sharpen more weapons to kill more guards. They put in their guards in jeopardy to think that I even sharpen the weapon, to believe our sharpen the weapon. Why do you think it took six months for them too? Because They knew that was the guy who told me that to copy the note. They knew it was a copy not They

had no intentions on charging me. They had no intentions of putting me involved in that. They had none if they had one eye, Oh, the intentions of believing that those knights that I sharpened and I don't blow in that July, I'll belong in a dungeon. I am just as Jukie asked the guy who did it. Jarvis said that for six months following the death of Sergeant haliburch Field, he had zero reason to believe or even consider that he was under suspicion for participating in the conspiracy to

commit murder. I asked how it was that he finally found out that the powers that be intended to prosecute him. When he finally fell charges, I was watching t V and my face appeared on television. I said, oh shit, you know, you know, we interrupt this program to say we are charging you know, and I'm looking at me and me looking at I. It was not a good thing. Wow. Yeah, So that's how I know. I mean, I never I was never part of the dragnet. You know. I was

never part of the interviews. I was never were part of being transferred to another unit, being suspect for another unit, and myself searched as if I was. You know, you you're accusing the sharpen the weapon, and they don't search yourself. They don't send you trthology confinement right they did any more else. I knew those guys is in a lot of trouble. You know. I feel sorry for them, you know, I feel sorry for the old scene and next ago, I'm looking at me on TV and I'm saying, Wow,

what the hill's going on? When that morning they came and got me and threw me in a dungeon. Sergeant Perchfield was stabbed in the heart in the hallway of the second tier of the Carson Section of San Quentin. The so called c Section. Court papers say this occurred two stories beneath Jarvis, a cell, right outside the cell of Andre Johnson, the man accused of the actual murder. The weapon, the metal shift that the investigator said was

constructed from the bedpost, was never recovered. I wish they would have found that weapon because that weapon would have been my way out of here. I really believe if they found that weapon, I would not been charged from her. It's because they did not find it. They got me

in trouble. I that's my belief. If they found the actual weapon, then they would have known somehow, fingerprints, something, anything, would have said that it was not me that sharpen anything, because you're sharpen it on the floor if you're going sharpen it. And why didn't they go in myself and

see if myself had any scrapes on it. Well, here's the thing, this is my always felt if they would have found that weapon, they could have took the grooves off that weapon and compared it to whatever group that they may have seen me scratching it our sharpen it on the floor. M I mean, that was my way out because I knew that was not going to happen that way. But they don't know where it's at. And now.

An open letter to Governor Newsom from Michael Satras, one of the attorneys that represented Jarvis in the late nineteen eighties throughout the murder trial that sent him to death row. Dear Governor Newsom, You're moratorium on executions in California reflects the reality that there is no right person for the state to kill but Jarvis is inestimably the wrong person, singled out among the many charged defendants and uncharged co conspirators to avenge the murder of Sergeant Birchfield in the

bowels of San Quentin. Jarvis was a pawn in the game, even under the prosecution's theory of his guilt, neither the actual killer nor the shot caller. Most ironic is that at the time the judgment of death was pronounced upon him, Jarvis was also the only one who had demonstrably reformed and changed himself, maturing from a sullen and angry young revolutionary gang member into a thoughtful and caring individual who had gained insight into himself and the world around him,

as well as a measure of peace and understanding. I know this because I was appointed as his counsel shortly after the capital charges were lodged against him, and literally stood at his side more than three years later in June, when the judge imposed the death penalty upon him, encouraging him to express himself in writing, develop his spirituality, and examine and reflect upon himself at the world around him, his eyes and years and soul open to the world

both within him and without him, he soaked up all that positive and expansive outflow like a sponge, so that in the most unlikely circumstances of fighting for his life from the deepest hole in which the state could bury him,

his humanity flowered. I have kept in touch with Jarvis over the many years since then, periodically seeing him and reading his books and talking to his supporters, and know that he has steadfastly maintained and enlarged upon his rehabilitation and pro social ways to become the remarkable human being

that he is today. One can only wonder who Jarvis would have become had the state not used all its resources to imprison him as a teenager and thereafter employed the machinery of death against him, but instead had deployed those resources in the name of his life at the outset, addressing all the childhood trauma, deprivation, violence, oppression, and neglect

that was his unique experience growing up. Unquestionably, Jarvis is the wrong person to execute, as the doubt of his guilt that lingered at the time of judgment has only gathered and grown stronger over the decades as exonerating evidence

and recantations accumulated. Ultimately the evidence is too uncertain and changeable to support the weight of a judgment as certain and final as death, and has grown irresistibly stronger in favor of life every day of the thirty five years I have known Jarvis, respectfully submitted Michael Sattris next week an epic five year trial that would end in the death conviction for Jarvis and why he thinks he got the death sentence when the other two inmates, also accused

in the conspiracy, were given life without the possibility of pearl. Today's episode is written and produced by Donna Fazzari and myself Corny Cole. Our theme song sentenced as complements of the band stick Figure from that album Set in Stone. Stu Sternboch Is composed the original music. Nate Defort did

the sound design. Visit Free Jarvis dot org to find out more about Jarvis's case and to sign your name to our Dear Governor Newsom petition and if you have questions for Jarvis, please leave a message on our hotline at two zero one nine zero three thirty five seventy five. That's two zero one nine zero three thirty five seventy five. Dear Governor Newsom is a production of i heart Media

and three Months Media. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.