Published by Padma Publishing

P.O. Box 279

Junction City, CA 96048-0279

www.tibetantreasures.com

© Jarvis Masters 1997

Portions of this book previously appeared in 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Printed in the United States of America

First Printing 1997; Second Printing 2000; Third Printing 2003; Fourth Printing 2006

Fifth Printing 2008; Sixth Printing (Prison Edition) 2013; eBook 2015

Cover photo of San Quentin © Cary Groner

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Masters, Jarvis Jay, 1962–

Finding freedom : writings from death row / Jarvis Jay Masters. p. cm.

ISBN: 978-1-881847-08-3 Softcover (200 pages)

ISBN: 978-1-881847-51-9 eBook

1. Death row inmates—California—San Quentin—Literary collections. 2. Prisoners—California—San Quentin—Literary collections. 3. Death row—California—San Quentin—Literary collections. 4. Prisoners’ writings, American—California—San Quentin. 5. Prisons—California—San Quentin—Correspondence. 6. Masters, Jarvis Jay, 1962– —Correspondence. I. Title. PS3563.A826F56 1997 97-22092 CIP 810.8’0920692—DC21

Contents

Foreword by Melody Ermachild Chavis

Acknowledgments

Sanctuary

Sanctuary • Rats • Little Black Sparrow • Pablo’s Wish • The Man Who Talks to Himself • A Reason to Live • Fruitcakes • Thirteen Sixty-Eight • The Boneyard Visit • Funny How Time Flies

Mourning Exercise

When I First Got Charged • Scars • Me and My Sisters • My Mother Died • Mourning Exercise • Dream • I Open My Palms to the Sky • Justice Marshall Resigns • Bryan • It’s Become So Hard • O.J. • In My Recurrent Dream

Finding Freedom

Night’s Bright Stars • For a Long Time • Seeking Silence • The Dalai Lama Hat • San Quentin Is Really Rockin’ ’n’ Rollin’ • The Empowerment Ceremony • Understanding Impermanence • Angry Faces • Maxism • Joe Bob • Every Night Before I Go to Sleep • Tylenol Prayer Beads • Meditation Has Become • Peace Activist • I Was Walking • Fourth of July • Stop! A Buddhist Is Here!

Epilogue

Afterword by H.E. Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche

Foreword

AS ONE OF THE DEFENSE investigators who prepared Jarvis’s trial, I looked into the details of his life and learned how far he has traveled spiritually in one short lifetime. Jarvis was born in 1962, the same year my oldest child was born. I met Jarvis’s mother, Cynthia, while working on his case, but she died of heart failure just before his trial. She had not seen him for many years. All of Cynthia’s children were raised in foster care because she was addicted to drugs. Jarvis’s father had left the family and later he too became an addict. In a series of foster care placements, Jarvis was separated from his siblings. For several years, he stayed in his favorite home, with an elderly couple he loved, but when they became too old to care for him, he was moved again, at the age of nine. After that, Jarvis ran away from several foster homes, and went back to the elderly people’s house. He was then sent to the county’s large locked facility for dependent children, and later to some more group homes. Once, he stayed with an aunt for a while, but he got in trouble. At twelve, he became a ward of the court because of delinquency, and was in and out of institutions after that.

During my investigation I met people who had known Jarvis in foster care and institutions, and they told me he had always had a lot of potential. They remembered a smart and articulate youngster with a sense of humor. But too many times he was pushed—and he went—in the wrong direction.

At the age of seventeen, when he was a very angry young man, he was released from the California Youth Authority and went on a crime spree, holding up stores and restaurants until he was captured and sent to San Quentin. He never shot anyone, but the big stack of reports that I read about his crimes was scary. As I told him, I’m glad I wasn’t in Taco Bell when he came through.

When Jarvis arrived in San Quentin in 1981 he was nineteen. Right away he got involved in what the prison system calls a gang. Most young men coming into prison—black, brown, and white—group together for a sense of belonging, for family. In those days, older African American prisoners passed on political education to younger ones.

In 1985, an officer named Sergeant Burchfield was murdered in San Quentin, stabbed to death at night on the second tier of a cell block. At the time, Jarvis was locked in his cell on the fourth tier.

Although many inmates were suspected of conspiring to murder Sergeant Burchfield, only three were tried, Jarvis among them. One was accused of being the “spear man”—of actually stabbing the sergeant. Another, an older man, was accused of ordering the killing. Jarvis was accused of sharpening a piece of metal which was allegedly passed along and later used to make the spear with which the sergeant was stabbed.

In one of the longest trials in California history, all three were convicted of their parts in the conspiracy to kill Sergeant Burchfield. But their sentences varied. One jury gave the young spear man the death penalty, but the trial judge changed his sentence to life without parole because of his youth. Another jury could not reach a verdict on the older man’s sentence, and so he was also given life without parole. Jarvis was sentenced by that same jury to death in the gas chamber, partly because of his violent background.

Although his lawyers asked the trial judge for leniency, also on the basis of his youth—he was twenty-three when the crime occurred, just two years older than the accused spear man—she denied this appeal and sent him to death row. He has been there since 1990. There he must be patient, waiting for appeals to be filed, waiting for the outcomes.

Jarvis’s situation is unique in one way: he is the only man on death row living in his crime scene. It’s as if he’d been convicted of killing a store clerk in a robbery, and his cell had been set up in that same store, so that for the rest of his life, his every move was watched and he was even fed by people who identified with his victim, people who thought every day about the dead clerk’s wife and children. And some day, several of the workers at that store might participate in executing Jarvis. Jarvis has more opportunity than most people on this earth to face up to how people feel about him.

Jarvis is usually stoic about his situation. He talks about karma, and the path he himself took, the choices he made. He often asks me to tell the “at-risk” youths I volunteer with, “You guys still have choices!”

The hardest thing is that he has so few. He doesn’t live on ordinary death row. Because the crime he is convicted of involved a guard, he lives in San Quentin’s security housing unit called the Adjustment Center. Men on the more relaxed part of death row can make phone calls, listen to tapes, use typewriters. Those in the security housing can have only a few books and a TV. They stay in their cells for all but a few hours of yard time three times each week. Jarvis cannot choose what or when to eat, when to exercise or shower. He can’t turn the tier lights off or on, regulate the temperature in his cell, or have any control over when he receives visits or how long they last. I think it must be almost impossible to grow into a mature, responsible man when one is infantilized this way, and yet I have seen Jarvis grow.

Jarvis is very different today from the troubled defensive young man I met in 1986. He even looks different. When I met him, his face had a sullen, callous expression. But, as happens so often to patients with fatal or life-threatening illnesses, facing his death has opened him up. Having arrived at San Quentin with minimal reading and writing skills, he began to educate himself and to meditate. As I write, he is a mature thirty-five-year-old man, and he plays a constructive role on death row, helping younger men.

Not all officers hold a grudge against Jarvis. Quite a few have told me they respect the changes he has made in himself. I can tell from the relaxed bodies of the officers who know him that they do not fear him. In contrast to how they handle some other clients of mine, many greet Jarvis, smile at him, touch his shoulder. When I arrive for a visit, typically several officers I run into on my way in tell me to say hi to him.

Sergeant Burchfield was killed in June, and if Jarvis is going to have trouble with staff in the prison, it sometimes comes in the month of June. A few times during this month, Jarvis has been placed in the worst part of the prison—on the bottom tier of the security housing. The authorities who make this decision explain it as a “convenience.” This move is usually stressful at first, because Jarvis’s belongings—including his personal books and legal papers—are all taken from him, although they are later returned.

On that bottom tier of the security housing is a row of cells where the most problematic prisoners are kept. There, Jarvis’s neighbors yell all day and all night, and some have hallucinations in which insects are crawling on their bodies or other people are in their cells. Some do not clean themselves or refuse to eat for fear of being poisoned. If inmates in this condition don’t improve, they are eventually sent to hospital prisons and officially designated mentally ill. But in the meantime, they can be segregated, as they are in the security housing.

During those hard months Jarvis spends on the bottom tier, it is particularly difficult for me to watch him get ready to go back to his cell after our visits, which are among the few pleasant times he has. Ordinarily, Jarvis smiles and says good-bye, holding his hands behind him, close to the portal in the metal door so that the officer can reach through and ratchet cuffs onto his wrists. But when he’s living on this tier, when the time is up, he doesn’t smile. I don’t know what else to do, except stand patiently an extra second holding my papers, waiting for him to go.

During those months, I worry more about him than I usually do, afraid he will get sick or depressed. But he keeps up his spirits amazingly well. He says that in a way his new neighbors are easy to live with, because no matter what they do, he can’t really get mad at them.

Currently, Jarvis is living back upstairs in a warmer, drier cell. The men on either side are very quiet, giving him the best meditating and writing conditions he has had at San Quentin. Across from his cell is a window. Jarvis is glad the glass is broken, because although the air is cold sometimes, it’s fresh. Best of all, through the window Jarvis can see some far-off houses. Several children play outside, riding tricycles and throwing balls. Jarvis has given the children names, and he’s gotten to know them individually by watching them for hours as they play. At Christmas time, he can see the homes decorated with colored lights, the first he’s seen for many years.

Jarvis has been in prison so long, he loves to hear about the details of ordinary life. (I tease him that he probably went to jail before airplanes were invented. It’s true he’s never flown in one.) So I describe the pungent, crowded atmosphere of a favorite café, the students with their laptops, the smell of espresso, the stacks of free weekly papers.

Jarvis wants to know all about a hike or a family dinner, how it looked, felt, tasted, all the flavor of life that’s missing inside. When I tell such stories, we’re not exactly living in the moment. In fact, we’re not present in San Quentin at all. He is leaning back, smiling, imagining himself with my family or friends. I am reliving some recent event in my own life, seeing it all again. From Jarvis’s perspective my life is so rich, so complex, the world so beautiful.

I usually write with Jarvis, not about him. When we write together at the prison, we take a break from discussing the appeal of his case. I take off my watch and put it where he can see it on the ledge between us and one of us says, “All right, ten minutes, OK? Go!” The idea of this exercise is to loosen up our writer’s muscles without worrying about results. We just write, sometimes about a particular topic, such as “A Conversation Overheard” or “Rain.” Sometimes we write whatever comes, just keeping our pens moving. He on his side of the thick wire mesh, and I on my side, the side with the door to the outside world—we both of us put our heads down and scribble away. We are breathing the same stale prison air. We can both hear the murmur of other visits through the walls, and occasionally a guard’s voice calling out. Jarvis has more light—the visitor’s side of the visiting booth is dim and the prisoner’s side is brightly lit with a fluorescent tube.

I have an ordinary ballpoint pen, but he has only the innards of one; he’s not allowed to have the hard plastic case, so he writes with the flimsy plastic tube of ink. We are both equally intent on getting words onto paper.

When our writing time is over, Jarvis and I read the results to each other. These brief shared writing exercises encourage both of us to keep on writing, and sometimes together we produce seeds that later grow into Jarvis’s stories and my essays.

His writing and his meditation practice are what make life worth living for Jarvis. Studying Buddhism these past few years has helped him to gain remarkable insight. Neither he nor I have any illusions about the fact that he has harmed others. But he has taken the precepts of dedicating his remaining life to compassion and nonviolence—not an easy path in a violent prison.

There are many constraints on what Jarvis can write about, many of which can easily be imagined by any reader, as well as others that might be apparent only to those working or living within the penal system. And because his appeals are pending, Jarvis cannot write about his case. His appeals will go to both the state and federal courts, and he will not be close to execution or freedom for at least two more years.

Jarvis hopes, as he has written, that “those who want to try to make sense of it will see, through my writing, a human being who made mistakes. Maybe my writing will at least help them see me as someone who felt, loved, and cared, someone who wanted to know for himself who he was.”

Some readers may find themselves eager for more details about Jarvis’s life and transformation. It is my hope and fervent prayer that the conditions of Jarvis’s life will change so that those stories may be written.

—Melody Ermachild Chavis

May 1997

Acknowledgments

THIS BOOK CONTAINS TRUE STORIES of my experiences in San Quentin. Many of the names were changed to protect those still in prison, but the characters are all people I’ve known. That I write of their human side, not just their violent, hardened, humorless side, was a challenge for them. But they all welcomed it, and I’ve appreciated their willingness to embrace and support my writing.

The italicized portions of the book were compiled from my letters to friends over my years in San Quentin, as well as from notes they sometimes took during visits. I want to thank them for their permission to use this material. I’ve kept parts of letters written to friends to help me discover, understand, sit with so many changes going on in me. I hope they will help the reader understand the transitions I have undergone.

My correspondents have been my companions, quiet listeners through whom I could hear myself speak, see the better part of myself reflected, and learn more about myself and the world around me. Their correspondence also helped me through troubled times. I want to thank them all, but especially Jim Cronin, Sarah Jane Freyman, Donna Gans, Pam Gerwe, Jane Hamilton, Kelly Hayden, Lisa Leghorn, Sarah Paris, Karen Poverny, Will Shonbrun, Diane Solomon, and Lynn Weinberger.

This book was born out of a process of self-discovery that I shared with Melody Ermachild Chavis, without whose belief in me, support, and encouragement for my case, my life, and my writing I wouldn’t be who I am today. She guided me through the many steps from extreme anger to the clarity of my Buddhist practice. She created a bridge for me to the outside world, bringing people into my life and giving passage to my voice.

There are many I want to thank for their true and stable friendship and for their humor. They have loved me through my anger and have always held me as a part of their family, especially my loving sister Carlette, Betsy Doubobsky, Melody Ermachild Chavis, Donna Gans, Kelly Hayden, Hershey Johnson, and Conny Lindley. I am especially indebted to Lisa Leghorn, who worked with me diligently in creating this book. She helped me see its benefit and encouraged me, not only by her belief in me, but by her pushy, stubborn, loving, and determined insistence, telling me to “write, write, write.” She is a person whose love has extended the radiant image of Tara to my heart. In my life, they are equal.

In particular, I want to thank Susan Moon from Turning Wheel for publishing my first stories; Linda Baer, Michael Bradfute, Mary Racine, and Anna Smith at Padma Publishing for their help with editing and production; Robert Racine of Padma Publishing and Kim McLaughlin of Chagdud Gonpa for their support of this project; Anna Smith and all the other typists and transcriptionists without whom this book could not have been produced from inside the walls of San Quentin; and Sarah Jane Freymann for her love, care, determination, and conviction as my agent in guiding me through the publication of this book.

Finally, without my precious teacher, Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche, I would not have my belief in the Buddhist path or know the true purpose of these words: benefiting others.

Sanctuary

Sanctuary

WHEN I FIRST ENTERED the gates of San Quentin in the winter of 1981, I walked across the upper yard holding a box called a “fish-kit” filled with my prison-issued belongings. I saw the faces of hundreds who had already made the prison their home. I watched them stare at me with piercing eyes, their faces rugged and their beards of different shades—all dressed in prison blue jeans and worn, torn coats—some leaning against the chain fences, cigarettes hanging from their lips, others with dark glasses covering their eyes.

I will never forget when the steel cell door slammed shut behind me. I stood in the darkness trying to fix my eyes and readjust the thoughts that were telling me that this was not home—that this tiny space would not, could not be where I would spend more than a decade of my life. My mind kept saying, “No! Hell no!” I thought again of the many prisoners I had seen moments ago standing on the yard, so old and accustomed to their fates.

I dropped my fish-kit. I spread my arms and found that the palms of my hands touched the walls with ease. I pushed against them with all my might, until I realized how silly it was to think that these thick concrete walls would somehow budge. I groped for the light switch. It was on the back wall, only a few feet above the steel-plated bunk bed. The bed was bolted into the wall like a shelf. It was only two and a half feet wide by six feet long, and only several feet above the gray concrete floor.

My eyes had adjusted to the darkness by the time I turned the lights on. But until now I hadn’t seen the swarms of cockroaches clustered about, especially around the combined toilet and sink on the back wall. When the light came on, the roaches scattered, dashing into tiny holes and cracks behind the sink and in the walls, leaving only the very fat and young ones still running scared. I was beyond shock to see so many of these nasty creatures. And although they didn’t come near me, I began to feel roaches climbing all over my body. I even imagined them mounting an attack on me when I was asleep.

This was home. For hours I couldn’t bear the thought. The roaches, the filth plastered on the walls, the dirt balls collecting on the floor, and the awful smell of urine left in the toilet for God knows how long sickened me nearly to the point of passing out.

To find home in San Quentin I had to summon an unbelievable will to survive. My first step was to flush the toilet. To my surprise I found all I needed to clean my cell in the fish-kit—a towel, face cloth, and a box of state detergent. There were also a bar of state soap, a toothbrush and comb, a small can of powdered toothpaste, a small plastic cup, and two twenty-year-old National Geographic magazines, one of them from the month and year of my birth.