In 2016, I was housed at Sierra Conservation Center in the California foothills where six days a week I sewed in the Prison Industries, mostly making vests and jumpsuits for the California Department of Transportation and shirts for CAL FIRE. I really enjoyed the work. it was interesting and rewarding.
One night, a former prisoner who had been sentenced to fifty years to life for a double homicide came with his wife to our facility to speak. Many years ago, when the former prisoner transferred to Sierra, he had started a Celebrate Recovery program for drugs/alcohol after reaching out to Rick Warren at his Southern California church and asking for assistance. He spoke about how the prison gangs did not like anything on the yard they did not control, and the founding members of Celebrate Recovery had taken some blows but persevered. When he went to the parole board, the family members of his victims asked if he had done everything asked of him in prison. The parole board commissioner indicated he had done everything asked and much more, describing the program he had started. The mother of one of his victims said in that case he should be given another chance in society, and he was granted parole. The founder had tears in his eyes as he related her generosity, her compassion. How do you forgive someone and give them another chance when they have murdered your son? Now he’s a minister working for Rick Warren in prison outreach.
Walking back to our housing unit, the honor unit that Celebrate Recovery had created, Paul, my cellmate, asked if I was upset that I had also been convicted of a double homicide, but spent eighteen years on San Quentin’s Death Row before receiving a new trial and a new sentence of Life in Prison Without Possibility of Parole, while the founder had been allowed a parole board hearing.
Shaking my head, I explained how when I was released from death row and transferred to Pleasant Valley State Prison I had been assigned as an education clerk. If the class went on break when the yard was closed, we would have to go into a small, fenced enclosure until it was time to return to the class. While we were locked in, we would see the custody clerks out on the grass throwing around a Frisbee and enjoying the sunshine. The other education clerks would be annoyed, muttering that we were clerks too and if we can’t go onto the grass and throw around a Frisbee neither then should they. I never felt that way; I only wondered what I needed to do to get onto the grass to throw the Frisbee.
After the education class where I clerked graduated, I went to the computer class as a student and completed my college degree. After computer class, I went to work in the law library and then was recruited to be the sergeant’s clerk and was finally out on the grass in the sunshine throwing around the Frisbee, as I moved to the lieutenant’s clerk and finally the captain’s clerk position.
“What are you going to do to get to the parole board?” asked Paul, as we entered the honor housing unit Celebrate Recovery had created.
“Not a thing,” I answered with a shrug. “The moral of the story is not that I can do anything anyone else has going on. The message is I’m not jealous of other people’s paths.”
One of my federal attorneys who saved my life by releasing me from death row came to visit me. “All your appeals are over,” he advised me. “I think we need to start putting together a petition to ask the Governor for clemency.”
“No.” I shook my head. “I’m doing self-help groups already, but you’re talking about a commitment of an entirely different magnitude. The lifers that are scheduled for parole board don’t like it when prisoners like me that aren’t scheduled start filling up self-help group slots they need to demonstrate rehabilitation.”
“Let me know if you change your mind.”
A friend of mine from high school who joined the Navy with me decades ago came to visit with his wife. I told him about what Dan had said, and he replied sharply, “I only have two really good friends from high school, one of them lives in Nebraska and I hardly ever see him and the other one is in prison. You need to listen to Dan and work on getting out of here.”
I listened, kept doing self-help groups including anger management, anxiety, depression, confronting criminal thinking, denial management, victim awareness, wellness and recovery, insight among others, and continued sewing sixty hours a week, but did not do anything about petitioning the Governor for clemency.
I returned to Pleasant Valley Prison and the Captain’s clerk position and was able to throw a Frisbee around on the grass in the sunlight once again. When I was scheduled to drop a custody level and transfer to a medium security facility at Corcoran Prison, two sergeants and a lieutenant felt I had performed well in my assignment as a custody clerk, noted my self-help groups, and wrote laudatory chronos in case I ever needed them for the parole board.
I had not been doing the self-help groups for the parole board, I had done them to learn more about myself and become a happier, more productive person. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is amazing, they teach you to view and interact with people and your community in a positive way. In many ways I’m happier now than I ever have been in my life.
In 2022, Dan came to see me at Corcoran and we discussed once again petitioning the Governor for clemency. Looking over the application, I was perplexed by the question about what I would do if granted clemency. I’ve been in prison for more than four decades, and I didn’t have a clue what I wanted to do if found suitable for parole. I could not come up with anything that sounded realistic and productive. I know I want to be part of a church congregation, I want to go for a walk along the beach, I want to attend a high school football game, but those thoughts didn’t really seem to be what they wanted from me.
While I struggled with the petition for clemency, I enrolled in a Parole Board Preparation class to learn how to write a parole board packet and understand the hearing process.
I was several weeks into the class when a Senate Bill started moving through the legislature. The bill excluded sex offenders, anyone who had killed a law enforcement officer, or a murderer with three or more victims. The legislative intent was to allow prisoners sentenced to Life Without Possibility of Parole prior to 1990 to apply to the superior court for resentencing. The judge would review your prison record including your rules violations, work history, laudatory chronos, self-help groups, and see if you have made an effort to rehabilitate yourself. If you had a good record and did not appear to be a danger to public safety anymore, the judge could resentence you to twenty-five years to life and allow you to go to the parole board. The parole board would do a thorough evaluation, meet with you at a hearing, and determine if you were suitable for parole. If you were found suitable, the Governor would conduct a review and make the final decision.
When the bill passed the State Senate and went to the State Assembly, I stopped working on my petition for clemency and started working on my parole board packet. I was cautiously optimistic I would be able to file for resentencing when the bill became law in January of 2024.
I didn’t have difficulty writing about my social history, life, and crime, but I did have a great deal of problem with my remorse letters and the concept of amends.
My remorse letter described my uneasy, contentious relationship with my two victims. My parole board preparation class sponsor felt I was re-victimizing. I thought about it a great deal, sent the letters to a friend whose opinion I respect and explained that I felt I needed to place all the events into context. I understood my drug/alcoholfueled reaction to my adversarial relationship that led to two murders was evil, tragic, horrendous and I had to take responsibility for not addressing in a healthy way my addictions, my anger, but not to relate everything that happened was inauthentic. My friend said I had written honestly and taken responsibility and accountability, so my written thoughts seemed fine to her. Using her suggestions, I rewrote the letters, carefully speaking my truth.
Of course, authentic truth is not always admirable or appropriate. One guy in my board prep class told the parole commissioners that if confronted with the same situation, he would go find his gun again and could not understand why he was denied parole when he had been honest.
Amends were daunting to me. How can I make amends to two people who are dead while I’m alive? The secondary victims are their loved ones who have a hole in their lives. Someone is missing at weddings, anniversaries, graduations, birthdays, all the milestones of life. The final victims are the community, a loss of a sense of safety in a world where violence exists. I contemplated amends for a long time and finally thought, “What if I had severely injured them instead of murdering them?” With medical intervention, a limb could be replaced by a prosthetic and with physical therapy they could be there for the milestones of life. Would they be whole? No. Would their loved ones be whole? No. It finally occurred to me even if I had committed a non-violent property crime, my victims would never have been whole. Even if I had been caught leaving their house with a television and the property was immediately returned to them, they would feel violated and a loss of personal security. This is when I realized amends can’t be about making someone whole since that can never happen. Now my thought is amends are about living amends, understanding the factors that led me to committing the heinous act of murder and addressing them in a healthy effective way. In my case, my main two causative factors are drugs/alcohol and anger.
I address my drug/alcohol addiction by doing cardio six days a week for forty minutes, followed by meditation, twelve steps self-inventory and reading scripture. I read in James that faith without good works is dead. This made me think that self-help and addressing my causative factors that led me to commit murder without good works is also dead. I must commit myself to being an asset to any situation, any community I find myself within.
At my board prep class the sponsor, who also has an alcohol problem, pilloried me for saying I felt my drug/alcohol problem was under control. I can tell he still struggles and has relapsed on occasion, but I don’t feel he fully comprehended my statement. I have been sober since 1991, and I have developed a path that has kept me sober. Alcohol/drug abuse is a disease just like diabetes. Now if I said I have not had a problem with my type 1 diabetes since 1991, so I’m confident that I’m cured and stopped testing my blood, taking insulin, and didn’t pay attention to my diet and exercise that would be stupid. In the same way, I can’t say I have not used drugs/alcohol since 1991, so I’m cured and can do whatever I want because I’m fine. I do not have confidence in myself; I do have confidence in my path, my daily routine as I carefully work my sober program.
I addressed my anger many years after I became sober. Although I was not involved in violence after I became sober, I still became very angry. I thought that the anger would go away when age mellowed me and found that idea was completely false. Only when I enrolled in anger management did I realize anger was not something thrust upon me. Anger comes from within me and must be dealt with there. I started to learn to identify and channel my emotions. Admittedly, I’m a work in progress, but I’m so much better at realizing when I’m becoming angry. I use active listening, humor, and even distance myself if overwhelmed. I no longer brood or plot vengeance.
A prisoner by the name of Hardin sentenced to Life Without Possibility of Parole filed for a Franklin hearing. Lifer prisoners who committed their offense before the age of twenty-six are allowed to ask the superior court to conduct a hearing where their prison record is examined and the judge documents their progress towards rehabilitation and can order an early parole board hearing. Life Without Possibility of Parole prisoners are excluded from Franklin hearings, but Hardin argued that if he was sentenced to a million years to life, he would be entitled to a Franklin hearing but was not eligible since he was sentenced to Life Without Possibility of Parole. Hardin argued this was a denial of the Fourteenth Amendment mandating equal protection before the law. The superior court granted Hardin’s petition for a hearing, the prosecution appealed the judge’s decision, and the appellate court not only upheld the Franklin hearing but ordered a parole hearing for Hardin. Instantly, Life Without Possibility of Parole prisoners started filing for their own Franklin hearings. A different superior court denied a petition and the appellate court in that district upheld the superior court judge’s refusal to give a Franklin hearing. Since there was a conflict in the two appellate courts, the California Supreme Court decided to hear the case to resolve the dispute. Interestingly, they left Hardin the controlling and citable case while they conducted their review. A briefing schedule was established with oral arguments to be scheduled later in the year.
I asked Dan to file a petition for me in the superior court, he declined stating the resentencing bill would pass and become law before the Supreme Court decides the issue and that we’d file for a resentencing hearing at that time. Since the bill was sailing through the legislature, I couldn’t disagree and continued to work on my parole board packet.
I created a study guide, and I wrote out answers to questions the board prep class instructor thought I might be asked at a parole board hearing. I’ve included a few:
1. What has changed the most in me? I have embraced change in many, many forms since I became sober. I think what has changed the most about me is I examine my life daily through self-inventory to see if I’m acting on my selfish wants/desires or reaching out to other people in a healthy way.
2. What caused me to commit my crime? I would say my inability/refusal to identify my problems which in turn kept me from finding solutions. I view my problems as drug/alcohol abuse, anger, and criminal thinking. Combined, they kept me from stepping up and becoming a mature person. The alcohol took all limits off my behavior and allowed me to act violently. The basis for this analysis is that I have not engaged in any violence since I became sober in 1991. Addressing my anger issues has allowed me to channel emotion in a healthy rational way. I no longer brood or plan vengeance, I now engage anger with the rational side of my brain and look for solutions, not emotional responses. In addition, I had for most of my life used victim’s stance criminal thinking as a crutch. I felt since I had been the victim of violence, I could justify making other people my victim. I can’t change what people have done to me or what I’ve done to other people, all I can do is learn from my past experiences and live in an ethical way moving forward.
3. Do I consider myself a criminal? What do I think makes me a criminal? I am definitely a criminal. I am a murderer, and I’ve been in custody for more than four decades. However, since 1991, when I identified criminal thinking as one of my problems, I have come to consider myself a criminal in recovery. Through sobriety, anger management, and daily self-inventory, I have been able to refrain from criminal activity.
4. How am I going to deal with questions about where I have been since being incarcerated? I will answer honestly and candidly but will also refrain from telling war stories or in any way glorifying prison life. If the question is related to employment or any other legitimate inquiry, I will be forthcoming. If someone is asking me for the wrong reason, I will answer the question briefly and move on explaining I’m trying to place that life behind me.
5. Have I accepted that I might die in prison? Since I was housed on San Quentin’s death row and friends of mine were executed, I have come to terms with dying in prison. My chances of being released from prison are not high. I am engaged in this process of self-help to become a better, happier person who will hopefully be an asset to whatever community I find myself within.
6. How can I assure the Board, that upon my release, I will live a life without crime and violence?Recovery has taught me not to feel I’m cured or give assurances. Recovery has taught me to begin every day with a plan that although flexible and able to adapt to situations, keeps me positive and productive. The plan incorporates cardio exercise, meditation, study of scripture, self-inventory, using active listening in my everyday encounters, and working on my criminal thinking so I act in an ethical manner. Living life without crime and violence is about putting in the work, finding positive alternatives to crime and violence that lead me into a productive existence.
7. What was the hardest step? (12 Step Program) I find steps four and ten are the hardest ones for me. Both steps require a fearless inventory although step ten also requires me to promptly admit when I’m wrong. My daily personal inventory has changed my life, but it is very difficult and an ongoing process that will continue the rest of my life.
8. What do you want to say to the Board? I was arrested in 1982 and sent to San Quentin’s death row where I remained until 2002. I did not think I would ever have the opportunity to appear before a parole board. There are only two possible results from this board appearance and both of them are positive. Perhaps you will find me unsuitable for parole, but then you will inform me of what I need to do in order to improve myself and that is a positive outcome. Perhaps you will find me suitable for parole, and then I will have the opportunity to continue my recovery in a different setting. In either event, I will be able to continue down my path to recovery and embrace living amends.
9. What if I were confronted with a similar situation today? First, I would not be drunk or on drugs, and I know how to deal with my anger in a more productive manner. If for some reason I was in a situation where I thought violence was an acceptable solution, I would reach out to my accountability partner and my support network for wisdom. I would find a peaceful alternative to violence. If I was in prison, I have no problem self-reporting to the guards. If I was on parole, I would have no problem reaching out to my parole officer for advice. I need to utilize community resources to find a community-acceptable solution to any adverse situations in which I find myself.
The bill was voted out of the final committee in the State Assembly ten to five in favor of passing, and then on the last day of the legislative session the bill was placed in the inactive file and did not receive a vote of the full Assembly.
I phoned Dan to tell him the bill had failed, and he told me I was overreacting, and the bill would come out of the inactive file and pass within a few days. I explained that the legislative session had ended. Although there are a few exceptions where bills can be acted upon after the session is over, this bill did not qualify and was dead.
Moving on, I asked Dan to file for a Franklin hearing for me under Hardin, and he fired up his computer to check on Hardin’s status in the California Supreme Court, and exclaimed, “There’s an avalanche of friends of the court briefs filed. I don’t know how they’re going to review all of them.”
“Probably some law clerks are reading them and writing one-page synopses right now,” I guessed.
“There’s a memo from the court clerk that says oral arguments will be in a couple months.”
“Why don’t I file a pro per petition for a Franklin hearing and ask for appointment of counsel. That will take some of the load off you,” I prodded Dan to let me pursue a Franklin hearing citing Hardin.
“That’s a good idea. If you get assigned counsel, they can handle the Franklin hearing if Hardin comes down favorably for you.”
“The thing about Hardin,” I added, “is seven judges will decide it instead of the 120 members of the state legislature.”
“Good point. In the meantime, you and I can work on a petition for clemency.”
I was silent about clemency. The thing about clemency or commutation of sentence is it’s a political process, a plea for mercy. Although the courts move slowly, they do have briefing schedules and hearing dates. You can file a petition for clemency and never hear anything about it – ever! I’d rather hear, “No!” A maybe that goes on into infinity is not a purgatory I wanted to enter.
“Look, Hardin probably won’t be decided until June of next year,” I interjected, “and by then we will have a sense of whether the legislature is going to do something about a review for Life Without Possibility of Parole prisoners. We can discuss clemency at that time.”
Saying goodbye to Dan, I felt much better now we had a game plan. I wondered why the bill hadn’t received a final vote in the State Assembly.
As my mind spun around the why, I pulled myself back and started thinking about why I had started Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in the first place. The idea was to become a better, happier person living a productive life. Although I struggle daily trying to discern the correct path, the ethical path for me, I feel good with my progress and believe I will prosper in or out of custody, wherever my path takes me.
A couple days later I received the news that the bill had been denied a vote due to opposition from law enforcement and victims’ rights groups. The State Senate planned to tweak the bill in several aspects including a sunset clause; and they would reintroduce the legislation next January.
I know people want to be safe, and they worry about Life Without Possibility of Parole prisoners, even ones who committed murders more than thirty years ago and in my case more than forty years ago, having a chance for resentencing, a parole board hearing, and a Governor’s review. People are raising children in their communities and want them to be safe and secure and I understand their concerns.
Oddly, I feel at peace with the delay, the additional time I now have to prepare myself for a chance at living in the unbarred world. I need to find an answer to the question about what I would do if released from prison better than merely joining a church congregation, taking a walk on a beach, or going to see a high school football game. I need to find a way to contribute in some small way and make living amends for the rest of my life whether it’s inside or outside of custody.
-The End-
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