July 15, 2021 • 37 mins
There is an adage made popular in 1954 by President Eisenhower, that there are “no atheists in a fox hole.” The idea behind the phrase is that anyone who finds themselves in position of extreme stress, where death is all but imminent, he or she will seek comfort of a higher power. Meet the Buddhist Chaplain who was instrumental in nurturing and reinforcing Jarvis’s burgeoning Buddhist mind.
If you’d like to support Jarvis Masters’s cause, please considering signing a petition on his behalf at www.freejarvis.org
Finding Freedom How Death Row Broke and Opened My Heart By: Jarvis Jay Masters and Narrated by: Dion Graham is available at Shambhala.com and at Audible.com
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Dear Governor is a production of I Heart Media and
three Months Media. If you are moved by Jarvis Masters
and his thirty years struggle on San Quentin's death throw,
and you'd like to support his cause, please consider signing
a petition on his behalf. Visit free Jarvis dot org
slash podcast to sign your name to an open letter
(00:20):
to California Governor Gavin Newsom, Dear Governor Newsom, Dear Mr
Governor Newsom. This is an open letter to Governor Gavin Newsom,
Dear Governor Newsom. There's an adage made popular in n
(00:44):
fifty four by President Dwight D. Eisenhower that there are
no atheists in a foxhole. The idea behind this phrase
is that anyone who finds themselves in the position of
extreme stress where death is all but imminent, he or
she will seek comfort in a higher power or after
being sentenced to death. We've all heard stories about men
and women turning to God, finding redemption, or being born again,
(01:08):
but there is surprisingly little research to prove this phenomenon
as anything but anecdotal. Official statistics on religious affiliations in
prison are not publicly available, and there are also those
who lose any sense of faith that they once had
after being sentenced to death row. Considering such bleak and
inhumane conditions, Jervis j Masters falls into the former camp
(01:30):
he found his religion as the walls of the capital
injustice system began to close in on him in nineteen
eighty six, tighter and tighter until they can find him
for a lifetime in a nine by four cement and
steel wire cage. On last week's episode, we met Melody
irma child Chavez, the investigator on Jervis's defense team who
(01:50):
first introduced Jarvis to Buddhism. This week, we meet another
woman who was instrumental in nurturing and reinforcing Jervis's burgeoning
Buddhist mind. My name is Susan Shannon. I am a
Buddhist and interfaith chaplain. I provide spiritual support for incarcerated
(02:11):
people and people who have recently gotten out of prison,
as well as spiritual direction for the general population. I
am also a CPE instructor, and CPE is a program
that chaplains need to go through in order to get certified,
so I am actively involved in training other chaplains. When
(02:36):
did you begin your chaplain see at Quentin two thousand
and eleven. And how long did you work with the
general population before you started working with those on death row. Oh,
I started in on death row almost right away. Jarvis
and I started one on one probably close to the
(02:56):
beginning of two thousand twelve, and we had one on
one visits every week for I believe it was a
couple of years before others began to want to get
in on the fund that we were having. I understand
when you first started your one on ones you were
(03:17):
just sitting outside Jarvis's cell door, not sitting standing standing, Okay,
And what was that like? Because I know when I
talked with him on the phone it is so loud,
so many voices. Did did they quiet down so that
they could eavesdrop on you? So it was kind of
(03:38):
one on It was one on one, but with like
ten years listening in. Yeah, well, yes, there was definitely that.
And there was also, luckily for Jarvis and myself, father
George Williams, who was the Catholic chaplain there, who put
us together. I saw that Jarvis and I had a
lot in common with our spiritual practice, and Father Williams
(04:00):
was able to secure for us a small room and
so It was only really one or two times that
I had to stand on his front porch, as he
would say, and the rest of the times we were
able to sit in a small room, which was great. However,
every night that I went into death Row, I walked
(04:20):
to buy Jarvis to cell, and so pretty much every week,
whether it was his group that was called for our
Buddhist services or not, I would stand and visit with Jarvis.
I think I was cleaning the floor and the Catholic
priests George Williams are calling brother George because I didn't
like the term father, so I call him brother George.
(04:44):
I said, how are you doing? He said, I brought
somebody to see you. I said who? And she stepped
out from around and she says, I think we have
the same teacher, and we do the same and if
I can do anything to help you, and if you
know other people who might need some help, I'm here
(05:06):
is father George. Brother George is going to allow me
to come in here on the tier is sponsor me.
You know, he was gonna use his credentials to allow
me to come in. And maybe you and I can
do some practices together, and maybe you and I can
figure out how we can extend this to other people
(05:29):
on death Row. Jervis Masters recalls meeting Chaplain Susan Shannon
from his side of the front porch one of particular kind.
It was really really funny. They had this thing when
they call self front. I think it's called self front.
Is that when you're allowed to sit in front of
some on sell. You know, I never knew. I never
(05:50):
could imagine I had been here along long, long decades
that they would let her sit on death Row, on
the tier and there, and we're meditating to get it.
It was without the power of this Catholic praise, he
would never even begin to happen. So that's how much
(06:12):
juice he has. So we're sitting there and you know,
I said, you know, Susan, I know some of these mantras,
and you're asking me to say some of these mantras instead.
And you know, there I learned because you just hear
it all the time and it just becomes a part
of your your song, you know. And we were doing
(06:34):
this and people start laughing all over the Dawn building.
You know, I'm trying to tell Susan because her eyes
was cold, I said, Susan, she was doing her thing.
You know, Susan, can you hear all these people laughing?
(06:55):
And she she leaned in, she says at us, and
I it, yeah. And I was sweating all over the place.
I was just pouring sweat. I had my whole little
naturals wet. Like I got out of the shower because
I didn't want to tell this deep practitioner to stop
(07:16):
you embarrassing. You know, I just had this go do this,
you know, And I did, I really did, and I
was so happy that I did. And I felt, if
I can do that, I can do anything. You know,
I mean, you can do anything. Did you guys really
(07:38):
develop a friendship? How do you describe that a teacher
student relationship. I think it's hard to not develop a
friendship with Jarvis because he is so jovial and inquisitive
and good humored and deep that he finds his way
(08:02):
into your heart no matter what. And as a chaplain
and as a female in a man's prison, I always
felt like I needed to uphold the best possible boundaries
I could. But Jarvis wears his emotion on his sleeve.
And as we would sit and talk together, life happens
and stories happen and we would laugh and we would cry,
(08:24):
and most definitely a very very deep connection. It wasn't
so much created as as much as it was discovered
to have already existed before we even met. What were
year one on one's like did you read from texts? Or?
At first? Jarvis had a lot of questions. Like many
(08:47):
of the men, he had seen certain things written, but
didn't know how to pronounce mantras, for example, or certain
sanscrit or Tibetan words. He wanted to know the explanation.
I would always asked him, well, what what are you
really interested in? And for a while we worked on
the pronunciation of mantras. For a while, we worked on
(09:09):
or shared together the different schools of Buddhism, some of
the different schools, most of the time with Jarvis. And
this is what makes him such an exceptional practitioner. Is
he uh? I was trying to think of how I
could articulate this to you guys. He he embodies his
(09:31):
practice on a day to day, minute by minute level.
So a lot of our conversations were about things that
had happened to him or things people said, conversations. He
had challenges he had with other people things he had observed,
and what would be the Buddhist approach, and he would
(09:52):
talk about I would ask him, well, what was your approach,
and we would talk about his approach. And he always
wanted to ground into some kind of Dharmic foundation, and
most of the time he was already there. He's a
he's a very advanced practitioner, explained Dharma. Well, Dharma is
(10:14):
the word that is used for the teachings of the Buddha.
Dharma means the path, the way, and so if you
are studying Buddhism, you're studying the dharma, the Buddha dharma.
And Jarvis and I both adhere to the Tibetan tradition.
In fact, as you may have read, we share a teacher,
(10:36):
Chunda Ku, which is what was my key to going
into death row in the first place, convincing Father George
that this was a very rare coincidence that Jarvis not
only share the same Tibetan teacher, but this teacher gave
us both the same practice, the red tarer practice. So
that was really really profound. And tell me what the
(10:59):
red tiers well, Tara is the feminine manifestation of the deity.
Of compassion in Tibetan Buddhism, so Tara is like the
divine feminine are are married, and Tara's compassion and healing energies,
as well as her activity energies, are manifested in different ways.
(11:23):
So in the Tibetan tradition, there are numerous depictions of
different facets of the same deity. So Tara's main facets
remain manifestations are green Tara, which is the manifestation of compassion,
White Tara, which is the manifestation of healing, and Red Tara,
(11:46):
which is the manifestation of enlightened activity. And chug Datuku
gave Jarvis and I both the Red Tara practice to do. Now,
have you known about Jarvis before you started your chaplaincy there?
Had you read his books? Or how did you find
that key to get into death row? My last year
(12:09):
of Masters in Divinity program, I took a prison ministry
course and I found that going into San Quentin, which
was part of the course under Father George Williams, was
my new monastery. I felt very activated and I began
to read. Father Williams is also a criminologist, and so
his course was rich in the criminology and all kinds
(12:33):
of readings we did, and I found my appetite to
be immense and insatiable. And eventually I was led to
Jarvis's books, which is where I found that he and
I shared the meeting and relationship with chunkda Tuku as
well as the red tarp practice. Did that give you
shivers when you saw that it did? And you know,
(12:56):
the truth of interconnectedness is crazy. The other thing about
Jarvis and I that we discovered over the years and
we continue to we probably know ten twelve people in common.
And and that's insane, right, like a sixty year old
white woman coming into San Quentin State Prison having ten
(13:21):
or twelve people in common with a death row inmate
who's been in there for however many years. So the
times we discovered our interconnections with other people were just
mind blowing and continue to be so. To know that
Jarvis had this connection with Chagdutuku made it very clear
to me that I was in the right place and
(13:42):
that our paths were going to cross. And before I
met Jarvis, I would visualize Tara above death Row every
time I walked in and just imagine her sending love
and light and healing and divine feminine concern and care
and protection to all the men they're never really having.
(14:04):
In my wildest imagination, how large our connection would end
up to be. The more that Jarvis studied the Buddha,
the more he realized he wanted to share what he'd
learned to commune with his neighbors who may equally benefit
from these newfound practices. And while pre COVID religious services
abounded in the general population, this was not the case
(14:26):
on death row, particularly for those who did not identify
as a Christian or a Catholic. Back in the eighties,
there were no Buddhist courses or services at San Quentin,
no formal Buddhist teachers or chaplains assigned a death row
up next. How Jarvis and Chaplain Shannon, and the threat
of a lawsuit managed to change the status quo for
those on death row open to the Dharmic path for
(14:59):
a on time. Before he met you, Jarvis wanted to
have a Buddhism class on death row, but he was
not permitted to do that. But you were able to
do that because of your capacity as a chaplain. How
did that come to fruition towards the end of Jarviston
my one on once. We we always talked about the
(15:19):
heart of Buddhism and that which is beyond time and
space and beyond form and bars and all of that,
and what that is is the the Bodhi Cheetah, the
enlightened heart, the awakened heart and mind of of the Llama.
And we always knew that chugged A Touklu's heart heart
mind would not have put us together if it was
(15:43):
just for him and I that was our Lama was
beyond that, and and so we knew that at some
point our group was going to grow. What happened was
that another inmate on death row who identifies as Buddhist,
filed a petition to begin a lawsuit against the cdc ARE,
(16:05):
saying that his spiritual needs were not being met as
a Buddhist. So pretty much the only thing that gets
the c d c ARE to make any kind of
change is that kind of a threat. So that because
I had already been going in, I had clearance to
go in. I had all the right paperwork to be
considered a chaplain by the prison, even though I wasn't
a staff chaplain, because they don't formally acknowledge Buddhist chaplains.
(16:29):
It just naturally fell to where our group began to grow,
and it grew rather quickly. How big did it grow?
In about a year and a half. It went from
Jarvis and I two, myself and six other men. Yeah.
(16:51):
Why is it that they don't officially recognize um a
Buddhist chaplain. It's that they don't visually recognized Buddhism as
one of the five main faith traditions that the state
prisons acknowledge, and those five are Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim,
(17:16):
and Native American. In spite of numerous lawsuits, they still
don't recognize Buddhist or Inner faith. However, you could tell
by the rapid growth of our group, and by the
work I did in the main line, and and just
looking around and what's happening across the world. The tools
and skills that Buddhism offers are very non sectarian. They're
(17:40):
very useful and adaptable to all other faith traditions. So
it's it's just a matter of time, I think. Tell
me about the first group gathering you had at the
Death Row Chapel. Yeah, so it did start slow, and
the way that the even though it grew fast, it
(18:02):
started slow. And I'll explain that the men on Death
Row are organized by the cdc R into groups called yards.
And I forget how many yards. There are, thirteen or
something yards. There's a lot of yards. And those yards
are organized according to all kinds of things raise former
(18:27):
gang affiliation um, maybe even crimes um, people who are disabled,
et cetera. So the rules are that men of different
yards can't mix. So that meant that though I had
sixty five guys signed up at the most, I could
(18:49):
still only see one yard at a time. The chapel,
what is about gosh, my bad measurement probably about long,
maybe not even ten ft wide. It's an old shower
area and it's encased in that diamond wire that is
(19:14):
used for the bars, the prison cells, et cetera. Including
on the top and up above us always was a
guard with a rifle. There's little sally ports that the
men were. The shackled men were brought in by their
tier guards, who they called they kind of affectionately called
(19:35):
their ride. So um, if somebody was on the second tier,
the second tier guard would bring them down, you know,
shackle them up, bring them down, I'd be sitting in
the There were five wooden benches bolted to the floor
in the chapel and three cages that weren't We were
(19:57):
never supposed to call them cages, but that's what they
were about, phone booth sized cages in the back. And
those cages were where the men would sit if they
if I had a mixed yard group, which I had
for an entire for quite a while, so as the
men were brought into the sally port and led to
(20:19):
the cage, I would sit as far away from them
as I felt the guard needed me to for him
to feel safe, because they're always wanting to protect people.
The guard and the inmate knew exactly how did sort
of dose. He go around to where the inmate would
(20:40):
be backed into, go forward into the cage, turn around,
and one fell swoop move. He would put his hands
behind him. The guard would shut the cage and locked
the cage, and the inmate would put his hands out
the little port of that's about the as of a
shoe box, and the guard would unshackle his hands. The
(21:04):
inmate would turn around and sit down. The guard would
lock the little place where the man's hands came out
and we would begin so and I always have to
wear a bulletproof stab proof vest whenever I went in.
Were you ever frightened? No, there was maybe one time
(21:25):
when I should have been frightened. There was. There were
some kind of funny times there where when I look back,
I think most people would have, you know, panicked. There
was one time when I was with Jarvis in the
little room and it was the end of a nine
hour day. I always had to go in. Um My
(21:47):
time's going into death row were part of a bigger schedule,
so I didn't pick and shoes when I could go in.
So that this was at the end of a nine
hour day. Jarvis and I had spent about an hour
or so. I was hungry, I was tired, it was
getting late. Um and there was a medical emergency on
(22:08):
the ground tier so the whole prison shut down. I
couldn't leave until this man died and was brought out
in all this, and so I was there for a
long time. Um. And and that was fun in a way,
because it was always fun to be with Jarvis, but
it was also hard in terms of keeping my My
(22:32):
blood sugar was really low, you know that kind of thing. Hum.
There was another time, when a guard who was new
brought an inmate in to the chapel. It was going
to be a one on one and unfortunately I knew
why this inmate was on death row, which never mattered
(22:55):
to me. I mean I was there as a chaplain
to address matters of this spirit and matters of the heart,
so I had good boundaries around um all the rest
of what comes with death row. But the guard, instead
of putting him into the cage, which this man and
I had been seeing each other for now, probably about
(23:18):
eight years, so we knew each other. Well, the guard
just let him go. And so I'm standing there, I'm
sitting there and this you know inmate, who is never
free like that around a free first and shackled, you know.
He looked at me. I looked at him, and we
(23:39):
both just raised our eyebrows. It was pretty funny. We
both just kind of raised our eyebrows and the and
shrugged our shoulders. And the inmate was he he was perfect.
He kept his hands behind his back and he said, um, officer,
aren't you forgetting something? And the officer can I swear here?
(24:03):
Can I? Absolutely? The officer up on the gun the
gun rail up above us. He looks down. He goes, dude,
you gotta keep him shackled, and and the officers like ship,
oh shit, oh shit, shit. He just started taking out.
And I'm sitting there, Oh my god, anybody else would
(24:25):
be scared shitless, and hear me and this inmate are
just kind of cracking up, and he sits down, and
you know, the guard is I'm sure worried he's going
to be losing his job or getting you know, that
could have been my retirement, right, And we both just
see he looks at me and he goes, that's never happened.
(24:46):
So that was the time when I probably could have
should have been scared, but I wasn't. I was sort
of amused up next, how the Buddhist curriculum on San
Quentin's death Row evolved. According to the Pew Research Center,
(25:12):
three and four prison chaplains believed the access to religion
related programs on the inside is absolutely critical to successful transformation.
Having piqued the interest of dozens of men on San
Quentin's death Row, I asked how chaplain Susan Shannon helped
develop their Buddhist curriculum to satisfy the array of believers
and practitioners. What I found was that as more guys
(25:36):
began to show up, there began to be some kind
of positioning with the guides, like, well, somebody maybe came
from the Zen tradition or was had read some books
on Zen, and they thought Zen was all there was.
Or somebody else came from the Soco Gakai tradition and
he thought that was all there was. And then there
was the Tibetan tradition, and they thought that was all
(25:57):
there was. So I said, you I saw right away it.
It was gonna be a bit of a pissing contest,
and I said, you know it, No, we're not gonna
do that. We're gonna focus on what the different schools
of Buddhism have in common, and the common goal is
to cultivate a warm heart and interconnectedness, and that's what
we're going to focus on. So I created this big
(26:20):
chart of comparison chart of all the Buddhist schools, and
I created a twenty two page outline that brought us
through step by step most if not all, of the
main topics that all schools of Buddhism cover. And that
took us about two and a half years. I gave
(26:41):
all the men the outline and I began to go
through it. Um I began to get really good at
this because by the time I had eight yards, I
was teaching the same thing for eight weeks in a row.
And UM, it took us two and a half years
to go through this. How do you have eight yards
in the tiny, tiny room? And I could only see
(27:03):
one yard at a time. Once the yards grew, I
couldn't see a mixed yard anymore. And with this this
kind of recognition of how the guys were beginning to
argue about their tradition, I also made the decision that
they agreed to that our sessions were not going to
be practice sessions. They were going to be study sessions.
(27:26):
And yet even though they all agreed on that, it
didn't happen that way. What happened was I found that
they had a deep, deep love of meditation. So what
I did was, as part of this twenty two page outline,
I extracted from Buddhist ceremonies a few of the main
(27:50):
elements that I felt were going to be really useful
to the men's lives. And this is how we structured
every time that I went there. Every every group. We
structured them in this way that began with breathing together
with a meditation. Began with a meditation where we set
our intention, and we called in all of our spirit guides,
(28:13):
all of the enlightened beings, all of the teachers, um,
anybody who has ever taught us anything that related to
our own realization. We brought them in. We consciously and
verbally brought them a little little space there and uh.
Then we would go through some breathing, some posture and
breath and it was the most This is where beauty
(28:35):
comes in. The men dropped into meditation so deeply. They
would sit there, and I wish, this is something I
thought all the time. I wish I could share this
image with the rest of the world. I would open
my eyes and I would look at these men sitting here,
(28:57):
and they would be glowing, and they would be so
at peace. And here they were in the darkest place
in the universe, one of the darkest places in the universe,
and they would be um sending love out, sending love
out to the people they loved, sending love out to
the people they had issues with, sending love out to
(29:20):
their victims, sending love out to all the people that
they'll ever or never meet, and these men were just
just these beautiful, beautiful faces of peace. And so meditation
did become an important part of our daily programs. And
not only that, but without fail, the entire cell block
(29:45):
would quiet down. And I'm talking seven twenty guys or
however many are in there now, but at the time
it was like seven guys stacked in cells five tiers
high with this amazing cacophony, and the whole place would
quiet down. What I found on Death Row is that
(30:09):
it's the razor's edge of impermanence. Life and death happened
very regularly on Death Row and there is probably not
a cell that hasn't had a suicide in it. You know,
no inmate has control over their life, so at any
given point in time, they could have their cell torn up,
(30:30):
they could be taken away for something that they did
or did not do. I mean, impermanence is lives on
Death Row, and so so does However, because of that
kinetic energy, so does the power of transformation. And that's
what I was trying to harness with these men, was
(30:52):
the ability to spiritually transform. You guys are standing or
sitting on the rocket launcher here on Death Row. You know,
all you can do really is spiritually transformed, and they did.
Over the years that I worked with the men, both
Death Row and Mainline. The hunger for transformation that I
(31:15):
found there far surpassed anything that I ever witnessed in
Tibetan monasteries in Nepal. And I just saw this incredible
zest and love for for transformation, for making amends, for
really looking at their own hurt and how that fueled
them to hurt others, and this deep hunger to feel
(31:39):
and heal what they had done in society. So in
this regard people who have maybe caused you the most
harm in this bigger picture, or maybe the ones who
were teaching you the most important lessons for going forward.
I we didn't talk a lot of out Jarvis and
(32:01):
his spirituality, but I will say that just just now,
that he is a profound um human being who embodies
his Dharma, his his Buddhism is in his blood, bones, marrow, sinews,
and heart. Nothing comes easy in prison, but then to
the Buddhist mind, all is a matter of perspective. Following
(32:23):
is an excerpt from Jarvis's audio book Finding Freedom. How
death row broke and opened my heart on how he
managed to improvise amala, a string of Buddhist prayer beads
with little access to anything, while in solitary confinement in
San Quentin, taylan all prayer beads. It was past midnight.
(32:44):
The prison night watchman was making his routine body count
down the tier when I awakened from a late evening
snooze with plans to get up and spend the rest
of the night. During my meditation practice. I pass the
length to myself for a while, or eight feet of it,
preparing myself with the repetitions of the Tara prayer. Suddenly,
I was struck by an idea for a way to
make my own mala, my own prayer beads which I
(33:06):
could use to keep track of the repetitions. I spun
around my cell looking for what I would need. Since
the very first day of learning this prayer, I wanted
a mala to help me with my practice. My teacher,
Rimpoche and other practitioners who came to sin Quentin to
visit me had often offered to bring me one, but
prison authorities had denied them permission to do so. I
(33:27):
gathered a pair of prison issue jeanes, a Sports illustrated
and a bottle of Thailand all and sat down at
the front of my cell. I picked and pulled at
the seams of the jeans until I got hold of
a good piece of thread. I unraveled more than I
meant to. Oh, A gaping hole widened down the leg.
I'll get another pair somehow, I resolved and put the
(33:49):
thread aside. I opened the Sports illustrated to the middle
and took out one of the staples. I straightened it
out and sharpened it on the rough concrete floor beside me.
I had to be very quiet. If night watchman heard
these strange scratching sounds, the whole cell block might be
searched in a panic. Scraping usually meant a weapon was
being sharpened. For almost an hour, I ground the staple
(34:10):
on the floor until it was as sharp as a
sewing needle. Now, I opened the bottle of Thailand aill
and began the slow process of poking a tiny hole
in the center of each tablet. There were a hundred
of them. I had to be as careful as a surgeon.
First I poked at the surface of the Thailand, and
then with a screwing motion. I made a hole all
the way through. Taking the thread from my jeans, I
(34:33):
passed it through each bead. All through the night, I
sat cross legged, poking holes and thailand ails and threading
them together. It was extremely tedious. My eyes blurred with exhaustion,
my fingers began to get sore. I felt foolish. What
in the world am I doing, I asked myself, but
(34:55):
I kept going, determined to finish. Five and a half
hour later, I held my first mama, made from trouser
thread and thailer as. I was elated, but when I
got up to stretch, my head throbbed. I had an
awful headache. I stood silently at the bars of my cell,
taking comfort and looking out a window. In the opposite wall.
(35:17):
A beautiful morning light was speaking in. I wouldn't mind
a tailing all too, I thought, to stop this pounding
in my head. I looked down at my hands. Damn,
I don't have any They're all on this mama. For
a split second, I thought the unthinkable. My head was
hurting that much. Then I smiled. I realized that after
(35:42):
spending all this time making my tailing a mala, all
I needed to do was to sit my butt back
down with it and take a few moments no tailing alls,
to do my spiritual practice. Next week, the social psychologist
assigned to Jarvis's death penalty case thirty years ago and
(36:05):
his groundbreaking research, reinforcing the fact the proactive prevention is
far more effective than reactive punishment when it comes to
reducing criminal behavior. The audiobook of Finding Freedom, How Death
Row Broke and Opened My Heart by Jarvis j Masters
can be found at Shambala dot com or Audible. Will
link to both sites in our show notes. This episode
(36:28):
was written and produced by Donni Fazzari and myself, Corny Cole.
Our theme song sentenced is compliments of the band Stick
Figure from their album Set in Stone. Stu Sternbott composed
the original music. Nate Defort did the sound design. For
more information on Jarvis and to find out how you
can follow his case and support his cause, please visit
(36:50):
Free Jarvis dot org. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio,
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Dear Governor is a production of I Heart Media and
three Months Media. If you are moved by Jarvis Masters
and his thirty years struggle on San Quentin's death throw,
and you'd like to support his cause, please consider signing
a petition on his behalf. Visit free Jarvis dot org
slash podcast to sign your name to an open letter
(00:20):
to California Governor Gavin Newsom, Dear Governor Newsom, Dear Mr
Governor Newsom. This is an open letter to Governor Gavin Newsom,
Dear Governor Newsom. There's an adage made popular in n
(00:44):
fifty four by President Dwight D. Eisenhower that there are
no atheists in a foxhole. The idea behind this phrase
is that anyone who finds themselves in the position of
extreme stress where death is all but imminent, he or
she will seek comfort in a higher power or after
being sentenced to death. We've all heard stories about men
and women turning to God, finding redemption, or being born again,
(01:08):
but there is surprisingly little research to prove this phenomenon
as anything but anecdotal. Official statistics on religious affiliations in
prison are not publicly available, and there are also those
who lose any sense of faith that they once had
after being sentenced to death row. Considering such bleak and
inhumane conditions, Jervis j Masters falls into the former camp
(01:30):
he found his religion as the walls of the capital
injustice system began to close in on him in nineteen
eighty six, tighter and tighter until they can find him
for a lifetime in a nine by four cement and
steel wire cage. On last week's episode, we met Melody
irma child Chavez, the investigator on Jervis's defense team who
(01:50):
first introduced Jarvis to Buddhism. This week, we meet another
woman who was instrumental in nurturing and reinforcing Jervis's burgeoning
Buddhist mind. My name is Susan Shannon. I am a
Buddhist and interfaith chaplain. I provide spiritual support for incarcerated
(02:11):
people and people who have recently gotten out of prison,
as well as spiritual direction for the general population. I
am also a CPE instructor, and CPE is a program
that chaplains need to go through in order to get certified,
so I am actively involved in training other chaplains. When
(02:36):
did you begin your chaplain see at Quentin two thousand
and eleven. And how long did you work with the
general population before you started working with those on death row. Oh,
I started in on death row almost right away. Jarvis
and I started one on one probably close to the
(02:56):
beginning of two thousand twelve, and we had one on
one visits every week for I believe it was a
couple of years before others began to want to get
in on the fund that we were having. I understand
when you first started your one on ones you were
(03:17):
just sitting outside Jarvis's cell door, not sitting standing standing, Okay,
And what was that like? Because I know when I
talked with him on the phone it is so loud,
so many voices. Did did they quiet down so that
they could eavesdrop on you? So it was kind of
(03:38):
one on It was one on one, but with like
ten years listening in. Yeah, well, yes, there was definitely that.
And there was also, luckily for Jarvis and myself, father
George Williams, who was the Catholic chaplain there, who put
us together. I saw that Jarvis and I had a
lot in common with our spiritual practice, and Father Williams
(04:00):
was able to secure for us a small room and
so It was only really one or two times that
I had to stand on his front porch, as he
would say, and the rest of the times we were
able to sit in a small room, which was great. However,
every night that I went into death Row, I walked
(04:20):
to buy Jarvis to cell, and so pretty much every week,
whether it was his group that was called for our
Buddhist services or not, I would stand and visit with Jarvis.
I think I was cleaning the floor and the Catholic
priests George Williams are calling brother George because I didn't
like the term father, so I call him brother George.
(04:44):
I said, how are you doing? He said, I brought
somebody to see you. I said who? And she stepped
out from around and she says, I think we have
the same teacher, and we do the same and if
I can do anything to help you, and if you
know other people who might need some help, I'm here
(05:06):
is father George. Brother George is going to allow me
to come in here on the tier is sponsor me.
You know, he was gonna use his credentials to allow
me to come in. And maybe you and I can
do some practices together, and maybe you and I can
figure out how we can extend this to other people
(05:29):
on death Row. Jervis Masters recalls meeting Chaplain Susan Shannon
from his side of the front porch one of particular kind.
It was really really funny. They had this thing when
they call self front. I think it's called self front.
Is that when you're allowed to sit in front of
some on sell. You know, I never knew. I never
(05:50):
could imagine I had been here along long, long decades
that they would let her sit on death Row, on
the tier and there, and we're meditating to get it.
It was without the power of this Catholic praise, he
would never even begin to happen. So that's how much
(06:12):
juice he has. So we're sitting there and you know,
I said, you know, Susan, I know some of these mantras,
and you're asking me to say some of these mantras instead.
And you know, there I learned because you just hear
it all the time and it just becomes a part
of your your song, you know. And we were doing
(06:34):
this and people start laughing all over the Dawn building.
You know, I'm trying to tell Susan because her eyes
was cold, I said, Susan, she was doing her thing.
You know, Susan, can you hear all these people laughing?
(06:55):
And she she leaned in, she says at us, and
I it, yeah. And I was sweating all over the place.
I was just pouring sweat. I had my whole little
naturals wet. Like I got out of the shower because
I didn't want to tell this deep practitioner to stop
(07:16):
you embarrassing. You know, I just had this go do this,
you know, And I did, I really did, and I
was so happy that I did. And I felt, if
I can do that, I can do anything. You know,
I mean, you can do anything. Did you guys really
(07:38):
develop a friendship? How do you describe that a teacher
student relationship. I think it's hard to not develop a
friendship with Jarvis because he is so jovial and inquisitive
and good humored and deep that he finds his way
(08:02):
into your heart no matter what. And as a chaplain
and as a female in a man's prison, I always
felt like I needed to uphold the best possible boundaries
I could. But Jarvis wears his emotion on his sleeve.
And as we would sit and talk together, life happens
and stories happen and we would laugh and we would cry,
(08:24):
and most definitely a very very deep connection. It wasn't
so much created as as much as it was discovered
to have already existed before we even met. What were
year one on one's like did you read from texts? Or?
At first? Jarvis had a lot of questions. Like many
(08:47):
of the men, he had seen certain things written, but
didn't know how to pronounce mantras, for example, or certain
sanscrit or Tibetan words. He wanted to know the explanation.
I would always asked him, well, what what are you
really interested in? And for a while we worked on
the pronunciation of mantras. For a while, we worked on
(09:09):
or shared together the different schools of Buddhism, some of
the different schools, most of the time with Jarvis. And
this is what makes him such an exceptional practitioner. Is
he uh? I was trying to think of how I
could articulate this to you guys. He he embodies his
(09:31):
practice on a day to day, minute by minute level.
So a lot of our conversations were about things that
had happened to him or things people said, conversations. He
had challenges he had with other people things he had observed,
and what would be the Buddhist approach, and he would
(09:52):
talk about I would ask him, well, what was your approach,
and we would talk about his approach. And he always
wanted to ground into some kind of Dharmic foundation, and
most of the time he was already there. He's a
he's a very advanced practitioner, explained Dharma. Well, Dharma is
(10:14):
the word that is used for the teachings of the Buddha.
Dharma means the path, the way, and so if you
are studying Buddhism, you're studying the dharma, the Buddha dharma.
And Jarvis and I both adhere to the Tibetan tradition.
In fact, as you may have read, we share a teacher,
(10:36):
Chunda Ku, which is what was my key to going
into death row in the first place, convincing Father George
that this was a very rare coincidence that Jarvis not
only share the same Tibetan teacher, but this teacher gave
us both the same practice, the red tarer practice. So
that was really really profound. And tell me what the
(10:59):
red tiers well, Tara is the feminine manifestation of the deity.
Of compassion in Tibetan Buddhism, so Tara is like the
divine feminine are are married, and Tara's compassion and healing energies,
as well as her activity energies, are manifested in different ways.
(11:23):
So in the Tibetan tradition, there are numerous depictions of
different facets of the same deity. So Tara's main facets
remain manifestations are green Tara, which is the manifestation of compassion,
White Tara, which is the manifestation of healing, and Red Tara,
(11:46):
which is the manifestation of enlightened activity. And chug Datuku
gave Jarvis and I both the Red Tara practice to do. Now,
have you known about Jarvis before you started your chaplaincy there?
Had you read his books? Or how did you find
that key to get into death row? My last year
(12:09):
of Masters in Divinity program, I took a prison ministry
course and I found that going into San Quentin, which
was part of the course under Father George Williams, was
my new monastery. I felt very activated and I began
to read. Father Williams is also a criminologist, and so
his course was rich in the criminology and all kinds
(12:33):
of readings we did, and I found my appetite to
be immense and insatiable. And eventually I was led to
Jarvis's books, which is where I found that he and
I shared the meeting and relationship with chunkda Tuku as
well as the red tarp practice. Did that give you
shivers when you saw that it did? And you know,
(12:56):
the truth of interconnectedness is crazy. The other thing about
Jarvis and I that we discovered over the years and
we continue to we probably know ten twelve people in common.
And and that's insane, right, like a sixty year old
white woman coming into San Quentin State Prison having ten
(13:21):
or twelve people in common with a death row inmate
who's been in there for however many years. So the
times we discovered our interconnections with other people were just
mind blowing and continue to be so. To know that
Jarvis had this connection with Chagdutuku made it very clear
to me that I was in the right place and
(13:42):
that our paths were going to cross. And before I
met Jarvis, I would visualize Tara above death Row every
time I walked in and just imagine her sending love
and light and healing and divine feminine concern and care
and protection to all the men they're never really having.
(14:04):
In my wildest imagination, how large our connection would end
up to be. The more that Jarvis studied the Buddha,
the more he realized he wanted to share what he'd
learned to commune with his neighbors who may equally benefit
from these newfound practices. And while pre COVID religious services
abounded in the general population, this was not the case
(14:26):
on death row, particularly for those who did not identify
as a Christian or a Catholic. Back in the eighties,
there were no Buddhist courses or services at San Quentin,
no formal Buddhist teachers or chaplains assigned a death row
up next. How Jarvis and Chaplain Shannon, and the threat
of a lawsuit managed to change the status quo for
those on death row open to the Dharmic path for
(14:59):
a on time. Before he met you, Jarvis wanted to
have a Buddhism class on death row, but he was
not permitted to do that. But you were able to
do that because of your capacity as a chaplain. How
did that come to fruition towards the end of Jarviston
my one on once. We we always talked about the
(15:19):
heart of Buddhism and that which is beyond time and
space and beyond form and bars and all of that,
and what that is is the the Bodhi Cheetah, the
enlightened heart, the awakened heart and mind of of the Llama.
And we always knew that chugged A Touklu's heart heart
mind would not have put us together if it was
(15:43):
just for him and I that was our Lama was
beyond that, and and so we knew that at some
point our group was going to grow. What happened was
that another inmate on death row who identifies as Buddhist,
filed a petition to begin a lawsuit against the cdc ARE,
(16:05):
saying that his spiritual needs were not being met as
a Buddhist. So pretty much the only thing that gets
the c d c ARE to make any kind of
change is that kind of a threat. So that because
I had already been going in, I had clearance to
go in. I had all the right paperwork to be
considered a chaplain by the prison, even though I wasn't
a staff chaplain, because they don't formally acknowledge Buddhist chaplains.
(16:29):
It just naturally fell to where our group began to grow,
and it grew rather quickly. How big did it grow?
In about a year and a half. It went from
Jarvis and I two, myself and six other men. Yeah.
(16:51):
Why is it that they don't officially recognize um a
Buddhist chaplain. It's that they don't visually recognized Buddhism as
one of the five main faith traditions that the state
prisons acknowledge, and those five are Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim,
(17:16):
and Native American. In spite of numerous lawsuits, they still
don't recognize Buddhist or Inner faith. However, you could tell
by the rapid growth of our group, and by the
work I did in the main line, and and just
looking around and what's happening across the world. The tools
and skills that Buddhism offers are very non sectarian. They're
(17:40):
very useful and adaptable to all other faith traditions. So
it's it's just a matter of time, I think. Tell
me about the first group gathering you had at the
Death Row Chapel. Yeah, so it did start slow, and
the way that the even though it grew fast, it
(18:02):
started slow. And I'll explain that the men on Death
Row are organized by the cdc R into groups called yards.
And I forget how many yards. There are, thirteen or
something yards. There's a lot of yards. And those yards
are organized according to all kinds of things raise former
(18:27):
gang affiliation um, maybe even crimes um, people who are disabled,
et cetera. So the rules are that men of different
yards can't mix. So that meant that though I had
sixty five guys signed up at the most, I could
(18:49):
still only see one yard at a time. The chapel,
what is about gosh, my bad measurement probably about long,
maybe not even ten ft wide. It's an old shower
area and it's encased in that diamond wire that is
(19:14):
used for the bars, the prison cells, et cetera. Including
on the top and up above us always was a
guard with a rifle. There's little sally ports that the
men were. The shackled men were brought in by their
tier guards, who they called they kind of affectionately called
(19:35):
their ride. So um, if somebody was on the second tier,
the second tier guard would bring them down, you know,
shackle them up, bring them down, I'd be sitting in
the There were five wooden benches bolted to the floor
in the chapel and three cages that weren't We were
(19:57):
never supposed to call them cages, but that's what they
were about, phone booth sized cages in the back. And
those cages were where the men would sit if they
if I had a mixed yard group, which I had
for an entire for quite a while, so as the
men were brought into the sally port and led to
(20:19):
the cage, I would sit as far away from them
as I felt the guard needed me to for him
to feel safe, because they're always wanting to protect people.
The guard and the inmate knew exactly how did sort
of dose. He go around to where the inmate would
(20:40):
be backed into, go forward into the cage, turn around,
and one fell swoop move. He would put his hands
behind him. The guard would shut the cage and locked
the cage, and the inmate would put his hands out
the little port of that's about the as of a
shoe box, and the guard would unshackle his hands. The
(21:04):
inmate would turn around and sit down. The guard would
lock the little place where the man's hands came out
and we would begin so and I always have to
wear a bulletproof stab proof vest whenever I went in.
Were you ever frightened? No, there was maybe one time
(21:25):
when I should have been frightened. There was. There were
some kind of funny times there where when I look back,
I think most people would have, you know, panicked. There
was one time when I was with Jarvis in the
little room and it was the end of a nine
hour day. I always had to go in. Um My
(21:47):
time's going into death row were part of a bigger schedule,
so I didn't pick and shoes when I could go in.
So that this was at the end of a nine
hour day. Jarvis and I had spent about an hour
or so. I was hungry, I was tired, it was
getting late. Um and there was a medical emergency on
(22:08):
the ground tier so the whole prison shut down. I
couldn't leave until this man died and was brought out
in all this, and so I was there for a
long time. Um. And and that was fun in a way,
because it was always fun to be with Jarvis, but
it was also hard in terms of keeping my My
(22:32):
blood sugar was really low, you know that kind of thing. Hum.
There was another time, when a guard who was new
brought an inmate in to the chapel. It was going
to be a one on one and unfortunately I knew
why this inmate was on death row, which never mattered
(22:55):
to me. I mean I was there as a chaplain
to address matters of this spirit and matters of the heart,
so I had good boundaries around um all the rest
of what comes with death row. But the guard, instead
of putting him into the cage, which this man and
I had been seeing each other for now, probably about
(23:18):
eight years, so we knew each other. Well, the guard
just let him go. And so I'm standing there, I'm
sitting there and this you know inmate, who is never
free like that around a free first and shackled, you know.
He looked at me. I looked at him, and we
(23:39):
both just raised our eyebrows. It was pretty funny. We
both just kind of raised our eyebrows and the and
shrugged our shoulders. And the inmate was he he was perfect.
He kept his hands behind his back and he said, um, officer,
aren't you forgetting something? And the officer can I swear here?
(24:03):
Can I? Absolutely? The officer up on the gun the
gun rail up above us. He looks down. He goes, dude,
you gotta keep him shackled, and and the officers like ship,
oh shit, oh shit, shit. He just started taking out.
And I'm sitting there, Oh my god, anybody else would
(24:25):
be scared shitless, and hear me and this inmate are
just kind of cracking up, and he sits down, and
you know, the guard is I'm sure worried he's going
to be losing his job or getting you know, that
could have been my retirement, right, And we both just
see he looks at me and he goes, that's never happened.
(24:46):
So that was the time when I probably could have
should have been scared, but I wasn't. I was sort
of amused up next, how the Buddhist curriculum on San
Quentin's death Row evolved. According to the Pew Research Center,
(25:12):
three and four prison chaplains believed the access to religion
related programs on the inside is absolutely critical to successful transformation.
Having piqued the interest of dozens of men on San
Quentin's death Row, I asked how chaplain Susan Shannon helped
develop their Buddhist curriculum to satisfy the array of believers
and practitioners. What I found was that as more guys
(25:36):
began to show up, there began to be some kind
of positioning with the guides, like, well, somebody maybe came
from the Zen tradition or was had read some books
on Zen, and they thought Zen was all there was.
Or somebody else came from the Soco Gakai tradition and
he thought that was all there was. And then there
was the Tibetan tradition, and they thought that was all
(25:57):
there was. So I said, you I saw right away it.
It was gonna be a bit of a pissing contest,
and I said, you know it, No, we're not gonna
do that. We're gonna focus on what the different schools
of Buddhism have in common, and the common goal is
to cultivate a warm heart and interconnectedness, and that's what
we're going to focus on. So I created this big
(26:20):
chart of comparison chart of all the Buddhist schools, and
I created a twenty two page outline that brought us
through step by step most if not all, of the
main topics that all schools of Buddhism cover. And that
took us about two and a half years. I gave
(26:41):
all the men the outline and I began to go
through it. Um I began to get really good at
this because by the time I had eight yards, I
was teaching the same thing for eight weeks in a row.
And UM, it took us two and a half years
to go through this. How do you have eight yards
in the tiny, tiny room? And I could only see
(27:03):
one yard at a time. Once the yards grew, I
couldn't see a mixed yard anymore. And with this this
kind of recognition of how the guys were beginning to
argue about their tradition, I also made the decision that
they agreed to that our sessions were not going to
be practice sessions. They were going to be study sessions.
(27:26):
And yet even though they all agreed on that, it
didn't happen that way. What happened was I found that
they had a deep, deep love of meditation. So what
I did was, as part of this twenty two page outline,
I extracted from Buddhist ceremonies a few of the main
(27:50):
elements that I felt were going to be really useful
to the men's lives. And this is how we structured
every time that I went there. Every every group. We
structured them in this way that began with breathing together
with a meditation. Began with a meditation where we set
our intention, and we called in all of our spirit guides,
(28:13):
all of the enlightened beings, all of the teachers, um,
anybody who has ever taught us anything that related to
our own realization. We brought them in. We consciously and
verbally brought them a little little space there and uh.
Then we would go through some breathing, some posture and
breath and it was the most This is where beauty
(28:35):
comes in. The men dropped into meditation so deeply. They
would sit there, and I wish, this is something I
thought all the time. I wish I could share this
image with the rest of the world. I would open
my eyes and I would look at these men sitting here,
(28:57):
and they would be glowing, and they would be so
at peace. And here they were in the darkest place
in the universe, one of the darkest places in the universe,
and they would be um sending love out, sending love
out to the people they loved, sending love out to
the people they had issues with, sending love out to
(29:20):
their victims, sending love out to all the people that
they'll ever or never meet, and these men were just
just these beautiful, beautiful faces of peace. And so meditation
did become an important part of our daily programs. And
not only that, but without fail, the entire cell block
(29:45):
would quiet down. And I'm talking seven twenty guys or
however many are in there now, but at the time
it was like seven guys stacked in cells five tiers
high with this amazing cacophony, and the whole place would
quiet down. What I found on Death Row is that
(30:09):
it's the razor's edge of impermanence. Life and death happened
very regularly on Death Row and there is probably not
a cell that hasn't had a suicide in it. You know,
no inmate has control over their life, so at any
given point in time, they could have their cell torn up,
(30:30):
they could be taken away for something that they did
or did not do. I mean, impermanence is lives on
Death Row, and so so does However, because of that
kinetic energy, so does the power of transformation. And that's
what I was trying to harness with these men, was
(30:52):
the ability to spiritually transform. You guys are standing or
sitting on the rocket launcher here on Death Row. You know,
all you can do really is spiritually transformed, and they did.
Over the years that I worked with the men, both
Death Row and Mainline. The hunger for transformation that I
(31:15):
found there far surpassed anything that I ever witnessed in
Tibetan monasteries in Nepal. And I just saw this incredible
zest and love for for transformation, for making amends, for
really looking at their own hurt and how that fueled
them to hurt others, and this deep hunger to feel
(31:39):
and heal what they had done in society. So in
this regard people who have maybe caused you the most
harm in this bigger picture, or maybe the ones who
were teaching you the most important lessons for going forward.
I we didn't talk a lot of out Jarvis and
(32:01):
his spirituality, but I will say that just just now,
that he is a profound um human being who embodies
his Dharma, his his Buddhism is in his blood, bones, marrow, sinews,
and heart. Nothing comes easy in prison, but then to
the Buddhist mind, all is a matter of perspective. Following
(32:23):
is an excerpt from Jarvis's audio book Finding Freedom. How
death row broke and opened my heart on how he
managed to improvise amala, a string of Buddhist prayer beads
with little access to anything, while in solitary confinement in
San Quentin, taylan all prayer beads. It was past midnight.
(32:44):
The prison night watchman was making his routine body count
down the tier when I awakened from a late evening
snooze with plans to get up and spend the rest
of the night. During my meditation practice. I pass the
length to myself for a while, or eight feet of it,
preparing myself with the repetitions of the Tara prayer. Suddenly,
I was struck by an idea for a way to
make my own mala, my own prayer beads which I
(33:06):
could use to keep track of the repetitions. I spun
around my cell looking for what I would need. Since
the very first day of learning this prayer, I wanted
a mala to help me with my practice. My teacher,
Rimpoche and other practitioners who came to sin Quentin to
visit me had often offered to bring me one, but
prison authorities had denied them permission to do so. I
(33:27):
gathered a pair of prison issue jeanes, a Sports illustrated
and a bottle of Thailand all and sat down at
the front of my cell. I picked and pulled at
the seams of the jeans until I got hold of
a good piece of thread. I unraveled more than I
meant to. Oh, A gaping hole widened down the leg.
I'll get another pair somehow, I resolved and put the
(33:49):
thread aside. I opened the Sports illustrated to the middle
and took out one of the staples. I straightened it
out and sharpened it on the rough concrete floor beside me.
I had to be very quiet. If night watchman heard
these strange scratching sounds, the whole cell block might be
searched in a panic. Scraping usually meant a weapon was
being sharpened. For almost an hour, I ground the staple
(34:10):
on the floor until it was as sharp as a
sewing needle. Now, I opened the bottle of Thailand aill
and began the slow process of poking a tiny hole
in the center of each tablet. There were a hundred
of them. I had to be as careful as a surgeon.
First I poked at the surface of the Thailand, and
then with a screwing motion. I made a hole all
the way through. Taking the thread from my jeans, I
(34:33):
passed it through each bead. All through the night, I
sat cross legged, poking holes and thailand ails and threading
them together. It was extremely tedious. My eyes blurred with exhaustion,
my fingers began to get sore. I felt foolish. What
in the world am I doing, I asked myself, but
(34:55):
I kept going, determined to finish. Five and a half
hour later, I held my first mama, made from trouser
thread and thailer as. I was elated, but when I
got up to stretch, my head throbbed. I had an
awful headache. I stood silently at the bars of my cell,
taking comfort and looking out a window. In the opposite wall.
(35:17):
A beautiful morning light was speaking in. I wouldn't mind
a tailing all too, I thought, to stop this pounding
in my head. I looked down at my hands. Damn,
I don't have any They're all on this mama. For
a split second, I thought the unthinkable. My head was
hurting that much. Then I smiled. I realized that after
(35:42):
spending all this time making my tailing a mala, all
I needed to do was to sit my butt back
down with it and take a few moments no tailing alls,
to do my spiritual practice. Next week, the social psychologist
assigned to Jarvis's death penalty case thirty years ago and
(36:05):
his groundbreaking research, reinforcing the fact the proactive prevention is
far more effective than reactive punishment when it comes to
reducing criminal behavior. The audiobook of Finding Freedom, How Death
Row Broke and Opened My Heart by Jarvis j Masters
can be found at Shambala dot com or Audible. Will
link to both sites in our show notes. This episode
(36:28):
was written and produced by Donni Fazzari and myself, Corny Cole.
Our theme song sentenced is compliments of the band Stick
Figure from their album Set in Stone. Stu Sternbott composed
the original music. Nate Defort did the sound design. For
more information on Jarvis and to find out how you
can follow his case and support his cause, please visit
(36:50):
Free Jarvis dot org. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio,
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
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