Sentenced to Death

Governor Gavin Newsom, Dear Governor Newson. The year the Compact diss was introduced, The year New Coke was launched, The year the UNI bomber killed his first victim, and too much less fanfare or infamy. The year Jarvis J. Masters was charged with conspiracy to commit murder of a corrections officer. This story ran in the Los Angeles Times December three of nineteen. Three inmates have been charged in the death of a San Quentin prison guard who was killed with

a makeshift spear last summer. The Marine County District Attorney's Office said. A spokesman said Andre Johnson twenty one, Jarvis J. Masters twenty three, and Lawrence Woodard thirty nine have been charged for conspiracy and murder with special circumstances in the death of Sergeant Howell Dean Birchfield. We're all convicted for

conspiracy to commit murder. Johnson was committed for sugety of conspiracy commit murder and the factual murder of original guard where was convicted of conspiracy commit murder, but as the leader of planning the murder, which wrote special circumstances to him because he planned it, it was his orders, so

he was convicted of that. When I was convicted of conspiracy and of sear bringing the weapon, and they never kept that weapon because they never found Jervis Masters, Andre Johnson, and Lawrence would were tried simultaneously before two separate juries, one for Masters and Wordard and the other for Johnson. Were you seated by your attorneys? You? I have two of them. I had Jeffrey wrote Wine on the right and Michael Satus on the other side, and we became

very very close. They understood my predicament and honestly were kind of stuff I was into where how stuck I am in this situation? And they said that the only way we can get you off of this man is that you have to tell your truth, and your truth is going to get a lot of people in trouble. You know, yeah, I said no, I seem like the gas chamber is a lot further away than exercise, are you know? So I said, no, that's not me. You can't go snitch. You know, people that they committed murder.

They'll kill you right there on that entercise, right there,

you're dead. In prison vernacular, snitches rats informants refer to inmates who cooperate with prison personnel by furnishing damaging information about other inmates, often in exchange for lighter sentences or some sort of payback monetary or otherwise allow One pair of notorious snitches in Orange County, California, who were rewarded with almost limitless taco bell runs for their information, I asked former San Quentin Warden Daniel Vasquez, what would have

happened if Jarvis were to cooperate with the police and snitch on his fellow inmates. They would they would retaliate against you and your family. They would kill you if they got that opportunity, or or killed your some of your family as well. Attorney, they will be there being threatened by the game members. They were being threatened. Yeah, they were being threatened, you know. They reported it. They

went into the back room and reported it. I don't know they did, but they did Mum saying that they couldn't represent me because they feel threatened, and that they will to represent me in an individual case without being connected to nobody. It's me by myself and they wouldn't do that. I asked Michael Satris, one of Jarvis's attorneys during the murder trial, if he remembered threats made to

the defense team. We had a whole hearing and everything about that where I think somebody was tape recording woods and would had made some threats to us. They would been sealed the hearing with it because I think we made a motion to withdraw or something because hey, we're in a conflict now. Yeah, remembers that, Yeah, And so there was all motion around that where all the evidence of the threat and everything that the tape recording thing was.

It was a matter of record. And then we because it had to do with the attorney client relationship that nobody else had an interest in, we had a sealed hearing where we talked about it with the judge. I think I start finding out Alice in trouble when I knew I felt trapped. I knew that I knew that I needed to tell the story about me. If I didn't tell a story about me, and if I did show a story about me, it was definitely gonna implicrate there.

So I'm thinking, Okay, if this goes any further, I'm not gonna be able to get out of this, you know, because if I try to get out of it, then if ilicate is going to implicate other people. And I'm saying, oh my god, yeah, this is this is not good here. You know this is not good. And I still thought up until I saw the d A making his case, he was finding things out that I never knew existed. And I'm looking at everybody saying, you know what's going

on here? And people were saying, man, this is none of your business. You know, this is none they you know, it's not you. They just trying to keep you here to snitch on other people. That's the only reason why they got you here, manage, because they got to use you to fetch all other people. So don't you worry about it. I always thought I was thinking out. I

really did. One major misconception about the death penalty is that it's a cost effective measure to get rid of the worst of the worst, Kill him quick and be through with it. Why waste our precious tax dollars to permit violent criminals to live out their natural lives in prison when the average execution costs less than a thousand dollars. But the truth of the matter is that it's far less expensive to imprison people for life without parole and

execute them. The arduous legal process costs more tax dollars, to the tune of seven hundred thousand to a million dollars to execute someone. The reason for this disparity is due to a bunch of factors. The state often pays expenses for both the prosecution and defense. Then there's the exorbitant costs associated with pre trial and trial of capital cases, more investigative costs, the cost of court personnel for protracted cases. It's even more expensive to house capital defendants as they

await their final goodbye. According to one study in two thousand nine, the average cost of keeping a death row inmate in prison during this lengthy process was forty seven thousand dollars per year, and as much as ninety dollars To put that in perspective. Jarvis was sentenced to death on July three, that equates to millions of California tax dollars for just one of the more than seven thirty

inmates on death row. Now, though Jarvis is a bit of an anomaly and that the average stay on death row prior to execution or exoneration is a mere fifteen years, but the math adds up to billions up next. Stanford Law professor Larry Marshall on the litany of failings in our capital punishment system, above and beyond the excessive costs. Stanford Law professor and informal advisor for Jervis's next appeal,

Larry Marshall on our country's broken capital punishment system. The issue of arbitrary nous, the issue of, beyond the racial part, who gets death and who doesn't is, as was called by the Supreme Court back in the seventies, a strike of lightning. And it seems terribly, terribly unsustainable to say that we are going to have that randomness in deciding who will live and who will die. Jail house informants, how many cases do we need to see? How many

scandals do we need to see? Until it's recognized that this is not a trustworthy form of evidence. These are people who are selling their testimony to the highest bidder, and sort of the issue that has become the dominant one in conversation about the death penalty arises. And I left it for last in my list intentionally because I don't want to make it sound like it's the only problem with the death penalty. But it's a huge, significant problem,

and that is the problem of innocence. That we have come to learn in the past couple of decades that the confidence that we used to have in our criminal justice system is unfounded. That as hard as we try, and this goes for capital punishment, non capital punishment, as hard as we try, profound errors are inevitable. That eyewitnesses, who we used to think were the gold standard of evidence, make terrible mistakes. Innocent mistakes, good faith mistakes, but they

make mistakes. And we know this because we can study that in laboratories, and we know that that's particularly true when you're talking about cross racial identification. We know that what we used to think was the case, which was that if somebody confess a crime, they must have done it, we now know from case after case after case that that simply is not true. That people scores hundreds of people have confessed to terrible crimes that we now know

they did not commit. Why did they confess, Well, often it's because they were subject to deep emotional uh psychological interrogation that led them to do that, perhaps because they thought they were going to be framed and the only way to avoid the harsher penalty would be to confess to the to to confess and hopefully get a deal through that. Some people, as I said, have mental illness that leads them to confess. But the idea that you wouldn't say you did it unless you did it has

now been discarded. There's no it's false. I know that that was the last case they heard on the pilly faced portion of it, and they gave me the death killty. Everybody thought I wasn't gonna get the death pilty because those guys didn't get it. How in the world can Jarvis get it? And he told you to was a sharper new weapon. Why do you think you got it? There's a legal explanation for it, and there's my explanation for it. I think illegal explanation holds work around. Though.

My old thing was that I didn't defend myself. I did not defend myself. I did not say where I was two weeks before that happened. I did not explain my activities, and I didn't do any of that, and I tied my best. Nothing that my attorney to do it. It was not my case, it was it was their case. It was not my case. I didn't have to not to worry about that's their stuff. Why would I worry about this? This don't happen them to do with me. These guys are in trouble, not me. How was my anitude? Uh?

Now their explanation is this that this jury became a professional jury. They use the word professional jury because when you first get jewels and they get elected, they fresh, they knew they are being guided by instructions. They're asked to listen to the evidence, and the evidence is how they come to some conclusion. But you educate them, you tell them the case, you explain what's going on, and how long they're gonna be there. I mean, they just so new. I mean they come from their jobs to

be here instead in a murder trial. Okay, when they came down the woodard being sentenced, they didn't know how to do it. They argue, amongst themselves. They got into these personal conflicts. They never was gonna give him the death pend. They was a hung jury once twice, I think was two hung juries. They just didn't get along and they were not you know, it became more out of you know, you disrespected me and you wanted me to vote this way. I'm not vote. You know. It

was one of those things. So when it came to me, they all said, okay, and this is really how it happened to let's get along, let's stop fighting, and it would go faster blah blah blah. So now they became professionals. They learned how to vote to execute somebody. They did it the right way. They didn't fight, They listened. They were more listening to each other. They were expecting each other's opinions, and by the time they took the vote,

they all were on the same page. They became professionals. They learned how to kill somebody, and that's not the kind of jury you want. Yeah, that's what happened before the penalty page. Do you remember the moment when you heard the jury come back and say guilty, Yeah, I did, I did, I did. I remember all the guards there was something about you can hear this chuckle. I finding, yes,

we got him. They were keeping themselves composed, but you know, they all you can hear this constant chuckle of their keys and belts and leather stuff. They all moved at the same time, all over the courtroom, you know. So it became real. It became real. It became real earlier that. But then it was like, okay, all right, Jay just found me guilty. Then when they went to the sentence phase, you came back and do you remember what they said? Did the jury stand up and the foreman tell you

what you were sentenced to? Yeah, they say, we recommend death something like that. This is gonna be crazy here. Yeah. Yeah, I was really messed up after that. I was really that was really messed up. I probably didn't show it, but um well they asked me to, and I looked in at magazine. I've seen that that book they had for Free Life and Relationship to Death. And then he really get this book, man, you know, and that's that's

started a whole another chapter of my life. Prior to being implicated in the capital crime, Jarvis remembers watching condemned prisoners walked by his cell and wondering what it would be like to walk in those ill fitted shoes for years. You know, I I was not on Death Row, but I was a saying Quentin, and I watched Death Row walk by myself many times because they were on the fifth tier and I was down on the fourth tier,

and so they were around me. And then I end up getting it and it was just like, this is not real. You know. You know how many times I walked across Death Row and I looked that people and they just looked like they were cattle or something. And I felt really bad because they were on death Road, and they always wanted to know what that feel like at night. The only thing that made the kind of light was that they have to go nowhere. You know. I was in the same sale uh new people all

up and down the chier. You know, I had been there a couple of years, so they didn't take me to this new unit or anything like that. You know, it kept me right where I was, So I just came back with a new sentence. Sentenced to death. Jarvis began writing about life on death Row early into a sentence. One person who he credits for teaching him and motivating him to write about his ordeal. Is Buddhist writer and teacher.

Susan Moon is someone I've been known for a long time, and she's a writer, and she's the editor of Turning Will that I got published in so many times when she visited me, I used to always learned from her plan. When I finally got that Bird has My Wings gun, she helped from the first page to the end. It was with Susan's guidance in that Jarvis won the prestigious Pen Literary Award for his unnerving poem entitled Recipe for

Prison and Pruno. Pruno, incidentally, is homemade fruit based fermented prison alcohol, also referred to as hooch rescue for pruno. Suthan Moose says, you know what, General, sucust do something. Let me write something and you write something that goes in between, and see what it sounds like. And I said, all right, let's do it. So when I went back to myself a few days later, I had got the order the transcripts that issued my death one, and I was looking at this and I was saying, wow, you

know these people got every sentence serious as hell. I said, wow, this is right. You know you will be put onto this. You will remain as saying Quentin until you put the death. And I'm thinking, and this is James Cagney type movie stuff, you know. So I looked at it and looked at it, and at the same time, I had a big old batch of puno under the bed. You know, it was ready to So I looked at both them and I said, you know what I will see if I can write

the same thing. Susan showed me how to do it right. So I took one. I took the transcripts off the court order, my def sence court order, and I knew how to make prono. So I wrote prono and I had the transcripts and I said, okay, this is how you make prono. And this is what you got now, this is how to see what students. You remember what Susan Moon did, right, thisn't that? And you give and I started reading. I said, well this is pretty good. I did this and I did that. I said, oh man,

this is starting to scare me. Now. You know, I'm getting ready to get executed and I need a drink in. Actor and social rights activist Danny Glover read Jarvis's award winning poem and it can mention called doing time organized to celebrate prison writers. Here he is intertwined with Jarvis's own recitation of recipe for prison Pruno recipe for prison

pun ten peel auntists Jarvis masters. It is the judgment and sentence of this court one eight hour bowl of food contail that the charge information was true, squeezed fruit into a small plastic bag, and the jury, having previously on said days and put the juice along with this mesh inside, found that the company showed be death at sixteen ounces of water and seal the bag typing at this court, having on August twenty placed the bag in your sink, then find your motion for a new trial,

and heated with hot running water for fifteen minutes. It is the order of this court that you've suffered death. Wrapped howels around the bag to keep it warm for fermentation sand penalty to be inflicted within the walls of San Quentin. Stashed the bag in your cell undisturbed for forty eight hours, at which place you shall be put to death when the time elapsed in the manner described by law. At forty to sixty cubes of white sugar. The day lated to be fixed by the court and

warrant of execution six TEA schools of catch up. You are recommended to the custody of the Warden of San Quentin, and he taken for thirty minutes to be held by him, pending finally secured the bag has done before determination of your appeal and stashed the bag undisturbed for seventy two hours,

repeat daily for fifteen minutes. It witnessed there after seventy two hours, I have here on set my hand as judge of the Superior Court, with the spoils skim off the mash, and I have caused the seal of this court to be a fixed there to pour the remaining portion into eight god mercy have learned. So California State Prison, same king. Would Danny be saying one verse of it and I'll be saying the other? Huh? I would love Danny to be making a prono, but logically it doesn't fit.

But I was just cracking a joke to seeing Danny, you know, making prono and the Selle Danny Glover that is very you had sixty seconds remaining so annoying. We start talking and it gets all interrupted constantly all the time. I do not like that lady. Yeah, and she's been

on my nerves. As we were wrapping the production of this episode, I received an email notification from the Supreme Court of California regarding Jarvis's habeas corpus appeal, and it read notice of forthcoming opinion to be filed in three days. So the untenable weight is over. I asked Jarvis how he is feeling about the outcome. The greatest fear I could ever imagine, walking out of here after all these years, looking looking for where I belong in this big old place.

Will the court reaffirm Jervis's death sentence, exhausting his final state appeal. Next week we'll bring you the news and what that will mean for the future of Jarvis's life. Today's episode was written and produced by Donna Fazzari and myself, Corny Cole. Our theme song sentenced as compliments of the band stick Figure from the 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. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. A bak