Jarvis and the Death Penalty

The United States is the only western nation that continues to make a practice of executing its own citizens. Of late, the death penalty and the prevalence of wrongful convictions have been under the white-hot light spotlight in everything from our political discourse to our popular culture. Governor Gavin Newsom recently put a moratorium on the death penalty in California, based on research that estimates one in 25 condemned prisoners are not guilty of the crimes for which they were sentenced. 

“Dear Governor” is an open letter introducing listeners to one such death row inmate, Jarvis Jay Masters, who has maintained he is not guilty of the crime for which he was sentenced almost 30 years ago. In this episode Jarvis poses the question, “how many guilty people must be put to death to justify the execution of one innocent man or woman?,” and, he invites listeners to answer this question for themselves. Jarvis also weighs in on the Coronavirus behind bars.

Meet Samara Gaev, a friend and mentee of Jarvis, and the Founder & Artistic Director of Truthworker Theatre Company, a social justice based, hip-hop theatre company. Samara and her team worked hand-in-hand with Jarvis to produce the original hip-hop musical, “Boxed in and Blacked Out In America,” which examines the impacts & practices of solitary confinement in US prisons, tracing Jarvis’s remarkable capacity for liberation within the walls of death row. 

Have a question for Jarvis that yo"u’d like to hear him answer on the podcast, please leave a message on our hotline: [phone] or [e-mail]

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Dear Governor is a production of I Heeart Media and
three Months Media Jarvis Masters. It is the judgment and
sentence of this Court that the charged information was true.
There are innocent people on death row. It is the
order of this court that you suffered death innocent people.

(00:24):
Change his minds. It has in every state. You will
probably see that change. The death penalty is because they
found too many innocent people of death row said penalty
to be inflicted within the walls of sam Quentin. They
said that I sharpened the weapon and sent it down
to the guy who then made it into a toll

(00:45):
and spirit to guard, at which point you shall be
put to death. The reason why I end up in
death row is because I didn't try to defend myself.
You are remanded to the custody of the Warden of
sam Quentin. Beyond the racial part. Who gets death and
who doesn't is, as was called by the Supreme Court

(01:07):
back in the Samities, a strike of lightning. I thought
that these guys are in trouble, not me. There was
so much evidence that was kept from us that if
he were tried now you know, they'd get an acquipbal.
I wish they would have found that weapon, because that
weapon would have been my way out of here. I

(01:28):
really believe that they found that weapon, I would have
not been charged from her. He should not be on
death row. He shouldn't be in prison actually for this crime.
It's really a tragedy. It's really unfair. No one knows
how long the day is. I've fucking with someone that
doesn't know what a day feels like. Innocent on death row.
They have no idea. May God have mercy on your soul.

(01:50):
God have mercy on your soul. Imagine, through a series
of random coincidences and professional ties, you're introduced to a
renowned author who's as respected as he is beloved. His
award winning essays have garnered international acclaim as a speak
to the heart of the human condition, love and devotion.
His books are recommended reading in many high schools across

(02:12):
the country, the students of which consider him to be
their mentor. This is a man of deep faith and
conviction who, decades ago, took the Buddhist vow to do
no harm one step further, he vowed to do everything
in his power to alleviate the suffering of others. All
of this despite the fact that he was a victim
of deeply flawed foster care system growing up in Long Beach,

(02:35):
California ghettos in the sixties and seventies. The abuse he
endured at the hands of multiple foster parents is all
but unspeakable. Born to a heroin addicted mother and a
brutally violent father, It's difficult to fathom how any human
would have the strength to overcome the kind of generational
abuse that destroys lives, families, and entire communities. Others have

(02:56):
been broken by a fraction of the horrors perpetrated on
this man, but he has somehow managed to find joy, hope,
and even optimism through it all. Now imagine this paragon
of compassion who has been lauded by luminaries from Archbishop
Desmond Tutu to Buddhist teacher Pema children and for whom
theater troops have written stage plays, and realized that he

(03:19):
has been languishing on San Quentin's death row for over
thirty years. His name is Jarvis J. Masters and it
was by way of professional happenstance that our paths crossed.
My name is Cornicole. I'm a television and radio producer
by lottery of birth. I grew up not twenty miles
from Jarvis, in a tony all white Republican enclave that

(03:40):
is North Tuston. My parents picked this town because the
neighborhood was safe in the public schools were some of
the best in the state. Prior to meeting Jarvis, I
hadn't had much occasion to think about the death penalty.
Why would I. I never knew anyone who was in prison,
much less a condemned prisoner. I, like my father and
his father before him, believe the death penalty was fair, effective,

(04:03):
cost efficient way to rid society of the dredges of humanity,
and never examined this conviction. I never had reason to.
In getting to know Jarvis, reading his extensive body of work,
talking for endless hours on the phone, I have been
forced to look within and question what I held to
be true for so long. On this podcast, myself, along

(04:24):
with the community of his supporters, want to introduce you
and the Governor of California to the man who is
Jarvis Masters. For one, we believe you will be a
better person for knowing him, And for two, as we
close in on the presidential elections, hopefully his story can
be an impetus for some to explore their own surface
level convictions and did deeper to understand why they believe

(04:46):
what they believe and in turn make their vote all
that much more vital. While everyone seems to agree that
the criminal justice system is in dire need of reform,
capital punishment is the ultimate wedge issue, controversial and polar rising.
It's about politics, it's about morality, and it splits our
electorate almost down the middle. Despite the fact that US

(05:06):
opposition to the death penalty is at its highest in decades,
President Trump doubled down on his pro death penalty advocacy
by expanding the practice. A g Bill Bar now announcing
the federal government will resume capital punishment first time since
two thousand three, bar directing prison officials to schedule the
executions of five death row inmates. There will be a

(05:27):
strict timetable for judicial proceedings that will allow the imposition
of the death sentence without undue to lay. In response
to this edict, a group of a hundred and seventy
five family members of people murdered wrote a letter to
a g Bar imploring him to change his mind. They
wrote that the death penalty exacerbates the trauma of losing

(05:48):
a loved one and creates yet another grieving family. It
also wastes many millions of dollars that could be better
invested in programs that actually reduce crime and violence and
that address the needs of families like ours. Also in
response to Bar's pronouncement, Joe Biden, a longtime supporter of
the death penalty, tweeted, because we can't ensure that we

(06:09):
get these cases right every time, we must eliminate the
death penalty. President Trump's d o J has not only
reinstated the death penalty, but if he has his way,
drug dealers will be put to death right alongside murderers.
And China they have a very, very tough penalty for drugs.
It's called the death penalty. And I said to President Sheets,

(06:29):
so you have one point four billion people and you
don't have a drug problem. I said, what do you
attribute that to death penalty? Quick trial? Following this zealous
defensive capital punishment, Massachusetts Congresswoman Ayana Pressley unveiled House Resolution
four zero five to, also known as the People's Justice Guarantee.

(06:50):
It would quote prohibit the imposition of the death penalty
for any violation of federal law and for other purposes.
Of the approximately thirty cosponts or Michigan Representative Justin Amash
is the only non Democrat who signed on. From an
ABC News interview, sister Helen pru John, author of dead
Man Walking In an outspoken opponent of the death penalty.

(07:12):
This is the first presidential campaign where you have well most,
if not all, of the Democratic candidates calling for an
end to the death penalty. We've never had as a
venture candidate before, even Obama. There's a huge shift happening
in the country about the death penalty. It was only
his reason It's sixteen that the Democrats formally opposed the
death penalty in its party platform. But if politics isn't

(07:36):
the arbiter of what's important at this moment in time,
look no further than Hollywood and popular culture. Kim Kardashian
has become an outspoken advocate for the condemned after realizing
just how broken the system is, and earlier this year,
the film Just Mercy, starring Michael B. Jordan and Jamie
Fox was released. It follows the true story of attorney
Brian Stevenson, who made it his life's mission to fight

(07:58):
for the wrongfully condemned. You only know what you enter
down here in Alabama from the moment you're ball. Earlier
in the year, movie director Edwards Wick released Trial by Fire,
starring Laura Dern. It tells the true story of Cameron
Todd Willingham, who was executed in Texas for allegedly killing
his three daughters after scientific evidence and expert testimony that

(08:22):
bolstered his claims of innocence were suppressed. You are guilty
of capital murder by order of the State of Texas.
You are sentenced to death. Oprah Winfrey's recent book club
pick was Anthony ray Hinton's memoir The Sun Does Shine.
How I found life and freedom on death Row after
a case of mistaken identity sent him there. On March

(08:50):
thirteenth of this year, Governor Gavin Newsom held a press
conference in which he announced that death penalty executions in
California would be halted under his administration and during his
time in office. It was a National Academy of Science
report that came out that estimates one out of every
twenty five people on death row is innocent. If that's
the case, that means if we move forward, executing seven

(09:12):
thirty seven people in California, we will have executed roughly
thirty people that are innocent in that same pressure. Governor
Newsom made a call to our better angels because he said,
when you know better, you do better. There are innocent
people on death row. I cannot sign off on executing
hundreds and hundreds of human beings knowing knowing that among

(09:37):
them will be innocent human beings. My name is Jarvis Masters.
I have been an inmate at Quentin Institute for a
most thirty years. Forty years. Cool ships has a long time.
Sometimes you just want to let that self go right,

(09:58):
and you want to keep the low. You know, you
want to like you know, you don't want you know
what it is, you just say something different all the day.
I have been an inmate at San Quentin Prison for
almost fourteen years. I am certainly guilty of the crimes
that brought me here, and I owe the mistakes I made,

(10:19):
and I've paid my dues, but I'm not guilty of
the crime that put me here on death row for
the last thirty years. I hope you take time to
listen to my story, and I hope you have the
heart to recognize the unjust reality of capital punishment, so
many guilty mans have to be put to death to

(10:40):
justify the execution of one innocent man. Dear Governor Newsom,
do you, Mr Governor Newsom? This is an open letter
to Governor Gavin Newsom. Dear Governor Newsom, myself, along with
a group of your constituents, wants to introduce you to
an exceptional human being, one of the seven hundred and

(11:03):
thirty seven souls currently on California's death rows lost my
dear mind. I know, I think I'm most provider something
or someone can survive so long, long long I think
that I am. I'm lucky. Our group spans the political spectrum.
Some are pro death penalty, while others are outspoken advocates

(11:25):
for the abolition of the death penalty the California State
programce san Quentin, California, Jo, You're lucky. You don't like
to say that, because I'm in a place where you know,
how How the hell can you be lucky on death
row liminar and nine right four so for forty years?
How how do you make sense out of that? You know,
this is the story of one man, but this is

(11:47):
not one man's story. I am so lucky that I
have my spanity. I have people to motivate me, to
keep me going. That's that's that's how no that you know,
I'm in a good place. I mean inside internally, I'm
in a really really good place. A man who found
grace in an unjust system, a system so broken that

(12:09):
justice is not color blind nor free from social bias.
So many things in my life I'm thankful for, you know,
and I think what happens to me accorded that when
you learn how to start thinking thanking people for for
the person you make yourself to be are, You're just
you're just full of you, humble yourself in front of

(12:30):
people who you know that's doing things for you in
ways where you can't help or feel thankful, you know,
because you come from a place where these things never happened,
and to see them happening, it's like, you know, it's
one of those whiles, you know. So yeah, I think
about a lot of people who helped me along the way.
Soon after the pandemic brought our world to a screeching halt,

(12:52):
Jarvis reached out to me to share how dramatically things
have changed for him and his buddies on the East Block.
San Quentin thus far has remained relative of the infection
free when you compare it to other prisons from across
the country, because social distancing in jails and prisons is
all but impossible and sanitizers forbidden, infection rates are exponentially
higher than that of the general public. The New York

(13:14):
Times aptly labeled jails is the petree dishes for the virus.
What's it like in there? Like, on the outside, it's
been crazy out here. It feels completely dystopian, all sorts
of shutdowns and nobody's going to work and everybody's staying
at home in the streets are empty. So what does
it feel like on the inside? From my fancis point,

(13:35):
is like all being done up there. I mean, it's
a real SII Fi movie. If you look out there,
you see people and their reactions to this disease. It
is really really scary, you know, and we all think
about our families and for instance, loved ones, and just
like everyone else would. What is the biggest story is

(13:58):
that at any time so it's sick, instead of putting
them in the hospital, they put them in solitary confinement
the whole And for someone to say I got a
fever and I'm not filling. Will say they're gonna put
you there. I guess not to me. People canna raise
their head when they are honest sick, they're not going
to do it. So there is no real serious motive

(14:22):
to raise your hand when you're really, really sick. Are
you gonna do it? You know, say, okay, I'm sick.
Listen me to the whole where I could barely breathe
and no one ever see me. No, I'm not going
to be putting isolation from fine where I cannot use
the phone. Well, I can't inform my family how I'm
doing or find out what they're up to. That's a bad,

(14:42):
bad plan that quldn't half of this problem. Is there
any testing that's being done to them and they just
get sent down to the hole? No, there's no chest
kits here. You've got a temperature in that temperatures stayed
at the high level for a couple of days, and
they don't you and hope there's guy's coughing all around
because it's the flu season. You can't really determine put

(15:04):
that cost actually means. I know that yesterday a guy
went to the whole because he had a high fever.
So that's how that goes. But other than that, everyone's
watching TV, and everyone's watching the news, and everyone's listening
to the radio, and everyone doesn't understand what Trump does.
But this is the West Coast, this is California. But

(15:25):
I think a lot of people don't see him as
being in control of this. They see local government's being
more in control of it. For me, I follow the money.
The money would kill me. How seriously, everything he is
out there, stop mons crash. There's a serious problem. When
they lose in eight nine, ten trillion dollars. A think
that's a serious problem. Anything that generates money, if it's

(15:48):
shut down, it tells me it is a serious problem.
But one gives me more anything is when people say
to me Jovers, you know, I understand what it feels
like to be in prison now. And I say really,
I mean, all right, I get it. I get that.
I get that, I get that. Okay, I don't even

(16:10):
want to burst the bubble, you know, I just let
them feel that. You know, when I'm on the phone,
a lot of people are it's very sympathetic to me
being locked up, based on there are three weeks out
of work, and at home with their spouse that much
to be a lot. But if they're fineess in that

(16:30):
place of confinement. Really it is true that they feel
locked up. They can't go outside for their walks, and
when they can't do the things they normally would do,
to suddenly test that off is a real problem. I
can sort of get it in one way, you know,
I can get it, because you cut off from the

(16:51):
routine of life and you will feel crummy. You have
to even if you can pay for not working. You
to still see the National Guards homework down the street
passing me where you're going? That is really unusual. Guard
tells me all the time, where is you going? They

(17:12):
do not have a quicker response thank you? Do? You,
on the other hand, have a very hard time for
understanding it, you know, and you don't know where it's
coming from. Brif property, jobs, employment, the way the world
is is suddenly you can turn it upside down, and
I understand that up next. It's difficult enough for a

(17:33):
healthy adult mind to bear witness to this tragedy, but
imagine how much more terrifying it is for a death
row inmate who suffers from mental illness or schizophrenia. Another
thing I want to talk about was this is something
I'm starting to observe just because I look for things

(17:54):
to look at psychiatry. There's a lot of people for
death Roy. It isn't especially Thankwich who's taking psychmanty For
one reason, that is whether paranoia rather's anxiety. To have
this thing going on right here, if you're creating a
whole new different kind of fear, that fears be concentrated

(18:16):
five six gay times, it would be meeting you. So
you can take a guy who's chest anxiety problems, are
schizophrenic or whatever it is. You can really see the
difference at him. You really can't. I mean, this is
very clear, and it can only get worse. Because I'd
one guy, She's a good friend of mine. He says,

(18:38):
I don't think I could take three more weeks? Is
I cannot take three more weeks of this? And I'm
thinking one of the for the last fifteen years is
at the boiling point. Why did you tell him? I
just told him in either way, you don't know what
three weeks might feel like. You may become a chess player.
You don't know what some of you doing it three weeks.

(19:01):
I told him. Also but if you can't take it
to the point where I think you can't take it,
then you'll be going by your damn self, because I'm
not going with you. Man. He thought that was really
really funny and just trying it at him. Though. What
got me corny was this when he said, I don't
think I can take three more weeks of this had

(19:21):
told me a whole lot. It's almost like he's repeating
what he's watching. Yes, he takes it more serious than
the people he's looking at. Yeah, like he's feeling the
anxiety of the world through an exponential amount. Right. But
the problem is he's in the cell of death road

(19:43):
and there's already many readers to steel hopeless you can
cast some money and trying to figure out how can
you whole school your kids or whatever? His freed of doom.
They're just doomed, persisted by my arch is it broken? Sick?

(20:09):
I'm leaving silence, hartnesss plex me. I don't know me.
Can you help me, Dear Governor Newsome. My name is Samara.
I'm founder and artistic director of Truth Worker Theater Company,
where a social justice based hip hop theater company for

(20:30):
young people who are directly impacted by mass incarceration with
loved ones who are currently or formally incarcerated, and we
create original cutting edge theater can never tell me, incorporating
music and movement and dance and lyricism and testimony, creating

(20:53):
visions for change around the prison system and all of
its ricocheting impacts on our communities. Jervis, but there you are, Javis,
probably looking all over. I first met Jarvis over ten

(21:13):
years ago after I had survived a violent crime at
the hands of a young man who was now serving
multiple lifetimes in prison. This was not an easy thing
for me. Despite my survival and despite experiencing violence, I
still understand that hurt people hurt people, and prison is

(21:35):
not a solution to create healed communities that are accountable
to one another. Jarvis was family and dear friend and
mentor to one of my closest friends, and she put
us in contact with one another, knowing that I was
committed to really exploring healing and justice, and also that

(21:58):
I work in New York's at a public schools and
particularly in transfer schools that are specifically geared towards servicing
young people who are overaged and undercredited, which often means
gang affiliated, formally incarcerated, pregnant and parenting, or impacted by
foster care. Jarvis spending his boyhood in and out of

(22:22):
foster homes and being awarded the state from such a
young age, incarcerated while still a juvenile and unjustly sentenced
to death, then serving twenty three consecutive years in solidary confinement,
was committed to mentorship on his own path to liberation.
Despite confinement, Jarvis had made clear to my friend that

(22:45):
he wanted to be directly connected to other young people
who were navigating systems that perpetuated oppression, marginalization, and would
disproportionately targeting young black and brown people. God am I
forgiven for my sins. I'm gonna talk behind these walls

(23:06):
are night. I'm gonna be killed with something that I
didn't do. God have I forgiving foods usigerating? Do you
know how many people are on the outside faring for you? Love?
You may not be able to climb those walls. We're
gonna make it a disappear. Almost thirty years into his

(23:37):
death sentence, and Jarvis's habeas corpus oral arguments are finally
on the docket next week, as he anxiously awaits those
arguments before the California Supreme Court. Jarvis will share his
perspective on this untenable waiting game, and I'll report back
from the courthouse. This episode was written and produced by
Donna Fazzari and myself. Corny Cole Stu Sternbuck composed original music.

(24:01):
Nate Dufort did the sound design. Special thanks to Samara
Gayev and the cast and the crew at the Truth
Worker Theater Company, who provided us with clips and music
from their original hip hop musical Boxed In and Blacked
Out in America. Visit free Jarvis dot org to find
out more about Jarvis's case and to sign your name
to our dear Governor Newsom petition. And if you have

(24:23):
questions for Jarvis, please leave a message on our hotline
at two zero one nine zero three thirty five seventy five.
That's to zero one nine zero three thirty five seventy five.
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