San Quentin News

Written By Incarcerated - Advancing Social Justice

Magick helps man to survive the row

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An Arkansas inmate performed ceremonial “ magick” to help him survive Death Row, reported an article in The Guardian. 

Damien Echols said he summoned an angel through magick (which he believes is a mixture of gnostic Christianity, esoteric Judaism, and Taoist energy practices) to protect himself.

“It had no discernible facial features. But I knew it was an angel,” Echols said, “and I got why angels in the Bible say ‘be not afraid’ when they show up, because this thing was terrifying.”

Echols and two friends were convicted of killing three 8-year-old boys in the early 1990s, according to the article. With no physical evidence to link the “West Memphis Three” to the murders, prosecutors instead relied on pentagram doodles and the teenagers’ belief in Wicca to convince a jury that they committed the murders as ritual sacrifices.

Echols and his codefendants were released in 2011 after HBO’s program “Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills” created a movement to free them and new DNA evidence introduced another suspect.

“I did magick to lessen the power of politicians who were interested in carrying out my murder,” Echols wrote. “I performed magick to draw freedom toward me.”

Echols is now a spiritual teacher and author, helping others learn magick. His classes have attracted a small but devoted following, according to The Guardian.

“I look to Damien because like thousands of others, I was inspired by his resilience,” said one of his followers, Sarah, a school administrator from D.C. “He taught me that anyone can be freed from their own personal prison cell.”

Canadians favor death penalty

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A Canadian newspaper editorial cites a 2016 survey that says 58 percent of Canadians favor the return of the death penalty.

The editorial board of the Ottawa Sun took issue with Amnesty International Canada (AIC) criticizing Florida’s use of the death penalty.

Canada abolished capital punishment in 1976 — the same year the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty. 

The last execution in Canada was when Ronald Turpin and Arthur Lucas were hanged at Toronto’s Don Jail in 1962.

The Sun’s editorial board suggested that AIC should focus more on the growing numbers of Canadians wanting to bring back the death penalty instead of spending time in Florida fighting the death penalty in another country.

In the major democratic governments in the world, all but three have abolished the death penalty — India, Japan and the U.S.

The Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) reports that as of July 1, 2017, there are 2,817 Death Row inmates in the U.S.

According to the DPIC, since 1976 the U.S. has carried out 1,465 executions. 

Two California ballot initiatives in 2016 involved capital punishment. The first resulted in the death penalty staying on the books — the second sped up the execution process. Multiple lawsuits, however, have stalled executions since 2006.

California’s Death Row male inmates are housed at San Quentin State Prison and the women at Chowchilla Women’s Facility. The state has approximately 750 Death Row inmates. All but 53 are men. 

According to the DPIC, since December 21, 2017, Gabriel Solache is the 161st person exonerated from death row. 

The Sun’s editorial board says that the death penalty “is wrong.”

They argued that capital punishment “is more expensive than imprisonment, has little effectiveness as a deterrent, and risks the execution of innocent people.”

Developing a relationship from 40 years of letter writing

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Letter-writing has not lost its appeal, at least not for Carol Horan, who values having something handwritten for its “lasting quality.” She has been a pen pal to prisoners for more than 40 years.

Horan first wrote a man name Jeff Dicks, who later died in prison of a massive heart attack after 17 years on Death Row, according to mysouthsidestand.com, a digital news site. 

“The first letter was so hard to write because you don’t know what to say or ask,” Horan said.

As she got to know Dicks, she learned he was convicted in 1979 for allegedly murdering a store owner. She felt that he “as a poor White man in the South” had a hard time getting a fair trial. 

She developed a friendship with Dicks and got to visit him with his mother, who had tried for years to prove his innocence.

“To physically see (him) and being able to hug him,” Horan said. “It was pure joy.”

Over the years, they corresponded about everything including life in solitary confinement, his appeals, his divorce from his wife, being an absentee father and later, his earned privileges that allowed him to teach a class. After Dicks’ fatal heart attack, she stopped writing letters for a while to process the loss of her friend.

During the past 40 years, Horan has corresponded with 10 inmates; currently she writes to three prisoners. One is on Death Row.

She is usually paired with a man through the Death Row Support Project but felt compelled to write to Habakkuk Nickens after reading an article about Nickens’ efforts to prevent gang violence in South Side Chicago. She remembered Habakkuk from Seymour Elementary School when she was a school secretary there.

While serving a 20-year sentence for gang activity at the Federal Correctional Institution in Ray Brook, N.Y., Habakkuk created a program called MEN, Men Educating Neighborhoods.

“It’s just a beautiful thing,” Horan said, “It is a very loving friendship, and he is doing beautiful work trying to turn his life around.”

The other two men she is currently writing are Jonathan, who is incarcerated at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, and Von, a 72-year-old man who has been on Death Row in Ohio for the past 35 years.

She never questions the men about what they did but asks how they spend their leisure time in prison or what type of prison jobs they have. She keeps photos of her prison friends on her refrigerator and stores all their letters in a box.

“One of the beautiful things about writing and receiving (a letter) is that you can read it again and again,” Horan told the Stand reporter in November.

Death Row gains attention with crucifixion painting

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Prisoners on Death Row in Nashville gained the attention of many parishioners with a thought-provoking painting of the crucifixion scene of Jesus, reported Holly Meyer of the USA Today Network.

Derrick Quintero, sentenced to death in 1991 for first-degree murder, is one of the artists who depicted the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus.

“The piece of art is a commentary on the continuing battle for our collective moral world view. I asked my fellow community members to help me create this project to begin conversation about what justice looks like,” Quintero said.

Even as the artists remained in their cages, their artwork, painted on two long scrolls, was free to travel to churches and other religious institutions with the help of Deacon W. James Booth of Holy Family Catholic Church.

“I think the hope is that the people who believe that death row is populated by unsaveable monsters see in this the work of human hands and people with faith. Many of them have done very bad, terrible things, but our faith teaches us that forgiveness and redemption are always possibilities,” Booth explained.

“Those who see the artwork can take away what they will from it, but it is not meant to be a political statement or push policy. The hope is that it can serve as a bridge of faith between the inmates and the outside world,” he continued.

But, even as the artwork is circulating, the Tennessee State Supreme Court was scheduling a handful of executions for later this year.

“The Catholic Church opposes the death penalty, but that does not mean the people who fill the pews all agree,” Booth said.

Booth abstains from talking policy while facilitating the showing of the Stations of the Cross. Rather, he discusses the men who created the artwork and asks viewers to reflect on the crucifixion of their savior Jesus.

“In my mind, it can be transformative in the way that a visit to Death Row can be. Taking those scrolls out, in a way, does some of that work without some of those individuals having to leave the comfort of their neighborhoods and parishes,” he said.

The artwork, undoubtedly, provoked healthy conversations about Jesus and justice among the prisoners themselves.

Quintero was unsure whether the painting changed the opinions of fellow prisoners, but he believes it has generated conversations that replicate the community model fostered on Death Row.

“We tackle all the positive and destructive issues that were a part of our lives,” Quintero said.

A spokeswoman for the Tennessee Department of Corrections, Neysa Taylor, chimed in on the state’s support of such programs. 

“The Tennessee Department of Corrections embraces therapeutic programs that allow offenders to both process and work through their thoughts on their crime and how they can change their lives for the better,” Taylor said.

The artwork impressed Alvaro Manrique Barrenechea when he unrolled the scrolls before him at Christ Church Cathedral, an Episcopal church in downtown Nashville.

“It’s a powerful piece.”

Tennessee prisoner makes ultimate decision in how he wants to die

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Death by lethal injection or death by electrocution was, for Edmund George Zagorski, the last major life decision he would make. 

He was 63 years old when he was executed Nov.1 by electric chair for the murder of John Dotson and Jimmy Porter over a sale of 100 pounds of marijuana in l983. 

Zagorski shot, stabbed and robbed Dotson and Porter, then stole their truck. The two men died at the scene.

Zagorski chose electrocution because he knew experts were speaking out against lethal injection, believing it caused cruel suffering prior to death. 

He wanted to avoid what medical experts were calling “torture” of the condemned, as reported in the Nashville Tennessean. 

He was part of a group of 32 Death Row offenders who sued the state of Tennessee over its use of lethal injection. The court decided against them in a 4-1 ruling. 

They cited the pain-filled, torturous lethal injection death experience of Billy Ray Irick, as characterized by doctors who reviewed his Aug. 9, 2018 execution. With Irick’s death, experts said the drug midazolam did not render him unconscious before the other drugs began shutting his body down, as was intended. 

The doctor who reviewed Irick’s death said the execution caused great pain and feelings of “…drowning and burning alive.” U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor said, “Capital prisoners …are entitled to humane deaths. The longer we stand silent amid growing evidence of inhumanity in execution methods like Tennessee’s, the longer we extend our own complicity in state sponsored brutality.” 

Zagorski was the 134th person the state of Tennessee put to death since 1916, the second execution in Tennessee in 2018 and the first electrocution in that state since 2007. 

His last words were, “First of all I want to make it very clear I have no hard feelings…Let’s rock.”

Zagorski spent 34 years on Death Row.

John Dotson’s widow, Marsha Dotson, said, “I’ve come to realize that it’s not my place to condemn somebody, to let them die.” 

State v. Gregory ruled unconstitutional

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Abolition of the death penalty is likely in the near future, a constitutional law professor says.

“The American death penalty lurched one step closer to its eventual demise” because of a Washington State Supreme Court decision in October, Garrett Epps wrote in an article for The Atlantic.

“In State v. Gregory, the state court held that the death penalty, as imposed in the state of Washington, was unconstitutional because it was racially biased,” noted Epps, a faculty member at the University of Baltimore.

Epps pointed to a ruling from the Washington Supreme Court, which found in October 2018 that death penalty sentencing in that state was “…arbitrary and racist in its application.”. This ruling gives Epps hope the death penalty is moving to “…its eventual demise…”

The court’s decision was based on two studies which gave evidence that in Washington, “Black defendants were four and a half times more likely to be sentenced to death than similarly situated White defendants.”

“Washington’s death penalty is administered in an arbitrary and racially biased manner…”. This is a violation of the Washington State Constitution’s prohibition on “cruel punishment,” the court concluded. 

Epps said the U.S. Supreme Court’s management of capital punishment cases over the past half century to be “miserable.” 

It was 1972 when the U.S. Supreme Court placed a moratorium, (15 years), on death sentences in Georgia, finding that state’s capital punishment laws, “cruel and unusual,” in violation of the 8th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. 

The concern was that an argument could be made that Georgia’s judicial processes for capital crime could statistically be shown as “arbitrary or racially based,” said Epps. 

Further he wrote that in 1987 when McCleskey v Kemp came before the court, once more from Georgia, the criminal defense claimed a “dual operating system” was in play in that state which gave greater penalties for Black defendants compared to White. Handing out penalties based upon race is “a clear violation of the 8th Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment” and of the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of the equal protection of the law. Justice Powell cast the deciding 5-4 vote, writing for the majority in which the ruling went against McCleskey and his criminal defense. But years later, retired Justice Powell told his biographer he “…would change his vote in McCleskey…”

Amnesty International urges death penalty repeal

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“Two wrongs don’t make a right. The death penalty is no way to impart justice,” says Erika Guevara Rosas, Americas Director at Amnesty International.
In 2016, the US Supreme Court in Hurst v. Florida ruled that Florida’s capital sentencing law was unconstitutional. Yet, despite the ruling, Florida still has the second-largest death row in the nation and is fourth in the number of executions since 1976.
Amnesty International wants Florida to abolish their death penalty but it’s an uphill battle.
A new report released by Amnesty International, which focuses on three groups of death row inmates, shows that youth offenders and those with serious mental and intellectual disabilities are being taken advantage of by Florida’s capital sentencing laws.
The report calls into question the validity of executing those with serious mental illness, who are unfairly being labeled the “worst of the worst.” The report shows that prisoners with an intellectual disability, young adults with a mental maturity lower than that of an 18 year old, and those with a background of extreme deprivation and abuse, are at risk.

Amnesty’s goal is to convince Florida’s governor and his cabinet to commute the death sentences of all prisoners on death row.
Another problem the report reveals is how race influences who gets executed. Since 1976, not a single White person has been executed for killing a Black person. Whereas almost one fifth of the executions in this same time period involved Black defendants convicted of killing White victims.
Amnesty’s opposition to Florida’s death penalty is unconditional and absolute. Amnesty also wants Florida’s judges and juries to be made aware of a defendant’s mental health status and age before imposing the sentence of death.
Despite Amnesty’s urging, Florida remains a staunch believer in the death penalty. In response to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Florida’s legislation has revised its death penalty statute so executions could resume. In fact, Florida’s Supreme Court has even made the retroactive effect of Hurst only available to a limited group of cases,
cutting off almost half of the 400 people on Florida’s death row from a new sentencing hearing.
Mathew Marshall is one such person. He was 24 when he was convicted of murder in 1988. Although the jury unanimously voted to sentence him to life in prison, the judge overruled the decision and sentenced him to death. “The USA must stop resorting to the ultimate cru- el, inhuman and degrading punishment, and join the 142 countries that are abolitionist in law or practice today,” says Erika Guevara Rosas for Amnesty International.

Houses of Healing a self-study program for Death Row and the SHU

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Some of California’s most segregated prisoners are finding self-forgiveness and introspection through The Houses of Healing Self-study Program.

Death Row prisoners and those housed in segrated housing units (SHU) facilities are offered a 14-week correspondence course. San Quentin, Pelican Bay and Corcoran state prisons are among the facilities where the program is available.

“Through group sessions and independent work, prisoners learned how to deal constructively with conflict and hostility,” said Robin Casarjian, executive director of Lionheart Foundation and founder of the program.

“They learned ways to break lifelong patterns of dysfunction in order to find greater emotional balance, a sense of self-esteem, and the power to choose positive behavior,” she added.

More than 450 men have voluntarily registered for the course since 2017, she noted. As a part of the course, the segregated participants read the Houses of Healing: A prison- er’s Guide to Inner Power and Freedom by Casarjian herself.

The participants have to dedicate at least 30 minutes a day to do “self-work.” The work includes reading, writing and stress reduction exercises like meditation and relaxation. “Some women and men aren’t actively looking for emotional and spiritual healing, but when the guidance to do the work actually becomes available to them, they choose it,” wrote Casarjian in her book. “We can’t choose what we don’t yet know exists,” she added.

The book has “Pause and Reflect” lessons, where the participants are asked to think about their childhood, a time they felt guilt about a situation and what motivated that behavior.

There are exercises such as “A letter of Forgiving to Yourself” and “A Look into Your Future.” They receive new assignments once a week for the 14 weeks.

“The idea of prisoners for- giving themselves is as unacceptable to many as the actual commission of a crime,” Casarjian said. “Many people believe guilt and the threat of additional punishment are the driving forces that will stop future violence and criminal behavior.

“But history has shown us, this threat doesn’t work.” She noted that no matter how much shame and guilt a prisoner feels, recidivism rates are still high. It can also create low self-esteem in the prisoners and that can fuel violence.

She sees self-forgiveness as a deterrent to crime.

“Self-forgiving, like all healing, is a process—not a one-time event. It is not a superficial act of saying, ‘Yeah, I did such and such, now I’ll forgive myself.’ In many cases, true self-forgiving takes time, courage, and a depth of honest looking that not everyone is ready or willing to do,” Casarjian said.

The course requires the participant to have a fifth-grade reading level and a commitment to doing the internal work. At the end of the course, selected assignments are submitted and reviewed by Lionheart staff or volunteers. Then, a certificate of participation is issued and signed by Casarjian.

This Houses of Healing program is strictly for prisoners in segregated housing units. It’s in accordance with a new directive by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, meant to create and deliver rehabilitative programing to all prisoners.

The program is also available in Spanish and at other prisons across the nation.

To register for the program if you are in a segregated housing unit contact: The Lionheart Foundation HOH SS
P.O. Box 4145
Dedham, MA 02027

Inert gas asphyxiation the new method of execution

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Alabama lawmakers in March voted to authorize a method of execution that has never been used before—inert gas asphyxiation.
Lawmakers say this alternative method is a more humane way to carry out capital punishment. It works by directing the inmate to breathe inert gas as opposed to oxygen. Examples of such gases include helium, methane and nitrogen.
The Associated Press reported that inhaling nitrogen gas is “like dying on a plane that depressurizes in flight, swiftly killing all aboard.”
Perhaps that’s why 51 of Alabama’s 180 death row inmates have signed statements indicating their preference for that gas as opposed to a lethal injection or the electric chair.
Some may say this represents a leap into the unknown, but according to John Palombi, an attorney with the Federal Defenders Program, “the uncertain- ties of nitrogen gas” trump what he thinks is the “known torture” of other execution methods.
An example of such torture took place in 2016, when Ronald Smith Jr.’s attorney witnessed him coughing and heaving for more than 10 minutes in the gas chamber. Smith’s movement showed he was not anesthetized at any point during the agonizingly long procedure.
Others, however, believe the uncertainty behind such a new procedure may cause more harm.
“This is entirely experimental,” said Randall Marshall, the legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Alabama. “It is the epitome of cruel (and unusual punishment) because it is experimenting on human beings.”
State Senator Cam Ward said he believes some inmates agreed to nitrogen gas because of the foreseeable, lengthy legal challenges. He added that it could possibly be a way for prisoners to avoid the death penalty.
Ward also attributes the fact that inmates are opting for this alternative method of execution to fear. According to the Dorland’s Illustrated Medical Dictionary, lethal injections involve drugs that, if given incorrectly, can result in suffering “I think they’ve seen stories of where the three-drug cocktail lethal injection has failed and there’s that fear of it being a botched process as opposed to nitrogen,” Ward said.

The executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, Robert Dunham, said that he expects there will be considerable litigation regarding nitrogen asphyxiation. In Oklahoma, which announced in March that nitrogen gas would be the primary method of execution, officials have begun constructing a set of protocols to use the gas because there has been an issue of obtaining legal injection drugs.

In Mississippi the method has been approved, but only in the event that lethal injections have been ruled unconstitutional or are unavailable.
In Alabama, the most recent state to consider this alternative method, litigation over the state’s lethal injection method ended because inmates
chose the nitrogen gas process.
The lawsuit that challenged lethal injections was dismissed.

CA leads nation in women on Death Row

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Courtesy of CDCR

A female inmate sitting on the Death Row yard


California leads the nation with 23 women on Death Row, but the condemned women are largely invisible and forgotten behind bars, and their stories rarely see the light of day.
California has more than three times the number of condemned women in Texas (six on condemn) and in Alabama (five on condemn), according a Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) report.
The women on California’s Death Row are housed in Central California Women’s Facility (CCWF) in Chowchilla. Until 1933, they were housed in San Quentin in the Women’s Ward. They were relocated to California Institution for Women at Tehachapi, which opened that same year.
“There is far less conflict be- tween the women on Death Row than with men,” Linda Fox, a paralegal who recently retired from the California Appellate Project, told San Quentin News. “They look out for each other— they have a different sort of experience. They interact in a different way; it’s a different community.”
Fox worked with attorneys on death row cases and had the opportunity to visit the women.

“I think they are less iso- lated than the men, but they are isolated from the rest of the women population. It’s a prison within a prison,” Fox said. “I know men do a lot of bonding in prison; they make friends they would not make otherwise, but for the women, it’s like a family.”
According to a sergeant at CCWF, women on condemned row have access to hobby crafts, religious programs and to Adult Basic Education and the Voluntary Education Program (VEP). They can also take college courses via the mail.
Most women on Death Row are there because they killed a husband or hired someone to do it, or because they killed their children, Fox noted.
Catherine Thompson, whom Fox said she worked with, has been on Death Row since 1993.
“Cathy is probably 60 now.
Courtesy of CDCR

Housing unit for Death Row inmates


She’s African American; she has a son who is pretty successful; she’s a very articulate woman. She is college educated,” Fox said.
Thompson was convicted as the mastermind of her husband’s murder. But there was no direct evidence presented by prosecutors that proved her involvement, according to “Women on Death Row in California,” an article in ThoughtCo.com. But the jury found her guilty, and she was sentenced to death.
All her accomplices received lesser sentences, including the shooter, who was found guilty and received a life sentence.
“There’s a great sadness in your heart knowing you’re going to die and going to leave the people you love,” Maureen McDermott, the first woman in California to be sentenced to the death penalty since capital punishment was reinstated in 1978, told the Los Angeles Times back in 1992. “But I’m not afraid to die. If they want to murder me, let them murder me. My life is ruined anyway.”
At the age of 44, McDermott became the first woman condemned to death in California since its reinstitution in 1978. She is in now her seventies.
The last woman executed in California was Elizabeth Ann “Ma” Duncan, 58, on Aug. 8, 1962. She was convicted of hiring two people to murder her pregnant daughter-in-law. There have only been four women executed in California since 1893.
The Chowchilla prison, which was opened in 1990, converted a housing unit to hold 10 women on a top floor, and the bottom floor became a common area and an exercise area.
Since the increase in the number of women on California’s Death Row, the bottom floor now houses more women, and they have their own exercise yard.
“What kind of life is this?
Waking up every morning to a cement wall is an unbearable future,” said McDermott in the L.A. Times article. “I sometimes think the gas chamber is better than staring at these walls for the rest of my life.”
As of 2018, there were 55 women on death row in America. There have been 16 women executed since 1976 — two by electrocution, the rest by lethal injection, the DPIC report said.
Emma LeDoux holds the distinction of being the first woman ever sentenced to death in California in 1906. In 1907 she complained about her notoriety:
“It seems that it is not enough for people to crowd and block the streets to stare at me, as if I were some sort of a Fourth of July horrible. Now they must start these rumors,” LeDoux said. “In justice to myself, I’m glad you came.” But she avoided the hangman when she was granted a retrial after appealing her case. She was eventually released to parole in 1920 but wound up back in prison in 1931, where she died in 1941.

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