PROUDFLESH: A New Afrikan Journal of Culture, Politics & Consciousness

Steve Champion a.k.a. Adisa Kamara

Preface

Tom Kerr

The eleven essays collected here for Proud Flesh are part of Steve Champion’s unpublished memoir, One Day Deep: Meditations on Death Row. Adisa has been living on Death Row in San Quentin for 24 years, writing poetry and essays for most of that time. He was mentor, friend, and co-author of Stanely “Tookie” Williams, who was executed by the State of California on December 13, 2005. (Williams writes about his relationship with Adisa in his 2004 memoir, Blue Rage, Black Redemption: A Memoir.) Adisa and his friend, Anthony Ross, carry on the political and humanitarian work they begun with Tookie in the 90s--the three men worked together in a tight-knit study group for many years--in their inspirational pamphlets, such as “The Ninth Ground” (co-authored by Williams) and “The Making of an O. G.: Transcending Gang Mentality” and in their individual writing http://faculty.ithaca.edu/tkerr/pamphlets/.

Adisa received honorary mention in the short fiction category in the 1995 Pen Prison Writing Contest and in 2004 he won first place in nonfiction for his essay, “His Spirit Lives On: George E. Marshall” (which is included in his memoir). He is coauthor of Afterlife, a Death Row anthology published in 2003; and he has poetry featured in the book Voices From The Inside. An excerpt from One Day Deep was published in Maxim magazine (May 2005).

You can hear Adisa read a message about his memoir and hear him read his and Anthony Ross’s memorial poems for Tookie Williams at: http://faculty.ithaca.edu/tkerr/adisa/ and http://faculty.ithaca.edu/tkerr/steveandtony/

Adisa welcomes correspondence; you may write him at the following address:

Steve Champion, C-58001,
San Quentin State Prison,
San Quentin, California 94974

Tom Kerr, Ph.D.*; Assistant Professor of Writing and Rhetoric, Department Of Writing, Ithaca College, Ithaca, NY 14850

*I began working as Steve Champion’s editor in the spring of 2003, when Steve corresponded with a writing class of mine focused on the prison industrial complex and the Critical Resistance movement formed to oppose it.

Table of Contents

Cycle of Incarceration
The Cage
Geography of Death Row
J-Cat
I Dream the Same Dream Everyday
Why (Not) Me?
Lamentations
Prison Is Designed To Dehumanize You
Attorney/Client Relationship: Who Has The Final Say?
America's Violence and Capital Punishment
The Anatomy of a Political Prisoner

Cycle of Incarceration

January 2002 marked my twenty-first year in prison and my twentieth year on Death Row at San Quentin. When I look at the faces of men on Death Row, I know each of them has a story that begins long before they arrived on the row. Their stories, and mine, begin at home, in the community, in the schools, and with our first contact with the police. Most of the guys on Death Row had contact with the police long before coming to prison, so it's unlikely Death Row is the first jail they have slept in.

It was during my first year in prison that I realized if I wanted to understand the cycle of incarceration it was important for me to go back to the beginning. Ending up on Death Row was not the result of a single mishap, not in my case. Instead it was the result of a long string of failures which, in all likelihood, could have been prevented with proper intervention. From juvenile hall to state prison, with gang life in between, my criminal evolution received vital fuel at every stage. I became a social pathogen. The penal institutions perpetuated “the criminal mentality” and provided me with all the nutrients criminal behavior feeds on. I became conditioned to a life of crime, conditioned to violence, conditioned to return time and time again to the facilities I tried so hard to stay away from. Believe me, there wasn't a single thing I liked about going to jail, and every time I found myself locked up I pondered the same question over and over: why do I keep coming back?

My first Christmas in juvenile hall was downright awful. It's the worst time of year to be there. Homesickness is epidemic. I felt empty, as if someone had scooped out my insides. Even the visit from my mother didn't do much to cheer me up. I desperately searched for a way to escape but couldn't find one. All I could do was sit in my hollow room alternating between reading comic books and gazing out the thick Plexiglas window that separated me from freedom. A lot of kids tried to escape, and many made it over the 20 foot wall. Some kids made themselves sick by swallowing shampoo so they could be transferred to the outside hospital and escape from there. Some kids escaped from the van going to and from court, but most kids escaped from juvenile hall. Sooner or later, they were all recaptured. I never escaped because I didn’t know how and, in any case, felt I wouldn’t be in too long.

Juvenile hall was not created to rehabilitate juveniles. It was built to warehouse them like a barn warehouses animals before they are carted off to the slaughterhouse. And although I didn't suffer the same gruesome fate as such animals, I did suffer a psychological death, with ramifications that affected my behavior well into adulthood.

In Los Angeles, the various juvenile halls included Los Padrinos, Eastlake, Wayside and Slymar. If you got detained by the courts you could be shipped back and forth to any one of these halls until your next scheduled court date, which could be months away. All the time you spent sitting in juvenile hall waiting to go to court was considered dead time, which meant if you got sentenced to Camp or the California Youth Authority (CYA) the time spent in the hall did not count.

Juvenile hall was a microcosm of the city that surrounded it: every ethnic group was represented. Most kids hung out with their own ethnic group but we still talked to whomever we wanted, so the exchange of criminal information was not impeded. I would talk for hours with other juves about burglary techniques as freely as students exchanged crib notes. This exchange, and being brought into contact with kids who were experts at stealing credit cards, money orders, boosting, tilt-tapping and other crimes contributed to heightening my criminal activity. I didn't know any kid who left the hall not thinking he was a smarter and more sophisticated criminal.

In juvenile hall we dressed in khakis pants, sweat shirts and tennis shoes. The idea was to create uniformity and destroy individual identity. It also served a deterrent purpose; in case of escape, the uniform would stand out like a sore thumb, making capture easier. The people who ran the day-to-day program at juvenile hall were called counselors. But “counselor” was merely a polite euphemism for guard. And though they dressed in their personal clothing to give the impression they were more like social workers, their attitudes were just like those of the cops that arrested me. I never called them counselors since they were nothing like the counselors I knew at school. The counselors at school never threatened me like the counselors at juvenile hall, whose philosophy was strict and clear: obey, behave, capitulate, or suffer the consequences. And the consequences were either loss of privileges, hog-tying, solitary confinement, or an ass kicking.

Most juvenile halls functioned on a merit system in which we got points for participating in all sorts of activities and for good behavior. Each week we were allowed to use our points to purchase candy bars, popcorn and other items from the unit store. Guys who scored the highest points were appointed to be messengers. Messengers got extra perks like first dibs on the extra food and permission to stay in the day room and watch TV when everyone else was locked in their rooms. A messenger’s job was to escort other juveniles and clean the counselors’ office, which gave them access to cigarette butts. To guys who smoked this was a big deal. Messengers automatically got extra points so they stayed on top of the point list. Whenever we went anywhere we had to line up military fashion in two adjacent lines with two messengers in front, two in the rear. Messengers were usually guys who knew the ropes and had been in the hall for a long time or guys who were coming in and out of the hall, so that counselors knew them on a first name basis.

I played plenty of sports in juvenile hall: basketball, baseball, football and weight lifting. It was fun and passed the time. But all the sports and other activities did not mitigate the brutality existing beneath the surface of the place. The term "sexual abuse” was first introduced into my consciousness at juvenile hall. Kids were regularly being sexually abused by other kids and counselors. Counselors had access to our records so they knew which juveniles admitted to being gay. And they went after them with gusto. At night everyone was locked inside his room so any counselor could easily creep down the hall and slip inside.

Some of us knew what was going on but we didn't say a word. Who would believe us? Who could we tell? The counselors? Some kids were taken advantage of by other kids, not because they were gay, but simply because of the way they looked, talked, or acted. If a kid looked effeminate or didn't act like he was hardcore, it was assumed he was a punk or weak. Sometimes the sexual abuse would start off as an innocent game, kids pushing other kids, seeing how much they could get away with. The more they got away with, the more they upped the ante—ass grabbing, face slapping and verbally abusing until the kid broke down. Rape was the end result of this game of humiliation and bullying taken too far.

But sexual abuse was only one form of abuse and brutality in juvenile hall. Kids were physically assaulted, rat packed, pressured out of their meager possessions, and terrorized by counselors and other juveniles. Some kids slit their wrists because they couldn't stand being incarcerated, abused, or being locked up in the hole for seventy-two hours. I knew guys who became suicidal after spending only a few days in the hole. Some only pretended to be suicidal because they knew it would get them attention.

The hall was infested with gang members, and I was one of them. Fighting was how we settled our disputes. Some counselors sanctioned the fights for their own amusement or as a way to let us blow off steam and make us more manageable. There were two types of juveniles—predator and prey. I was determined not to be prey. Guys who didn't fight back wound up as permanent punching bags or punks. This label, a jacket very few people could discard, would follow them to every institution. The main reason I engaged in violence was to prevent myself from becoming victim to it; ironically, cracking someone upside the head was a preventive message that announced you were just as dangerous and crazy as the next guy.

Although judges had the final decision on whether we were released or not, it was the juvenile hall psychologist who had the greatest influence on the judge's decision. Everyone coming into juve got interviewed and tested by psychologists. The most famous test administered was the Rorschach inkblot test, interpreting inkblots supposedly to reveal intellectual and emotional traits. When the psychologist asked me what the pictures looked like, I said flowers and trees . . . and he diagnosed me as educably retarded and antisocial. This is a diagnosis commonly ascribed to many inner city youth. It wasn't that I was antisocial; I socialized well with my friends and family. I just didn't trust people I didn't know. Besides, my socialization was unique and not one psychologist ever took the time to figure it out, because it wasn't part of their job description. They lumped us all together under the same diagnosis—antisocial­—because it was convenient. And of course my “problem” was never conveyed to my mother or anyone else with the wherewithal to do anything about it.

The psychologist made me out to be maladaptive to society in order to justify my incarceration but never addressed the causes of my attitude and behavior or offered a solution to change the conditions that produced them. I'm reminded of Paulo Freire’s analysis of the oppressor and the oppressed. The oppressor works to change the consciousness of the oppressed to adjust to oppression, but not to change the conditions that created the oppression. Juvenile hall taught me to be extremely suspicious of all authority figures. I knew on a very basic level they weren't concerned for my best interest and, therefore, could not be trusted. The first thing I learned when being interviewed by psychologists was to feign ignorance or answer their questions with whatever I thought they wanted to hear. My objective was to get the hell out of there as quickly as I could. I was becoming adaptive, learning how to master my environment.

Every Sunday I went to religious service and so did most juves. Most Blacks attended the Protestant services, Mexicans attended the Catholic one, and White guys were divided between the two. I personally went to church for three reasons: to get out my room, to see my homeboys from other units, and to look at the girls who were allowed to attend with us. Church was a meeting place and although we couldn't communicate beyond head and hand gestures, just seeing the girls or a homeboy made the walk to church worthwhile. The girls sat in the front row with an empty row of seats between us and a squadron of female counselors guarding them, so we couldn't get close enough to touch them, but you could still feel the youthful sexual energy which, if ignited, would scorch the place.

Sometimes dances were arranged between the boys and the girls. This is when we got the chance to get really close. We were allowed to slow dance, so we sneaked in hugs, rubs, strokes and kisses, all under the watchful eyes of counselors who wouldn't hesitate to send you back to your room if your hands disappeared. The girls were just as happy and horny as we were, so they weren't complaining, and they spurred us on by grinding against us.

Some classes at the hall school were also coed and rumors ran amok about rampant sex in the class closet and rest room. Guys ware pulling every con they knew to get a class with the females. When I finally got into a class with some girls, it was sort of a let down—there were only three of them. One was fat, with a pug nose, and looked like a mean little warthog. She was Mexican and, I could tell, a gang member. The other two were skinny White girls with stringy blond hair and face pimples the size of BBs. Even if I had wanted to get with one of them, and I did not, the teacher watched us like a science project. And if the restroom was the place to sneak, as was rumored, then I quickly chalked that rumor up to being just that—a rumor. The teacher, not being the dimwit everyone ascribed him to be, kept the restroom locked. When anyone wanted to use it he went over, stuck the key in the lock, opened the door, and stood sentinel until you finished—not once did he ever take his eyes off the classroom. The man was an evil genius.

Every kid in juvenile hall had a central file. This is a dossier chronicling our behavior, activities, and background. All institutions maintain this kind of file and encourage their staff to consult it in order to better understand the prisoner. My “C file” followed me to every facility I ever went to. It was like my second skin and became the primary criterion for judging me. It didn't matter if the information inside the file was true or not. The institution would act on it. A counselor could consult my file before ever talking to me personally, so his initial view of me would come from reports he had no way of knowing were either true or false. In juve I wasn't allowed to view, challenge, or question what was inside my file, as if the contents were top secret and I was too stupid to understand what was being said about me.

The first time I appeared in front of a judge was a dreadful experience. I had the dumb-ass idea a judge might cut me slack if I were religious. So, like most guys, I got religion real fast, carrying a Bible and wearing a rosary around my neck into the court room, hoping the judge would notice my piety. I doubt if the judge even noticed the loud pink rosary hanging almost to my stomach. He detained me, and I trashed the rosary and used the Bible paper for rolling up cigarettes butts. Oddly, I only used the first few blank pages of the Bible and never the pages with scripture written on them. Even my delinquent self saw that as a line I wasn't going to cross. Juvenile hall was where I began to develop an extreme distrust of the criminal justice system. I came into contact with judges, district attorneys, public defenders, probation officers and psychologists, and witnessed firsthand the racism, the politics, the cynicism, and overwhelming sense that no one knew how to fix whatever was broken. I somehow knew that all of these people together couldn't put Humpty Dumpty back together again. It was up to me to look out for myself. Even if I did it all wrong.

What I experienced in juve was pivotal in shaping my consciousness, my behavior and my future. Juvenile hall prepared me to survive in the harsh reality of prison. It desensitized my moral compass. I could watch or join in beating and kicking the crap out of some poor fool, whether he deserved it or not.

After several trips to juvenile hall a frightening picture began to emerge. At the time I didn't give it much thought, but I began to recognize many of the same faces who were at juvenile hall the first time I was. They had eventually gotten out just like I did and they had returned, just like I did . . . time after time . . . after time. Eventually we all ended up in Camp.

I was 15 years old when I was sent to Camp Munz. The van traveled twenty-two miles up a winding road to get there. It seemed like a long way from Los Angeles and I wondered how I would be able to get home if I escaped. I didn't have an answer, so I stayed put. Since most all of us had crossed paths in juvenile hall, it was easy to become fast friends with guys in Camp. And I was schooled in the politics of Camp by older guys in the hall, so I was already prepared when I got there.

All juvenile camps had the same layout, so if you saw one camp you had seen them all. For some reason the county always saw it necessary to build two camps adjacent to each other, something I never understood. The Camps, stationed in mountainous and rural areas, were also habitats for coyotes, snakes and other wildlife. Counselors would tell stories of kids being eaten by coyotes and dying from snake bites. It was supposed to be a strong incentive not to escape. It wasn't. Guys tried to escape whenever they got the chance.

There were three types of camps: lock up camp, open camp and fire camp. To get to fire camp we needed parental consent: in the event we got killed fighting a fire, the camp wouldn't be held liable. Open camp was less restrictive than lock up camp, which had towering fences encircling it. The age of kids sent to camp ranged from 11 to 17. The sentence was usually six months to a year. Anything beyond a year required a court appearance. Escaping from an open camp and getting caught guaranteed more time added to your original sentence, plus a transfer to lock up camp. Escaping from a lock up camp guaranteed getting sent to Youth Authority. Despite the consequences, guys were still escaping.

In Camp Munz we lived in a dormitory, and it didn’t take me long to adjust to living with strangers. Juve was a good training ground and I had already been to a pre-camp program. Privacy was nonexistent in the dorm. Showering, changing cloths, taking a shit—all was out in the open. Even masturbating was a public event. Some guys didn't even bother with getting under their blankets; they would sit on their bunk, whip it out and go at it fast and furious for 2 to 3 minutes. In the center of the dorm was a large rostrum where counselors sat and could watch all wings of the dorm. There were several oval shaped mirrors attached to the ceiling so they could see behind them without having to turn around. This was to catch guys clowning around or talking when the dorm was supposed to be on quiet time.

We all were assigned a personal locker, which stood next to our bunk. Thievery was rampant and I had been a damn good thief in juve, but when I got to camp I stopped. I outgrew it. But there were guys who specialized in sneaking into other people's locker and ripping them off. Sweets like candy and cookies were highly prized because they could be quickly consumed. The trick for the thief was not to draw attention to himself, so stealing from guys who wouldn't fight back or were too scared to tell the counselors was a locker thief’s best bet.

Camp Munz ran on a point system, in which we were assigned a number of points we had to meet weekly. We called it “busting.” Not busting our points every week meant we were going to be punished. There were several ways to earn points or loose them. There were rules against hurting wildlife: birds and even rats could cost you big points. Other rules like spitting on the ground, wearing your hair braided, not wearing a belt, making a sloppy bed, having a dirty bed area, a dusty locker, and/or wearing a moustache were considered rule violations punishable by point deductions.

Another rule violation was “grouping.” Grouping consisted of more than three people socializing. To get around the grouping law we'd break off into groups of threes and some of us would stand, while others laid on the grass. Another group would walk around in small circular motions close enough so we all could talk. Then we would rotate positions. Counselors feared grouping, for the same reason slave masters feared it and didn't allow their slaves to group. Grouping, to both counselors and slave masters, meant a conspiracy was brewing—that plans of escape, revolt, attacks on staff or other inmates were being formalized. The truth is, the bulk of the conversation in groups was about girls or guys telling war stories. Taking over camp never crossed our young minds.

Each week after chow everyone's point total was read. I would sit there stone-faced as a couple of counselors snickered when certain names were announced because they knew beforehand who didn't bust their points. Some guys got labeled as habitual screw ups and counselors did everything to prevent them from busting. If you didn’t bust it meant you’d be confined to the dorm on your bed while everyone went to the movies on the weekend. Not busting also affected our release date. Every time we didn't bust counselors had the power to add a week to our release date, so busting was not only important, it was vital.

The punishment for not busting could be just as physically brutal as it was humiliating. I used to seethe with anger and despise counselors for making guys stand outside under the scorching heat or freezing cold in one spot while everyone else eyed them like they were lepers. Guys were also made to clean the dorm, and some were forced to walk around the track field with their mattress strapped on their backs. Counselors who were particularly cruel made guys wear jeans that were too small, and for the whole day the poor guy would be the target of sexual jokes. I knew resistance could land me in solitary confinement or a permanent program in lock up camp, but still I vowed to myself if they ever tried to make me do the things I saw them make other guys do, I was going to rebel.

One thing I didn’t expect to find in Camp was a group of guys like me in a program called "Leadership." Instead of counselors orienting me, these guys sat me down in a room and ran down the program. It was a psychological tactic employed by counselors who relied on "Leadership” to tell them if a new arrival was going to be a problem. I nearly got into a fight with one of the guys because his line of questioning was more like a police interrogation than a camp interview. We called these guys "smacks" because most of them were kiss-asses to counselors and acted like they wanted to be one of them. I took special pleasure in poking fun at them.

My counselor, a cowboy and straight up redneck, was named Askins. He dressed and acted as if John Wayne had left him in charge. When he called me in for our first interview he was reading my C file and chewing tobacco. The first words out his mouth were, "How come they didn't send you to Youth Authority or a lock up camp?" He told me he thought I was a fuck-up and needed to be someplace tougher than camp. Askins was in charge of the camp farm and said he was going to assign me to work on it so he could keep an eye on me. I got up early every morning to tend to the animals and afterwards I spent most of my time playing with the pigs and goats, trying to get the goats to charge at me as I held their horns. I would clean the pigs up and seconds later they would flop back in the mud, so I stopped cleaning them. Being at the farm gave me a chance to be away from the daily ruckus of camp life where I couldn't think straight because I felt besieged by the overload of activities. These were the times when I really felt homesick.

Because I was athletic I joined the camp track team. I ran cross-country and in 10 kilometer races in different cities, which I enjoyed. When running I felt free, like nothing could touch me. I also ran against local high school track teams. We were the only incarcerated team present at these competitions and always stood out with our dull and tattered clothes. At one track meeting the guys on my team got intimidated by watching the other teams practice their baton passes. They looked down at their torn cleats, then over at the other runners and announced they weren't going to run. The coach was speechless. I got pissed off and told them we could beat these guys because we were better than they were. I really believed we could win. This inspired the guys and, when we ran, we won. I felt proud my speech had something to do with it.

The next day at breakfast we were given a hero’s welcome. A counselor who was at the track meet went on a ten minute spiel about courage, bravery and leadership. Then he said my name and nominated me to be mayor of the camp. I was so shocked I coughed up the food in my mouth. Other counselors chimed in, applauding to second my nomination and, before I knew it, I was Mayor, catapulted to leader of the camp. My first official act as Mayor was to kick all the ass kissers out of leadership and appoint my homeboy Ron Ron, Brian, and a couple of Mexicans I was cool with to leadership positions. When new guys came to camp who I thought were cool I would pull them aside and give them the run down on what was really happening. I could get any job I wanted but I chose to work in the kitchen and laundry room, where I could smoke cigarettes and marijuana undisturbed. Being Mayor gave me free reign to do whatever I wanted. I didn't have to eat or walk in group formation with everyone else. But there was a down-side to this position—counselors expected me to police my peers by punishing and taking points from them. I wasn't about to do that. Each week I was given a sheet of paper with names of everyone in camp. I was supposed to either add or subtract points by each name. A counselor would then tally these points and come up with the total points every week. They were mystified why my sheet always had guys who were considered program failures now busting their points. They eventually took the sheet from me. And the homeboys Rainbow and Treach, who I was helping, went right back to being program failures. But more than anything, being Mayor kept counselors out of my face, and for that small slice of peace I was eternally grateful.

Even after being elected Mayor I had to attend school like everyone else. The teachers were okay, a few notches above counselors. There was one teacher everybody resented because she didn't tolerate nonsense in her classroom. But underneath her tough exterior, she was as caring and compassionate as they come. This teacher got me involved in creative writing and, for a while, it held my interest. She was the first person I heard use the word “melanin” and who told me the ancient Egyptians were Black, and she even arranged a field trip for our class to see King Tut's treasure, which was on display at the Los Angeles museum. However, the significance of this exhibit impressed me as much as algebra would have impressed a lion. I wasn't ready. My indifference must have dashed her already thin hopes of reaching me because she started giving another little bright guy more of her attention.

Camp kept me busy and involved in a lot of activities, but it never challenged me to explore myself or teach me how to deal with the violent milieu I was going to return to. Sometimes we received weekend furloughs, which were supposed to reintroduce us back into the community. But for most of us it was a reconnaissance mission to scope out possible places to rob. The counselors really didn't have anything to offer me; I was there to do time and they were there to watch over me and to collect a paycheck. They had to deal with me but did not take any real interest in my life. They were quick to tell horror stories about guys who had came through the Camp and were now either in Youth Authority, prison, or dead. And I would end up just like them if I didn't clean my act up. I don't remember them sharing a single success story of guys who got out of Camp and made it. So the message was clear to me even if no one said it: I was going to wind up in prison no matter what I did.

My counselor's hostile attitude towards me never changed the whole time I was in Camp. I was put off by his advice, which didn't correlate with my perception of reality. He stood at odds with everything I felt, thought, and believed. There was no way I was going to trust him, not after he made it clear he didn' t give a damn about me. When it came time for me to write my commemoration and have counselors sign it so I could go home—everyone in Munz had to write one—my counselor neglected to bring it up, and I had no idea when I was getting out. One day I was in the dorm talking with some friends and a counselor called out my name, "Pack your shit, Champion. You're going home." It happened just like that, after months of Camp it was over. I think I felt the same way a lot Vietnam vets must have felt coming back from the jungle to their homes—completely disoriented.

I grew up in camp and so did thousands of other guys. We became more sophisticated and hardened by our experiences. Our dreams were not of becoming doctors, lawyers, or teachers, but to be the next Al Capones, Lucky Lucianos, and Benny Segals of the world. The gangs were our crime family and loyalty was a life or death matter. In camp we forged bonds, made enemies, and honed our fighting skills. I had grown close to a few guys in Camp and we exchanged numbers, vowing to hook up on the streets. I did meet up with some of them, but most of us wouldn't meet again until Youth Authority or prison.

In 1978, the judge told me, "I'm sending you to the California Youth Authority to stop you from ending up in San Quentin Prison." It was a paradoxical statement since even I knew CYA prepared you for prison as opposed to preventing you from going. Unlike juvenile halls and camps, which were spread throughout different cities within Los Angeles County, the California Youth Authority, like the California Department of Corrections, had institutions outside of L.A. County, and it also incarcerated a larger number of people. Two of the most infamous Youth Authorities are Preston and Youth Training School (YTS). Their reputation for violence, brutality and hardcore thugs was known to everyone. Being shipped to either of these places was considered a prelude to prison.

The maximum time CYA could hold a person was age twenty-five, then they had to release you. Some guys sentenced to prison were held in CYA because the judge felt they were not emotionally, psychologically or physically prepared to be in prison. The Youth Authority's job was to “toughen them up,” get them ready for prison. A couple of these guys had life sentences and one was a friend of mine who had a prison number, not a CYA number like everyone else. He knew he was going to be sent to prison one day and eventually he was.

I was 16 when I was sent to YTS. I was schooled by veterans in juve on what to say to the interview board to make sure they sent me there. Most of the guys at YTS were "adult commitments" who could have easily been sent to state prison because they were eighteen and over. The administration threatened to send many of us to prison on the first thing smoking if we got into any trouble, and some of us were soon gone. Since I was used to hanging out with my older homeboys I acted more mature than my actual age, so many guys thought I was older and were surprised to learn I was still a juvenile. It wasn't strange to expect to see guys I had known from juvenile hall and camp at YTS. We'd grown up in these institutions and on some level we all accepted the cycle of incarceration that had become our lives. Coming to jail and seeing familiar faces was like having a family reunion.

YTS stood only a few hundred yards from Chino State Prison. This area is known for its dairy farms, so every morning I woke up I could smell the heavy odor of fertilizer and cow dung that hung in the air like a huge fart. It was a constant reminder of being incarcerated in a place I didn’t want to be. I considered YTS a junior prison because we dressed in the same style clothes as guys in prison: blue shirts, blue jeans and work boots. The same kind of educational and vocational programs were offered to us, as well. We were even issued an identification card, given a number, and had to appear in front of a parole board in order to be released. CYA parole was basically no different from being on parole from a state prison. Most of the conditions of parole were exactly the same. YTS signified I was one step away from being in prison, and although I wasn't consciously looking forward to going, the possibility was not something I feared.

Everyone at YTS had a trade or went to school or both. The school offered college courses, a GED class and the basic run of the mill classes to get a high school diploma. There was a host of trades available and I went through several of them: warehousing/stock keeping, landscaping, auto mechanics and upholstery. I enjoyed landscaping because I was getting paid to mow grass and trim tress, something I had to do for free at home. It was cool because some homeboys and I were on the same crew and we would have fun racing each other a round the institution on the lawn mowers.

There were specific units at YTS that housed people for certain programs. There was a drug and alcohol rehabilitation unit, a unit for people enrolled in the college program, a unit for repeated offenders, a unit for people with vocational pay numbers, a lock up unit, a psyche unit, and a unit for behavioral modification, where special diets were used to control hyperactivity. Then there were units that had a mixture of everybody. But in all of them there were gang members.

I wasn't in YTS long before I got into a fight with a guy over a soda. I kept throwing fists when the counselors tried to break it up and smacked a counselor in the face. At the disciplinary hearing they concluded I was a nut case and sent me to the psyche unit. The psyche program was pretty much like the rest of the units until nightfall came. That's when the banging and screaming started. The next morning these same guys would act as if nothing happened. I eventually found out these guys screamed almost every night and didn't remember a thing when they woke up because they were screaming in their sleep. Most on the ward were on heavy psyche meds but I knew guys who weren't crazy at all; they just played crazy because in the psyche unit you could get away with murder. The counselors were not going to write up “nuts.” So I took advantage of that by getting into fights without worrying about the consequences. There was this one guy we called Crazy Tim who was always in trouble. He was straight bonkers. One day a couple of guys and myself were kicking back on the bleachers listening to music and watching some guys play baseball when out of the nowhere a half-crazed Tim walked up mumbling unintelligible words, whipped out a baseball bat, and cracked Pierre upside the head. We swarmed Tim like a Delta Force, forcing him to the ground so Pierre could get his blows in, but every time Pierre swung blood gushed from his head wound like a water faucet, until he couldn't stand up any longer. We finished kicking Tim's ass. The last time I saw Tim he was being escorted to an outside mental hospital.

In the psyche unit everyone had to participate in therapy class. Mine was "transactional analysis" and a whacked out "group reality" session. During my first group session we were seated in a circle in the dayroom. Inmates and counselors faced off to hammer out problems on the unit. At first I thought it was a constructive way to dialogue until I saw medicated guys stand up, point fingers and start snitching on each other. After that I made myself invisible in these sessions, sitting in the corner and saying nothing. They eventually forgot about me.

I got transferred after complaining to counselors and their supervisors that I was gonna really go crazy if they didn't get me out of there. The counselor who escorted me to the U/V unit was begging me to stay and as he opened the door to the unit he said, “If you go here with your homeboys you’re gonna stay in trouble and catch another case.” I ignored him. But he was right. I wasn't there a month when a racial riot broke out between the Blacks and Whites. A few people got hurt bad. After the investigation, “confidential sources” said I was one of the instigators. I ranted and raved about taking a polygraph test to prove I was innocent. I failed. I was sent to O/R, the lock up unit, along with some other guys, and they added 6 months to my sentence. A couple of my homeboys, Ace and Buster, and a white guy, were sent to prison, but no other whites involved in the riot were transferred to Preston or given a lock up program like me and my homeboys. Win or lose, Blacks were always seen as the aggressors.

One of the counselors was pissed off at me, so he got me put in a strip cell for a week, then on administration segregation with the rest of my homeboys. A few days after I arrived, another riot took place in a different unit and more guys I knew came on the tier. We were like POWs. Every morning we were let out for a half hour into the dayroom for recreation. Since there were a lot of us the counselors didn't want us all coming out at the same time; they worried we might try to attack them. We did get into a conflict with a counselor who tried to short change us out of our dayroom time. We started protesting by banging on our cell doors, flooding the tier with water, and some of us even managed to break out the small glass window panes on the door of the cell. The counselors called in the security squad who stormed the tier with canisters of mace, stun guns and batons. They roughed us up, put us in handcuffs, then left us hog-tied, laying faced down on our bunks for hours. They wanted to leave us with the impression that with terror and violence they could and would control us. But terror and violence never changed my attitude; it only left me with a negative attitude and even more hatred towards authority.

After doing 5 months in the hole I slowly worked my way back out by going through a phase system. I started at Phase "A" and had to work through each phase before I got to "D" and was released. When I came out I had been radically changed. In the hole there's not much to do, so I read what I could get my hands on: pimp and gangster novels, comic books, history books. I developed a healthy appetite for reading. Every week I dutifully went to the library to select books that interested me. I read books more to pass the time than to expand my mind. My homeboy Spark introduced me to a few political books. I enjoyed them but they were far and few between the garbage books I was consuming. Youth Authority School was boring and didn't hold my attention. The only class I paid any attention in was history, because the teacher made it fun. When he spoke dramatically about Asia or Africa it sparked fantastic images in my mind. And I wanted to learn more. But I didn't get the chance, not there.

As time passed, YTS changed. A different breed of guys was coming in and a lot of guys I knew were either going home, getting transferred to other CYAs, or going to prison. Some guys were sent to prison and returned after a few months, and I saw how they acted differently. They were more reserved, circumspect, serious and mature. They would run down to us how things were, giving us a blow by blow account of how serious and cool prison was. They showed us pictures of older stone face guys and told some real war stories. It was easy to be transfixed by their words because every one of us had homeboys or relatives doing time in prison. We were going to follow in their footsteps and I don't think any of us thought otherwise. If joining a gang was our rite of passage then going through the cycle of incarceration— Juvenile Hall, Camp, CYA, and Prison—was our initiation into the highest order of thugdom.

After hearing about stories in prison I gradually started to take on the behavior and images of guys in prison. A lot of us were talking more about stabbing people and not fist fighting. We started packing knives, razor blades, screw drivers and other sharpened objects around like we were tool boxes. I had developed a mythological version of prison. Instead of prison being a place to dread and stay away from, it was glamorized, considered a badge of honor. When guys said, "I'm going to the pen,” they said it with pride. Psychologically, I was prepared to go. The guys who left YTS wrote letters back saying how much better it was than YA and that we should come. A couple of older guys doing time in Chino, but working inside YTS, further sensationalized prison for us. They fed us story after story until I felt I had outgrown YTS and wanted to leave. I even wrote my homeboy Evil in Duel Vocational Institute (DVI) and told him I wanted to come there, but he told me not to come because he was about to parole. A counselor asked me and Hoo Ron, who was recently back from Chino, whether we wanted to go to a new CYA that was opening up. We told him we wanted to go to prison. He walked away shaking his head in disbelief.

Gangs ran most of the units at YTS and did most of the pressuring—bullying people out of their stuff. I saw guys who weren't gang members join gangs out of fear and for protection. Then there were guys who came under gang protection, which meant paying money or providing some kind of service, sexual or otherwise. There was also extortion rackets going on where guys were forced to pay weekly rent just to stay on the unit. These guys would do their entire time being extorted and not utter a single word to a counselor. They didn't want a "snitch" jacket on them, so they accepted their humiliation and brutalization in silence.

Some counselors knew when a guy was being pressured and questioned him. Even if the guy swore on a stack of Bibles that nothing was wrong, the counselor could transfer him to another unit, which only made things worse, because then he would surely be labeled a "snitch" and there was no way to disprove it. Some guys attempted suicide rather then be labeled a snitch. YTS didn't have a "protective custody" unit so there was no place to hide.

The racial divide was clearly defined in YTS : Blacks vs. Mexicans, Blacks vs. Whites, Blacks vs. Mexicans and Whites. The racial hostility between Blacks and Whites stemmed from Whites who were neo-Nazis. The Mexicans, for some strange reason, always sided with them. The Nazis would proudly parade around the unit showing off their swastikas, lightning bolts and white power tattoos. Any time they made a racial slur, directly or indirectly, it exploded into fist fights and sometimes a race riot. I didn't think twice about attacking them since they practiced an ideology that detested Blacks. And some brothers after beating a Nazi down would strip them nude and shove objects up their ass to humiliate and psychologically brutalize them. The racial tension between Blacks and Mexicans was fueled by ignorance and ego and the frustration of being locked up. The Youth Authority Administration didn't seem to mind racial tension or spates of violence between the gangs because as long as we were fighting each other it kept counselors out the line of fire. The biggest concern for counselors was a united front among prisoners. And they had no qualms admitting this. "If you dudes ever came together there would be little we could do," a counselor told me once.

My favorite past-time was pumping iron. I spent a great portion of my time on the recreational yard just lifting weights. It was a good way to burn off steam and concentrate. I had a goal to get 20 inch arms. The weight pile became a place to socialize and reassert my masculinity. Lifting weights gave me a sense of freedom because no one could tell me how big I could and couldn't get. Seeing my body transform gave me a tremendous sense of accomplishment. It took hard work and dedication and was the one thing I could do for myself. If I'd poured this much commitment and energy into developing my mind I would have become a genius. Like most of the guys who drove iron I was very secretive about letting others see how big I was getting, so I guarded my yokes by staying covered up. I even wore a shirt when showering. The only time I showed myself was for pictures.

The counselors used to watch in awe when we drove iron. They were amazed at how big and strong we got without steroids. But their observations were hardly motivated by genuine interest. They didn’t give a damn about us. Most counselors concluded that we were beyond help and on some level we thought so too, but the truth was they watched us to see who the leaders were, who would be a physical threat, and who we ran with. Their observations would eventually end up in our C files. And what gang label they put on us was there to stay.

I wasn't an angel when I paroled from YTS. I had hopes of getting a job and maybe enrolling in college. I figured since I wasn't gang banging anymore I had a chance of bettering my life. But I also knew what I had been through and that CYA was the last stage of graduation before going to prison. It is a preparatory course which conditioned me for prison the same way high school prepares students for college. Unfortunately for many guys, it takes going to prison to understand the cycle of incarceration, but that alone wasn’t enough to break it. For me, it took coming to Death Row to finally wake up.

I arrived in San Quentin in December 1982 with a long history of imprisonment behind me. I saw some of the same faces, walked on the same yards, and had the same tier with guys I’d done time with as a juvenile. I had deep conversations with them about their criminal life and prison recidivism, and they all understand how they were engineered for prison at each stage and every level of their incarceration, like a double helix strain of DNA programmed to become a human being.

Prison is the Ph.D. of incarceration where everything is heightened to a maximum degree. The guards are more sadistic, the brutality and violence and racial hostility between prisoners are more intense, sexual abuse is more prevalent, gang activity is more extreme, and punishment from both prisoners and guards is more severe—often fatal. You won't find any transformative power, redeeming values, or rehabilitative qualities in prison unless you find it in yourself. But none of this is written on the prison menu or found in the prison budget.

Prison has a way of destroying your sense of modesty—just one strip search in front of a guard who scans and scrutinizes every orifice of your body, and some piece of your humanity is ripped out forever. I had heard stories about prison, but none of them came close to the real thing. I haven’t seen anything in prison worth glamorizing, and I’ve been here 20 years. There is nothing exciting living inside a four by ten foot cell, where you are under the microscope twenty-four hours a day, as if you are part of a crude experiment. There is nothing fun about living in a hostile, abnormal environment that chips away at your humanity and steals your dignity. There is nothing manly about being told what to do, and when to do it, or wondering if you will be accidentally shot down on the yard one day. There is nothing exciting about having to defend yourself against guys with knives who want to take your life because they've been given a mission and it's you or them . . . nothing personal. There is nothing joyful about being separated from family and loved ones and being deprived of human contact. There is nothing pleasurable about the prospect of growing old and sick in prison and people around you dying off, one by one. There is nothing pleasant about hearing guys you know commit suicide because they were depressed or lost their minds. There is nothing fun about seeing your parents grow old and your children grow up while you're in prison. There is nothing cool about losing your freedom. Every stabbing, every cell search, every sadistic guard, every execution, every fist fight, every brutal attack, every rotten meal and every disrespectful slight I have ever witnessed here is a constant reminder of the horror of imprisonment—an experience I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.

But there are guys who think prison “isn’t so bad.” They get a kick out of being someone in prison because they've been so invisible in society. Prison gives them an identity and a place to fit in. These guys barely contract a muscle about the prospect of doing life in prison. Each time they get locked up it's like returning home. They don’t need to make any psychic adjustments; they know the prison terrain like the backs of their hands. Inside prison they shine, because here they have a purpose.

It should be no surprise that prison isn't designed to improve or correct the behavior or mentality of prisoners. Punishment replaced rehabilitation long ago. If it were otherwise people released from prison wouldn’t be returning in such large numbers. They would reenter society more improved and balanced. Instead, people exit prison more screwed up than ever. Most of us never break the cycle of incarceration because in each institution we learned only the things that brought out the worst in us.

It is no accident that America has the largest prison population in the world, with two million people and counting. California incarcerates more juveniles than any other state in America, and Black women are the fastest growing prison population. Crime is big business. Mega bucks! The fastest growing industry in California is the prison industrial complex. The perpetuation of crime benefits America's economy by creating jobs. Think of all the people who are employed because of crime. It is no coincidence how each cycle of incarceration helps to perpetuate criminal behavior, which fuels the high rate of prison recidivism.

My personal experiences give me insight into how the various stages of incarceration can condition a person for a life of imprisonment. The guys I have conversed with over the years have told me by the time they were eighteen they were not only psychically prepared for prison but saw it as their manifest destiny. I felt the same way, but never did I imagine I would end up on Death Row reflecting on where the cycle first began.

The Cage

I've spent more than half of my life trapped in cages. But these last 20 years on Death Row is an experience I am still struggling to comprehend. It's said it is difficult to explain the magnitude and intensity of an experience while you are living it, that only afterwards through reflection can it be fully explained. But what if you die before you can reflect? What then? Living in a small cage presents this dilemma: dying is everyday and there is no way to explain it, not really.

Being confined in a cage for so many years I now understand why circus animals suddenly attack their trainers: no creature likes to be humiliated. Both humans and animals are born to be free. When you take away their freedom, you distort their identity and make them self destructive, even violent.

When I was six or seven, I saw a puppy roaming around in a gully, lost and shivering. No one was around so I grabbed it, took it home, and put it on a leash, which gave me control over it. When I came to prison, when I was put in a cage, my captors likewise believed they had gained control over me. I fed my puppy everyday the same way my captors feed me everyday. Every night I put him in a box, not to protect him from the elements but to prevent him from running away. So too with my prison box; my cage has a lock that's checked day and night to make sure I don't get away. I never thought about how the box was affecting the puppy and I doubt my captors are losing sleep over how the cage affects me. I had total control over when and how my puppy could move around, just as my captors now have control over me.

My four by ten foot cage is smaller than your average bathroom. When I stand and stretch my arms, I have to turn my palms upward so my fingers don't smash into the ceiling. There's not much room for walking in my cage, just back and forth . . . back and forth. If I walk four steps north or south, I bump into the bars or the toilet. Walking east or west is completely out the question. If I stand in the back of my cage and spread both my arms as if pushing against two pillars, I can't fully extend my arms.

There are maybe twenty inches between the bed and the wall, a distance inadequate for walking or exercising. When I do push ups, I have to concentrate very hard so I won't scrape my shoulders against the concrete wall on one side or the steel bunk on the other. The bunk is about a foot and a half high, three feet wide, and less than six feet long. The flat mattress offers no sleeping comfort.

Since I stand over six feet, sleeping on the bed forces me to curl up in a knot to keep my feet from dangling off the edge of the bed, so instead I sleep on the narrow strip of floor between the wall and steel bunk. Although there is little room for movement, I've learned to sleep almost motionless without cracking my head or bruising my body against the steel or concrete that surrounds me.

The steel bunk isn't totally useless, though. Confinement has forced me to be creative in order to cushion myself from some of the harshness that pervades prison reality. My steel bunk serves several functions. The bed becomes a table when I eat my meals and a mat when I meditate. All my meager possessions are placed on top of the bunk. It also serves as my desk ­when I read, write, and study. Every morning I roll the mattress up and tie a string tightly around it so it can serve as an improvised chair. I use my two wool blankets to cushion my back against the wall.

In the back of the cage bolted to the wall is a large gray steel locker with four compartments. I store my food and other miscellaneous items in there. Right above the locker is a fire sprinkler in case I decide to burn the place down. Beneath the locker is a stainless steel sink next to a stainless steel toilet (there's a whole lot of steel). No matter how much I scrub and wash these fixtures, they never come clean. An inch or two under the sink is a vent that works half of the time, but I keep it plugged up with toilet paper because I have a nagging feeling that if my captors got secret orders to kill everyone on Death Row, they would do it by gassing us through ventilation (okay, so I'm a little paranoid).

In front of my cage attached to the bars on the outside is a screen that covers the entire front. There is a square tray slot about a foot long and two and a half inches wide that's built right into the cage bars. It stays locked unless they're sliding stuff through it.

I don't stare out of the bars too often because nothing is there. The scenery is as blank and cold as a dark wasteland. About twenty feet from my cage is a gun rail four and a half stories high. It's designed for the guard who patrols 24 hours a day. He or she packs a Mini 14 rifle and 38 pistol. They have a clear view and clear shot into my cage.

I was forced long ago to come to terms with these nauseating circumstances. Twenty years is a long time to be looked at through bars and wire mesh. The only privacy I have is my thoughts; and if I want them to remain private I must keep them to myself. I've had to make a lot of adjustments over the years, some mental, some physical, but I still haven't been able to get over my disdain of eating in the same room where I shit. Call me finicky, but I still have some dignity left. So when I eat I turn my back to the toilet.

The Geography of Death Row

To think about anything except death is evasion.
— Norwegian philosopher Tonnesen

There is a vertiginous quality about being on Death Row that defies description. Words will most certainly fall short of the real experience, because the geography of Death Row is located more in the region of one’s psyche than inside some concrete structure. However, empathy depends on understanding the array of emotions stirring inside people who await their execution. I step cautiously, because all kinds of wild notions exist about Death Row, and I don’t want to add to the misconception that the row consists of remorseless monsters, irredeemably heartless and void of genuine compassion.

I’ve been here in San Quentin for over 20 years, and there are times when I feel my entire life drove me to this final impasse, as if my name had been written in a book, and this place is the setting of the last chapter.

Waiting to be executed is not a surreal experience, at least not for me. The mental asphyxiation that drains you little by little each day takes enormous effort to withstand. If dying could be experienced before the fact, this would be it. For many men on the row, the very possibility of being methodically killed exists only in some quantum reality where they are being exonerated over and over for crimes they were convicted of. For these men, it is easier to pretend that dying in here isn’t part of the equation. Yet, of course, it is the essence of the experience and, awake or asleep, we are assailed by constant reminders.

The process of execution is no secret to us, and there are men who have imaginary dress rehearsals, while others simply choose to ignore their situation altogether. There are many of the latter here, men who refuse to accept that their lives hang in the balance. Denial can be a comfortable place, especially when you possess no sense of your own humanity and have no frame of reference for what you should be doing. Without a sense of identity or purpose, the future remains an intangible blur. So many on the row lose themselves in fantasy or some form of intoxication, anything to avoid facing the facts.

Death Row, however, pushes most occupants to contemplate their own mortality. For most men here, including myself, it is the first time in our lives that we have reflected on the profound question of our death. This creates for many a continual barrage of emotions that can’t be sorted out, and leaves some of us wrenched by inner conflict. Some men constantly engage in psychological struggles and avoid mental quietude for fear of what they will find, and for an even greater fear of who they will meet. I’ve watched men, paralyzed by despair, isolate themselves in their cells and live like recluses. They reject all contact from the outside and shun any association with other prisoners or guards. They begin sleeping most of the day, staying up all night, neglecting their hygiene, and talking to themselves. This mental deterioration leads a few of them to spend inordinate amounts of time trying to achieve the maximum level of escapism, which begins with self-mutilation and ends with suicide.

At fist glance the row seems like any other prison. The cells are the same, the yards are similar, the guards are identical. But when you look into the eyes of anyone with a death sentence you will see the distinguishing features underling life on death row: desperation.

Death Row is a tortuous waiting period, where hope is assailed each time someone is executed. However, most of the men on the row cling tenaciously to one overriding affirmation, “It won’t happen to me,” and for a long time I, too, embraced that thought. A protracted debate goes on inside your head between being aggressively idealistic, cautiously optimistic, and darkly cynical, and these divergent impulses force you to analyze things with greater clarity and objectivity. I absolutely don’t want to be executed, but more importantly, I don’t want to cling to life with fear. No, for me, life must register on a conscious level where I continue to exist as a subject. I refuse to exist where denial or pretense is the only viable course, and where avoiding the truth leads to an even darker prison. Though many have convinced themselves that they are content in the suffocating atmosphere of the row, I reject it outright.

I understand why some men on the row escape through false bravado and an I-don’t-give-a-fuck attitude. Insanity lies just on the periphery of delusion, and I have arrived at a mental focus that has kept me sane and kept me from the altered states to which many succumb. But living in an environment where the probability of going home in a pine box is heightened by every confirmed death sentence, the mind is strained to the utmost.

Someone once asked me, “Do you ever get tired of all the uncertainty, all of the waiting?” According to the stoic Seneca, “To overcome the fear of death, we must think of it constantly.” Though I disagree with this view, I do feel that we must reconcile with our mortality in order to acquire an objective understanding of death, while not giving into a morbid preoccupation with it. My reply to the query was no. I never see myself as waiting to die, but rather fighting to live. The same person then asked me: “If you had a choice (gas or lethal injection) which would you choose?” To me, that was like asking someone who is about to die in plane crash whether they would prefer to die in a burning building. I didn’t bother replying, as the question was simply too absurd. Besides, I don’t constantly think about dying, and I don’t mentally walk myself through the execution procedure. But I have talked to men who visualize themselves being executed, and I don’t imagine sleep comes easy for them. I imagine them waking up every morning from a nightmare, or worse, having all of their senses implode in waking life. The level of stress and paranoia must be staggering for these men, and I’m not surprised that they become psychotic and/or suicidal.

Whenever I hear laughter on death row I wonder about its authenticity, and when I see a smile I am skeptical about its sincerity. How genuine can such things be under the mantle of impending doom? This place magnifies desperation, while mollifying human pleasure, except for that recalled in memory, and even memories become exhausted by overuse and fade as the years pass. Everyday I watch men struggle to disguise their pain. I witness their daily battles to overcome flaws and become better people. But no redemption can be found in this place; the public’s thirst for vengeance will not allow it. Therefore, there are only the private acts of self-transformation each man must make within himself, acts that undoubtedly will go unnoticed or be actively ignored.

If execution day comes for me, I can’t say exactly just what I’ll be thinking or feeling. I don’t envision myself being strapped down on a table or in a chair, and having my life methodically drawn from me. Something about the prospect of a self-fulfilling prophesy prevents me. Accepting the knowledge that death is here (always) is enough for me.

Dying is the most solitary experience we will ever have. No matter how many people we have around us in those final moments, we must ultimately die alone. This is the nature of death. The philosopher Voltaire observed that “The human race is the only one that knows it must die and it knows this only through its experience.” Perhaps knowledge of that fact is why people avoid it so much, the reality I mean. Accepting the fact that we’re going to die is easy, what is difficult for men on death row is finding the wisdom to meditate upon life.

The J-Cat

When I first came to prison I didn’t see a lot of guys who were mentally disturbed. I mean, there were some who had their problems, but who doesn’t? There was the occasional lunatic they’d put in the unit, but for the most part everyone was pretty much sane. As the years went by, though, I gradually began to notice a very different caliber of prisoner, nothing like the guys I was used to being around. They were, to be blunt, completely bonkers. The California Department of Corrections (CDC) labels them Category J, but in prison lingo they’re called J-Cats.

A J-Cat is someone who is mentally and/or emotionally disturbed. In a civilized society they would be placed in a psychiatric hospital where they could get real help. In prison, they are lumped together with the main prison population and given psychotropic drugs as “treatment.” The mixture is explosive.

In 1985 I was being held in the Adjustment Center (AC) – a place for incorrigible and radical prisoners. A new program was implemented that required everyone who came to AC to be housed initially on the first tier. On the first tier you couldn’t have any appliances (e.g., TVs or radios) or purchase food items from the canteen. These restrictions did not apply to the second and third tiers, but you couldn’t be moved there unless cell space was available, or if a guard wanted to move you. If they didn’t like you, they wouldn’t move you. It was an arbitrary and capricious system used as a technology of control and punishment against anyone who harbored ideas of resistance.

In spite of their worst intentions, we turned their first-tier pit of hell into a piece of heaven. We formed an exercise and study program, orchestrated a solitude period, and, most importantly, created an atmosphere of solidarity. Many of us refused to be moved to the upper tiers and this infuriated the guards. Our response confounded our keepers, because the first tier was supposed to be a place no prisoner wanted to stay. The guards couldn’t tolerate the loss of control, so whenever we instigators went to the yard, our few belongings were moved to other cells on the second or third tiers. When this ploy failed because we demanded, on threat of creating a disturbance, to be moved back to the first tier, they installed “J-Cats” on the first tier with us to disrupt the equilibrium we had created.

Since 1985 I’ve seen many J-Cats come and go and don’t remember much about most of them. But there is one I will always remember, Louie, the archetype of all J-Cats. With a Machiavellian mentality, he excelled in his scuminess and decadence. His disturbing laugh would haunt the tier whenever he felt he did something remarkably vile, like shit on the floor of his cell and then flood the entire tier with water. Little turds would float down the tier as everyone scrambled to get their property off the floor, trying simultaneously to beat back the polluted water rushing in their cells. The guards would watch and laugh, and often allow the tier to stay flooded all day, as the foul shit smell, which remained long after the water was cleaned up, worked its way into the cracks of the floor.

Louie would patiently, quietly wait until three o’clock in the morning, and then, like a mad drummer, start pounding his shoe against the stainless steel toilet or sink. The sound cut into the most solid of sleeps. Sometimes he banged for hours, stopping in brief intervals to bust out in his hideous laughter, which taunted everyone on the tier. I, for one, wanted to pound Louie’s head against the same sink and toilet he used to keep everyone awake at night. Whenever someone tried to hold a conversation on the tier, he’d start hollering a barrage of expletives. “Shut up Nigger! Shut up Nigger! Shut up Nigger!” This was his favorite mantra – the chorus we heard throughout the day. Louie was obviously Afro-Cuban, but that didn’t seem to matter to him. When he was taken out of his cell, he’d smile cunningly, nodding to everybody as he passed our cells, as if he were oblivious to his obnoxious, disrespectful behavior. He would even say, “Hello. How are you doin’, my friend?” (in his heavy Spanish accent). But as soon as he got back to his cell we were, once again, niggers, bitches, punks, motherfuckers, and whatever else his twisted mind could conjure up.

After a few episodes of Louie’s verbal rampages, I learned to tune him out like a bad record. I heard him, but I didn’t hear him. There were people who tried to argue with him, which only added more fuel to a fire already out of control. You can’t out argue a J-Cat. They have too much energy stored inside them. They’re like super-athletes who train for marathons, and they’re always in the zone.

Often Louie would promise everyone that he’d be cool if someone gave him a cigarette and some people did, but only after they’d christened them by rubbing the rolled cigarettes across their nut sack, or sliding them between their ass cheeks. Yeah, people hated Louie that much. When Louie couldn’t blackmail people out of cigarettes, he went back to holding the tier hostage again through verbal terrorism, launching his attacks, each one as outrageous and despicable as the last.

The police would walk in the catwalk, a small alleyway behind the cells. It gave them access to a small port window in the back of each cell. They’d stop at Louie’s cell, open the window, and slide him packs of cigarettes, extra lunches, cigarette lighters, stolen food from someone’s package, and other things, all the while congratulating him for doing a good job of disrupting the tier. Whenever they missed a payment or two, he would go berserk, and turn on them by exposing what they were doing for him. But it was a fact we already knew. Louie never went to yard and rarely took showers. His mental descent into hell was obvious to everyone, even the guards.

In time, we all grew exceedingly tired of Louie’s antics. No one could pass a line down the tier without him threatening to snatch it. One day his neighbors began waiting until he went to sleep, then took turns pounding on his walls for hours. The objective was to keep him up so he would go to sleep when everyone else did, and this drove him crazy. I was glad because he was now getting a taste of his own medicine, and he couldn’t stand it. He began to growl like an angry dog, cursing and screaming, but his neighbors wouldn’t relent, and after almost a week, Louie tried to kill himself. The guards hustled him off the tier strapped to the gurney, and Louie never returned. I was elated. We all were. We had won a major political battle.

Our victory didn’t mean that the guards stopped housing J-Cats in AC, because they didn’t. A few weeks later they brought in another one. That was fifteen years ago, and since then I’ve seen many J-Cats exhibit the same perverse and disturbing behavior as Louie, in some cases even worse. I’ve seen them mutilate themselves; shit and piss on themselves; shit and piss on the tier; sling shit and piss at people; spit on people; smear themselves with shit; destroy their property; scream and holler day and night; bang their heads against the wall; tear the sink off the wall; eat light bulbs; insert objects up their rectum; eat their own shit; drink urine; set themselves on fire; and live in squalor and filth. I’ve seen them used by the police, I’ve seen them laugh and cry, and then I’ve seen them commit suicide.

J-Cats have problems like most people do; theirs are just more severe and require more attention than the average person’s. They have a disease they’re not responsible for, any more than someone who inherits defective genes from their parents. Prison is the last place they’re going to get any sympathy, or the kind of treatment needed for them to heal and cope with life. In prison they’ll only get worse, and in the end, if they don’t take their own lives, someone else will.

I learned a lot about myself from my reactions to J-Cats, who taxed my nerves to the utmost. Sometime after Louie and before the next Louie came along, I decided the least I could do was see them as human beings.

I Dream the Same Dream Everyday

I never dream of going home in a pine box or body bag. I dream of walking out of prison free and standing tall. For over 22 years this dream has sustained me. It has kept me strong, focused, determined and hopeful. It has allowed me to escape the psychological clutter and dark thoughts of prison.

I have witnessed what happens to guys who deposit their emotions in the wrong bank, who rap themselves around prison like a quilt for warmth and comfort. They usually end up with nothing. They start to dream about prison life: about prison food, prison guards, prison stabbings, prison riots, prison yards, prison enemies, prison cockroaches, and, ultimately, about prison death. And all of it gets etched in the memory like a tattoo permanently cut into the skin. Prison is all they have, all they know and, unfortunately, all they become. Without a constant visual and social stimuli to connect them to something beyond the confinement of prison walls and prison life, they begin, as the years go by, to think less and less about freedom. Eventually, the thought is just too painful.

The stories they remember and share began to grow old and fade. They have told these same stories countless times, each one more embellished and elaborate then the last. The stories stop appealing to them. They lose their luster. But they don't have to look far for entertainment, because most of the stories circulating on the prison yards are borrowed ones, like sitcoms and soap operas that mimic each other. The future is rarely discussed because they have no control over it. People don't like talking about the unknown. If you're lucky you'll meet someone whose topic of conversation isn't limited to the prison drama that goes on, or you'll find ways to avoid most of the madness. To escape the horrors of prison requires a strong imagination; without it, you’ll succumb to one of the countless psychological traps set for you here. Prison is geared around a restrictive routine. Nothing ever changes. Not the screeching noise, or the deadening silence, or the pungent smells, or the grimy walls, or the monotonous program, or the paranoia and lunacy. Just when you think it can get no worse a taboo is broken, a line is crossed, and all hell breaks loose. You are told this is the norm, to adjust, adapt, and accept it like an ass kicking. I never could and I never will. I have always believed that you can make the best out of a bad situation.

I dream to ward off sensory deprivation. Lack of human contact and communication can leave you empty inside. I'm not attempting to escape to a surreal world of fantasy. I am fighting to maintain an emotional and psychological foundation that is vital to my sense of self worth and spiritual survival. It's not enough for me to wake up in prison each day breathing. That's like having a body without a heart. I need a purpose in my life, need to maintain my sense of being and connection to life the same way an endangered tribe fights to hold onto their culture. For me that means dreaming, reminding myself that prison is just a simple physical structure that cannot destroy my mind.

Sometimes I feel the tenseness permeating my body, like a noose tightening around my neck. Even after years of meditating and exercising, the stress still saunters in unwelcome and hits me with a wicked left hook. I'm knocked back. I stumble, just a little, but I stumble. I then ask myself, "Where in the hell is this coming from?" I've been doing everything right but my subconscious picks up on the craziness that surrounds me, hones in on it like a radar, and there's no way I can completely escape the toxic waste. At such moments the steel bars, gun towers, barbed wire fences, concrete walls, and eternal perdition encircling my being comes into full view.

Everyday I look within myself scanning for signs of psychic wounds. They are not visible to the naked eye nor do they show up in my mirror. But they eat at me internally. I try to gauge the collateral damage that 22 years has done to me. It's hard when you're still living and experiencing it. I am not a psychologist nor a behavioral scientist, but I do know that no person in prison, or anyone who gets out, remains unscathed.

Whenever I feel out of sync, I wonder whether it is a result of the toxic build up. I try to ferret out these things because I want to better understand and put them into perspective. I realize I have to dream to stay alive. I am as sure of this as I am that breathing is essential to life. To rise above the different degrees of insanity and depravity I witness, I dream the same dream everyday.

Why (Not) Me?

Why me? Why did I end up on Death Row? What purpose does it serve in the larger scheme of life? It would be easy for me to feel sorry for myself and start the perpetual game of finger pointing and making excuses for my situation, but my predicament would remain the same. Besides, self-pity is not my style.

When I was first arrested I read an article in the L.A. Times stating that I was facing the death penalty. The concept of "Death Row" didn't register with me; I ignored the article because it was inconceivable to me that I could actually be sentenced to die. My first attorney dismissed the idea and, looking me straight in the eye, said, "They are not going to sentence an 18-year-old to death.” I believe he believed that, and he even got me to believe, at least for a time. Of course, he was wrong, and in less than two years I was sitting in San Quentin Prison with the rest of the male Death Row population fighting not to be killed. Twenty-three years later, I’m still fighting.

Death Row is dreadful, and suggesting to someone that there must be a higher reason they are on the row (besides to be executed) is hard for anyone to swallow. I myself reject the suggestion. I don’t know any person who likes being told their suffering serves some cosmic purpose. I’ve had many conversations with men who adamantly profess their innocence. I don’t play the role of judge or jury. I simply listen and hear them out. Many asked themselves the same question I’ve asked: “Why me?” The question is almost a religious one, as if you are trying to enlist God to right a wrong. And as much as you try to rationalize it, you are never satisfied with the answers, especially when your life is at stake.

One guy I talked to lamented, “I’m innocent of this crime. I shouldn’t be here. Why me?”

“Why not you?” I asked.

He looked at me with a quizzical expression, as if he were trying to figure out what to say next. The guy didn’t get angry or cop an attitude; instead, he told me he had never looked at it that way before and walked away. Most people never do ask that question, because they’ve become accustomed to the “woe is me” attitude, not realizing that their self-pity blinds them from seeing the big picture (if there is one), beyond their tragic circumstance.

In order to maintain some objectivity while simultaneously trying to answer the question, why me, or at least to gain some understanding of its nature, I had to distance myself from it, which required a deeper understanding of who I am. Limiting my analysis strictly to social factors would mean I am doomed, because on this level it is about politics, and the politics of the death penalty is dictated by politicians and influenced by people whose emotional connection to me (and to people like me) is the connection a hawk has for its prey.

I could easily say a corrupt D.A., my dump-truck attorney, a biased judge, my ignorance of the law, and a tainted jury got me here (and there is some truth in all that). I could even put up a pretty good argument my Karma got me here, since I haven’t exactly been an altar boy. I could argue I needed to experience this extreme adversity to prepare for my future journey. I could beat myself up asking, “What makes me so special?” But I would only wind up on a philosophical or emotional roller coaster, because I know in the larger scheme of life I am just a strand of hair on the vast head of the universe, and so is everyone else. I don’t have time to be mad, only time to fight.

The question “Why me?” contains lessons that can’t be lived in the past or future. One is gone and other is steadily approaching. I live in the present. I use my past dialectically to understand my present, and the past and present both inform the future. I refuse to leave the metaphysical questions to philosophers, gurus, and bartenders. Why not me? Perhaps my life is supposed to serve as an example to others, who might learn from my mistakes, or more immediately, perhaps I needed a Death Row experience to wake me up.

Lamentations

I have spent years trying to explain to people what it’s like living on Death Row. I’ve had little success, but I keep trying because it is important for people to know. Family and friends say they want to know what it's like to live here, but their actions often tell me something different. It's a dilemma, like when one partner suspects the other of infidelity. They say they want to know the truth, but in fact they don't. The truth is too painful to bear. If I could open up my heart and transmit what's inside into their hearts, they would understand. Then I wonder, what if they did know, what could they do about it?

Life on Death Row is like being held in suspended animation. Like you’re standing on the outside of the world, locked out, watching life. So you are stuck in this monotonous world where an occasional visit, quarterly packages, letters, phone calls (if you are lucky), and the back-and-forth to the same recreational yard with the same faces for ten or sometimes fifteen years encompass your entire life. You walk around in this nightmarish existence, searching for closure and finality to something that you have absolutely no control over. It can be suffocating.

Sometimes I imagine myself drifting, or flying, to freedom, where I withdraw into myself, severing ties to the outside world, taking a vow of silence. I've had to battle against this fantasy because, if I don't, I might just renounce the world and not look back. So I fight to be included in this world despite all I find wrong with it. Still, I am not able to shake the feeling that there has been a big cosmic mistake and I was dropped on the wrong planet at the wrong time. But I am still alive, so it must mean something. It must mean I belong in this world, and that's enough to keep me fighting.

I must write down messages reminding myself to call or write certain people, not because I'm getting forgetful, really. If I don't write it down, weeks and sometimes months elapse before I get to it. And talking to certain people on the phone can be both frustrating and exhausting, so I have to prepare myself ahead of time.

There were times I'd call people, fight my way into the world, then regret it. I would ask myself why in the hell I had called. I'd make a vow never to call them back and, to make sure I didn't, I’d throw away their number. Someone might say I ought to be grateful to someone who even accepts my collect calls, and I am grateful, but it’s not always worth the aggravation. So I distance myself to save us both from a potentially explosive situation.

At times I would offer advice to family members, but most times it went unheeded—in one ear and out other. At other times, I have tried to explain to them what Death Row is like, and I haven’t gotten the feedback I was looking for. No one went into action to write the governor about my case, started campaigning against the death penalty, or joined an anti-death penalty organization. So now I keep quiet, suck it up, as they say, and pretend like everything is cool, all the while my heart bleeding as if a major artery has been cut. So why do I bother calling family? We all need family, even if all we can do for each other is listen. I call to keep myself connected, keep myself from withdrawing, and to give family access to me.

I’ve come to the realization that everyone has their own journey and their own timetable. It's not for me to say when people ought to be ready . . . that's their decision. I have to focus on me, make sure I'm on the right path. This doesn't stop me from wanting to help folks, but ultimately it's their choice to listen or not. You can only do so much, then you have to step back and let people find their own way. Some find it and some don't. It's hard, because nobody likes standing by watching someone they care about sink. But what else can you do? I've been told I should just be there if a person needs me or is ready to listen, but for me the clock is ticking down and I might not be here if the State of California gets its way. So I'm shouting. The question is, are you hearing?

Prison Is Designed To Dehumanize You

Every day I wake up in prison I have to find ways to stop them from trying to take my life and stealing what humanity I have left. My fight for my humanity began when I first walked into the courtroom cuffed and shackled and the judge read the charges against me. When, later, I was sentenced to be executed, the judge said, "You are a menace to society." His words were, in fact, a declaration of war on my very humanity. It was open season on Steve, and the contract on my humanity was a direct invitation to anyone who wanted to attack my personhood. This is an unwritten policy sanctioned and endorsed by society: no one cares about a menace.

I was declared civilly dead, labeled a non-person, and stripped of the respect and basic rights accorded human beings: I can't own a business, father children, or vote. This is what dehumanization is about—the stripping of your humanity, rights and dignity. About disrespecting you, about treating you like garbage. It is about humiliating you and denigrating you. It's about trying to convince you that you are a non-person who has no rights and therefore nothing to complain about. In the end, it's about destroying your mind, your soul. So every morning I wake to resist, because my resistance is a confirmation of my humanity.

When I came to prison I was hurled into a toxic environment that incubates stress, deception, insecurity, and every psychological disorder known to man. It is an environment with its own laws, codified long before I arrived. The violence and brutality are part of the program that gets transmitted from generation to generation. Prison is like a bad experiment that grows worse by the day. It is an abomination to everything that is life-centered. I realized early that unless I fought on every level to hold onto my humanity, I would die here, not necessarily a physical death, but certainly a psychic one. I would end up like a television set where all of the channels play white static.

Being dumped into an environment where violence is an article of faith and not be affected is difficult. Living in a cage the size of a bathroom and not becoming filled with anger and rage is hard. And as brutal and cutthroat as prison is, nothing quite prepared me for the battles I would have to wage within myself. The struggle to maintain equilibrium, to prevent a slide over to the dark side, is a daily battle, for deep in my heart I know if I go there I might not return.

Every single day I spend in prison I fend off mental assaults that eat away at my psyche like acid: the strip searches where every orifice of my body is scanned and scrutinized; the unpredictable cell searches; the lockdowns; the racism; the terror and violence; the 24 hour surveillance by guards who pack Mini 14s and .38 revolvers; the restricted movement; the lack of mental stimulation; the lack of outside human contact; the lack of nutritional food; the psychological games played by guards that pit prisoner against prisoner; and the dread of being hurt or possibly hurting someone. It's enough to drive anyone stark raving mad.

Most times the assaults happen imperceptibly and, if I don't pay close attention to them, frustration builds up and surfaces in my thoughts and actions. Early on when I was assailed by ill thoughts, I’d experience angry internal outbursts—tiny conspiracies that ganged up on me. I would use these to justify unruly behavior. Prison is littered with a host of things one could go berserk over, and sometimes I did go berserk, but I always brought myself back from the brink of insanity by meditating, staying positive, and reading literature that motivated me to transform my life. I have been fortunate; many others have not.

Prison has left more scars on my mind than the violence of prison has left on my body. It wasn't that prison combat disturbed me so much, because it was something I was used to. It was the fear that I could so easily say "fuck it," that I could give up my sanity in a split second.

I used to fear that the brutal, bellicose, inhumane atmosphere of prison would swallow me up, that it would transform me into someone I didn't know, much less like. I have spent many days and nights questioning myself on a metaphysical level: Is there a god? Why does he permit injustice, suffering, and evil in the world? What is the meaning of right and wrong? What is the purpose of my life? The mental acrobatics I perform to keep from going over the edge is a feat in itself. But I must exercise and cleanse my mind everyday, because I know if the psychic pendulum swings the wrong way I'm finished. I've seen too many men go crazy to believe otherwise.

I'm in a tug a war, a life and death struggle. The moment I stop caring about myself and life would mark the decline and eventual demise of my humanity. Emotions and humanity are inextricably tied together because you can't claim to be human and not have feelings. Prison tries to dehumanize me by dislodging the emotions that keep me human.

I am fighting like my ancestors before me to be a full human being even under soul-shattering conditions. My rebellious spirit has gotten me into trouble at times, but the fight against emptiness and numbness, the by products of dehumanization, is a battle I can't avoid, a struggle I must join, and a war I must win!

Attorney/Client Relationship: Who Has The Final Say?

Prior to their arrival on Death Row, most guys (including me) didn't have a clue as to how the law actually worked. Even when we suspected something was wrong, our suspicions were usually brushed aside, and we assumed our attorney(s) would protect our legal interests. After all, the attorney was the expert, cloaked in respectability and credibility. So we ended up keeping our mouths shut.

One can use "ignorance" as an excuse when you don't know squat about the law, but there is no excuse for someone spending years on the row and still claiming ignorance. I know guys here who have never gone to the law library to pick up a book, who have never asked their attorney(s) to down load legal information, or even whether they are pro- or anti-death penalty. They assume because the attorney has been assigned to their case by the courts that he or she is automatically against capital punishment. But that's not necessarily true! Many attorneys are for capital punishment, and at the same time will represent a person on Death Row without breathing a word of their political ideology; and sadly, their client never asks.

Some serious tug a wars transpire between attorneys and their clients. These battles are about control, disrespect, and a lack of inclusion. The attorney wants full control with only minimum input from the client. Sadly, many attorneys see their clients as a means to an end—the end being an easy paycheck. The truth is, the attorney/client relationship has to be one of mutual cooperation in order to present the best and strongest defense possible. But oftentimes the client is treated like a footnote, something acknowledged and referred to every now and then.

Attorneys who lack respect for their clients disguise their antipathy in condescending paternalism, as if they must protect the client from himself, assuming he can't think or make rational decisions. Many Death Row prisoners have to constantly battle their attorneys and/or the California Appellate Project (CAP), just to get their trial transcripts. The attorney or CAP uses the excuse that somebody might steal the transcripts or a guard might read them. This is possible, but if someone wants to know the details about your case there isn't anything you can do about it because your case is a matter of public record and can easily be down loaded from the internet. What it comes down to is control, and most attorneys and the CAP are going to push to be in charge.

Too often attorneys assigned to death penalty cases have preconceived notions about their client(s). They are well aware that the majority of men on the row come from impoverished backgrounds and sometimes the attorney confuses poverty with a lack of intelligence. When their client performs poorly on standardized psychological tests it confirms in the attorney's mind that their client is mentally handicapped and couldn't possible grasp the intricacies and nuances of the law or the appellate process. Therefore, the client's ideas and opinions are given little or no weight.

Death Row prisoners are placed in three categories: (1) Those who would prefer death rather than life in prison. (2) Those who give up and want to be executed. (3) Those who want to fight for their lives. The first two categories create a paternalistic relationship where the client must be pampered like a child. The third category might create some conflict between the client and attorney over methods, strategies and tactics; however, this is the only relationship worthy of respect, because the attorney comes to recognize the client as an equal partner and not as a passive observer.

Attorneys assigned to death penalty cases rely heavily on agencies like CAP, which may have their own agenda. Among Death Row prisoners a deep suspicion exists that CAP is interested in getting people off Death Row but not necessarily out of prison. Some attorneys and CAP spend an inordinate amount of time and energy on collecting and developing mental health issues and personal background information, which they proffer as an explanation of why the person committed the crime, but do not put forth a strong defense for innocence. To be fair, in many cases, penalty phase issues are the only thing the attorney has to work with. But it is inappropriate when this practice is applied as an overall strategy for each and every case without exploring other options.

Much of the mistrust and conflict between attorneys and their clients stems from attorneys making unilateral decisions without their client’s knowledge or prior consent. What's even worse is when the client reads about these decisions for the first time in a writ or brief filed by the attorney. This is a complaint I've heard Death Row prisoners make time and time again: their attorney(s) filing or doing things they are adamantly opposed to. This is more than a question of the attorney doing what he/or she thinks is best. It's about the need for one’s counsel to respect the rights and wishes of the client to play a significant role in determining their own destiny (unless the client is insane and unable to work for his best interest).

Although I understand the dilemma most attorneys wrestle with between being the legal advocate for the client and developing a personal relationship with them, the struggle must remain focused on keeping the client alive. The truth is, most attorneys are going to opt for a clinical role, even while some genuinely care and see the humanity in their client(s). After working closely with someone for several years, it's hard not to see the person behind the conviction unless he is a total monster, and for many men on the row the relationship they develop with their attorney is the first honest and open relationship they have had with another human being.

When the Attorney General responds to a writ or brief, it clearly states: The State of California vs. The Defendant . . . not the Attorney. If the attorney fails to file a petition on time or to include all pertinent issues, it's the defendant's fault, not the attorney’s. If the courts deny every appeal of the defendant he will be the one executed, not the attorney. Ultimately, the case is about the client and this is something every attorney must never forget.

The client is certainly not a lawyer, but he is the one who was present at the trial. He is the one who observed witnesses’ facial expressions and body language as they testified, things that can't be gleaned from the mere reading of a trial transcript. The client’s observations at trial are vital to preparing an adequate appellant defense. The client, not the attorney, lives everyday with what happened during the trial, so who knows the case better than he? This is why I say the client (if competent) must have the "final say" on his case and appeal. And by final say, I'm not talking about the client's "last words," when he's already strapped to a gurney with the last shreds of his life being drawn from his body. By that time it's too late: respect, cooperation, and inclusion become "non issues," and the attorney/client relationship is severed forever.

America's Violence and Capital Punishment

America's embryonic beginning was fueled by colonial conquest, and what follows is a series of brutal, racist wars, genocide, slavery, and the overthrowing of sovereign nations—a bloody history replete with repression. No student of American history should thus be shocked that capital punishment is an intrinsic part of the American system. Execution has always existed as a tool of repression in one form or another.

America's embrace of capital punishment is paradoxically interlinked with its need to purge itself of its own deep rooted guilt and shame for past atrocities and ongoing crimes. America, unable to come to grips with it ugly past and much less than perfect present, projects its guilt onto the marginalized segments of society through mass unemployment, social stigmatization, incarceration and lethal injection. Such a scapegoat strategy of blaming the victim is not a new phenomenon; historically, it has been used by nations and groups of people calling for extermination, for subjugation, and for enslavement and the expropriating of other people's land. The enslavement of Africans, the genocide of Native Americans, the eradication of the Tasmanians and Herero peoples, the genocide of the Armenians and the Jewish Holocaust are just a few examples. In all these cases, the destroyed people deserved their fate because they were savages, sinister, impious and considered less than human by their conquerors.

Contrary to popular opinion, capital punishment is not a deterrent to crime, any more than beating a child corrects misbehavior. Capital punishment functions as a "final solution" for the poor and for those who are considered "social dynamite." Rich people who get indicted for murder can afford to put up the best defense by hiring the best lawyers, the best investigators, and the best experts to avoid a death sentence. The poor are not so fortunate.

Unable to distinguish consistently between political and moral issues, America blurs the line whenever it suits its interest. It is no wonder we hear the president and political leaders lecturing to youth how violence does not solve problems, while simultaneously justifying the invading and bombing of other nations, or doing nothing when over a half million people are being slaughtered in Rwanda, or executing people at home.

The United States is the only industrialized western nation that still uses the death penalty. It criticizes other countries like Cuba and Iran for their human rights abuses, while sending children as young as 14 to adult prisons and executing juveniles and the mentally retarded. America ranks along with Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen as the only countries that execute children under 18 years of age. While countries like Taiwan and Kenya are coming out of the Dark Ages to abolish the barbaric practice of the death penalty, America seeks, with the passage of the 1996 Anti Terrorism and Penalty Act, to hasten execution by limiting habeas corpus. While defending the use of the death penalty, America can only pose as a civilized nation. Civilized nations don't execute their citizens.

The death penalty is applied in an arbitrary and capricious manner. Less then one percent of all murder convictions result in the death penalty, for one, and for blacks the odds of receiving a death sentence are 3.9 times higher than for whites for the same crime, according to a study by law Professor David Baldus and statistician George Woodworth. Additionally, a black defendant convicted of killing a white victim is eleven times more likely to receive the death penalty than a white killer. Due to systemic racism, police and prosecutorial misconduct, mistaken eye witness identification, false confessions, judicial error, incompetent defense counsel and unreliable jail house snitches, all arguments for the death penalty are deeply flawed and morally bankrupt.

Don DeLillo was right when he said: "You can never underestimate the willingness of the state to act out its own massive fantasies." Execution acts as a cleansing ritual which balances the scales of emotional justice and appeases the God of vengeance. America's love affair with capital punishment is a corollary of its inability to intelligently deal with its own contradictory past. So long as America chooses to ignore its own criminal past and present inequities, people are in danger of being demonized, warehoused, and executed. An enlightened society would never tolerate such barbarity and injustice. The death penalty, like slavery, Jim Crowism, child labor, and the denial of women’s suffrage, will come to an end only when the people, not politicians, decide to stand up and determine the moral fate of the country.

The Anatomy of a Political Prisoner

The brilliant revolutionary theorist and political prisoner George L. Jackson wrote: "All black people wherever they are, whatever their crimes, even crimes against other Blacks, are political prisoners because the system has dealt with them differently than whites.”

Jackson wrote those words in 1971 and since that time the burgeoning prison industrial complex has only made things worse. I would bolster George's claim by adding to the list all people of color and poor whites, because unlike the rich, who have access to every advantage of the judicial process, from posting bond, hiring attorneys, to hiring experts and the best investigators, the poor and minorities are victims of a stigmatizing social system that intentionally treats them differently, because the political nature of the system is inherently biased and corrupt.

One cannot ask what political prisoners are without asking what conditions created them. One cannot advocate the freeing of political prisoners without targeting the system that put them in prison in the first place. That would be like abolitionists helping slaves to escape but remaining silent on the institution that perpetuates slavery. The unfairness permeating the judicial system is inextricably tied to the twin evils of racism and capitalism, meaning if you have no capital and happen to be a person of color you are twice as like to be treated unfairly.

There seems to be some confusion among activists as to what constitutes a political prisoner. This might explain why political prisoners receive little or no outside support. People in the activist community usually support those political prisoners who have obtained celebrity status, media attention and the support of national or international organizations like Amnesty International, the ACLU, or the NAACP . . . whereas countless other political prisoners get lost in the process, like defective products on an assembly line.

Some people in the activist community judge those in prison on the nature of their crime. They are quick to say: "I can't support that person," or "the crime he committed wasn't political so he isn’t a political prisoner." They use these rationalizations to justify their non-support, which tacitly excuses the same corrupt system they are fighting to change. I argue that you can't freeze a person in time at the worst moment of their life and declare that is the total sum of who the person is. That attitude precludes the chance that people can change, when history has proven otherwise. As I have read somewhere, every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.

Would anyone dare to question whether W.L. Nolen or George Jackson, both targeted and assassinated by prison guards because of their political beliefs, were political prisoners? Was Shaka Sankofa, who resisted every stage of his illegal execution, a political prisoner? Are Hugo "Yogi" Pinell and Ruchell Magee, who have both been held captive in various California Prisons for a combined period of over 80 years, political prisoners? Their political awareness is what distinguishes Marilyn Buck, Mumia Abu Jamal, Leonard Peltier or Sundiata Acoli from countless other men and women held hostage behind concrete walls and barbwire fences. While essential to the struggle, political awareness is not a necessary condition for being considered a political prisoner. George Jackson wrote: “I met Marx, Lenin, Trotsky Engels and Mao . . . and they redeemed me." He continues: "We attempted to transform the black criminal mentality into a black revolutionary mentality." Two pivotal words in George's statement are redeemed and transform. Political Education (PE) is what gives birth to politically conscious prisoners. That's why some political prisoners take a stand and others do not. The awareness levels are not the same. Political Education can transform and redeem the lives of all prisoners just as it did for Malcolm X when he was in prison. A conscious political prisoner is someone who received a political education and uses it to educate, train, teach, and radicalize other prisoners. He takes a conscious political position for his actions. His awareness and knowledge about social injustice is what motivates him to be an active agent for revolutionary change.

While all political prisoners need and deserve the support of the activist community, the list of political prisoners who have actively resisted repression and made sacrifices is steadily growing. The lack of outside support ensure the isolation and repression of courageous voices that speak truth even under the mantle of death.

Citation Format:

Steve Champion Steve a.k.a. Adisa Kamara. “The Geography of Death Row: Essays from Inside San Quentin,” PROUDFLESH: A New Afrikan Journal of Culture, Politics & Consciousness: Issue 4, 2006

Copyright © 2006 Africa Resource Center, Inc.