Speaker 1: Dear Governor is a production of I Heart Media and
Speaker 1: three Months Media. Dear Governor Newsom, Dear Mr Governor Newsom,
Speaker 1: this is an open letter to Governor Gavin Newsom, Dear
Speaker 1: Governor Newsom. After the California Supreme Court, here's a habeas
Speaker 1: corpus appeal for a capital crime. They have nine d
Speaker 1: days with which to file their opinion. We had already
Speaker 1: surpassed the nine week mark following Jarvis Master's appeal, so
Speaker 1: we knew the decision was impending, soon to be delivered
Speaker 1: to our inboxes. Anyone can stay apprized of ongoing Supreme
Speaker 1: Court cases by signing up at Courts dot c A
Speaker 1: dot gov. At the sixty six day mark, we all
Speaker 1: received an email with a subject line Supreme Court of
Speaker 1: California Case Notifications for s one three zero four nine five,
Speaker 1: the body of which read notice of forthcoming opinion to
Speaker 1: be filed in three days and three days later, twenty
Speaker 1: one days before their deadline, the eagerly anticipated email read
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court of California Opinion available online and then
Speaker 1: in parentheses concurrence. I lost the English unanimously. That heard
Speaker 1: it real bad, you know, but I mean just you know,
Speaker 1: sucked it up for a while. I did a lot
Speaker 1: of meditation and a lot of sitting in, a lot
Speaker 1: of thinking, and one thing I was very very confident
Speaker 1: in months out of this decision was that I will
Speaker 1: try to feel in the same place ready to accept
Speaker 1: whatever outcome that is. Jarvis's lawyers had filed his habeas
Speaker 1: petition in two thousand five. It took the California Supreme
Speaker 1: Court fourteen excruciatingly long years to address the petition and
Speaker 1: then sixty nine short days to reaffirm what they had
Speaker 1: already decided. Had the court moved with any sense of
Speaker 1: urgency or a bare minimum respect for the goal of
Speaker 1: a speedy trial, there's a possibility, however remote, it might
Speaker 1: have been, that Jarvis could have already moved through the
Speaker 1: Federal appeals, a far less politically fraught system, and inhaled
Speaker 1: the wonders of freedom. When I heard about the decision,
Speaker 1: my immediate reaction was I was crushed. I felt crushed
Speaker 1: to the ball. Yeah. I was hoping that no one
Speaker 1: asked me these questions about what it felt like, you know,
Speaker 1: because to me, it would have been like I was
Speaker 1: a specive than a subject card, uh, something to look
Speaker 1: at you. I any want to be that way mm hmmm.
Speaker 1: I described it as having just had your wisdom keeeth
Speaker 1: pulled out and someone's trying to hold a conversation with you.
Speaker 1: You know, it hurt it in that way. So that
Speaker 1: was my first you know, That's how I responded to it,
Speaker 1: and over the next ten fifteen hours, and so I
Speaker 1: had to straighten up, you know, I had to figure
Speaker 1: out how to straighten up off this, you know. And
Speaker 1: when it comes down to your freedom, epis so long,
Speaker 1: you really, deep down inside you know, want this. You
Speaker 1: want to win this. And they caught up to me
Speaker 1: that the idea of losing is one more long, long
Speaker 1: time of being in prison for zero, for nothing, and
Speaker 1: no one knew how. And I was saying this to myself,
Speaker 1: No one knows how long a day is. I'm fucking
Speaker 1: with someone that doesn't know what a day feels like,
Speaker 1: innocent on the death throw. They have no idea. Then
Speaker 1: they get upset because I'm upset. You know, what world
Speaker 1: are you guys living in? Concerns that were key in
Speaker 1: the two thousand five petition included, but we're not limited
Speaker 1: to prosecutorial misconduct. Newly discovered evidence and ineffective counsel. His
Speaker 1: appellate attorneys at the time wrote that his death sentence
Speaker 1: rested on evidence that the prosecution had known or should
Speaker 1: have known was quote inflammatory, unreliable, untrue, and or misleading.
Speaker 1: In so many words, I had now hold everybody up.
Speaker 1: I had now played the role of don't worry about this, okay,
Speaker 1: blah blah blah. You know that was just that was
Speaker 1: role playing because I knew no one would understand where
Speaker 1: I was really at. You know, silence for me was
Speaker 1: the biggest hug I could have gotten, just so like
Speaker 1: every time someone talked to me, I was able to
Speaker 1: call somebody I had. I had to explain people were
Speaker 1: calling you, but you felt like you had to comfort
Speaker 1: them all the time. It just feels like I was
Speaker 1: the strongest shoulder for people to lean on. And if
Speaker 1: I was fillion upset, they were phillips. So Mynes, who
Speaker 1: was not the shill upset because I knew it would
Speaker 1: create a lot of unhealthy ways for me personally. The
Speaker 1: star witness against Jarvis was a black guerrilla family member
Speaker 1: by the name of Rufus Willis, who testified under grant
Speaker 1: of immunity from prosecution at the trial that he had
Speaker 1: been in the prison yard when the b GF gang
Speaker 1: were planning the assassination of Officer Birchfield, where it was
Speaker 1: agreed he said that Jarvis would provide the tip of
Speaker 1: the spear. In the preliminary hearing, Rufus Willis described Jarvis
Speaker 1: as standing five seven, chubby, with a stomach, wearing glasses,
Speaker 1: clean shaven, and free of tattoos. Note in fact that
Speaker 1: Jarvis masters is six ft one, slender, didn't wear any glasses,
Speaker 1: had a mustache and goatee with a tattoo on his
Speaker 1: left cheek. An inmate named Harold Richardson, however, confessed to
Speaker 1: playing the role in the crime that Rufus had attributed
Speaker 1: to Jarvis, and fit the physical description Rufus had articulated
Speaker 1: to a t seems like a slam dunk for reasonable doubt.
Speaker 1: Right just have him testified before the jury. Not so fast.
Speaker 1: Harold Richardson refused to testify, citing his right against self incrimination.
Speaker 1: Jervis's council pleaded with the judge to grant immunity for prosecution,
Speaker 1: but for whatever reason, the judge refused. Jervis's council also
Speaker 1: pleaded with the judge to allow expert testimony regarding the
Speaker 1: unreliability of jail house informants, and for whatever reason, she
Speaker 1: refused that plea as well, do you feel like you're
Speaker 1: losing hope? You know what? And there you're talking about, Well,
Speaker 1: can you hear the Buddhist here? I'll I don't want
Speaker 1: to get into what hope post to do for me
Speaker 1: right now, you know, I don't. I don't think hope
Speaker 1: is gonna that's gonna help me resolve where I'm that.
Speaker 1: I just don't think hope is a necessary thing to
Speaker 1: have right now. I think it's really unhealthy. I think
Speaker 1: it has no real value to it. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that I'll be chasing something that you know, I don't
Speaker 1: know where it would go one way to other, and
Speaker 1: Hope is not going to be responsible for that. I
Speaker 1: would not let that be my response. I would not
Speaker 1: give Hope that responsibility. In other words, I really don't
Speaker 1: want to put hope o front street, you know so,
Speaker 1: I think that is a very very Buddhist way of saying,
Speaker 1: you know, hope is not an issue that you should
Speaker 1: put everything into. Okay, what do you want to put
Speaker 1: on street? If not hope? The idea of not expecting anything.
Speaker 1: Work with that? Why do I need to spend time
Speaker 1: trying to effect one outcome from the other. To not
Speaker 1: be that smart to know and to live in that
Speaker 1: space of unknown, not knowing. That's a very comfortable space
Speaker 1: if you can control it, if it can be maintained.
Speaker 1: How do you do that? Oh man, I don't really know.
Speaker 1: You know, I know what the practice is. I really
Speaker 1: don't know how to do that. I can give you
Speaker 1: the basic instruction, but I don't I don't know how
Speaker 1: it works. And that's what they call it. What a
Speaker 1: practice is. You get better at it, you discover more,
Speaker 1: it becomes more of a way of thinking. It supposed
Speaker 1: to create balance in your life. H Quit trying to
Speaker 1: tell yourself what you don't know. I mean, that's just
Speaker 1: the way I see it in prison. On me, I
Speaker 1: I cheech this kind of stuff to people. So I
Speaker 1: mean my way of saying it to a lot of
Speaker 1: guys in here is, you know, quick trying to tell
Speaker 1: you know yourself you know something. When you don't, all
Speaker 1: you're gonna do is fall asleep and want some bit
Speaker 1: once some timely lost because of it, leave it alone.
Speaker 1: Trying to be in the best place when it happened.
Speaker 1: So just be in the place of not knowing what
Speaker 1: you what you really don't suppost and know anything about,
Speaker 1: and be smart enough to think that you don't need
Speaker 1: to know what you're not gonna be told to you
Speaker 1: until it happens. Lawrence Woodard, the man who was accused
Speaker 1: of masterminding the murder of Sergeant Birchfield, was sentenced to
Speaker 1: life without possibility of parole. Andre Johnson, the man who
Speaker 1: was accused of a single stab wound that severed Sergeant
Speaker 1: Birchfield's pulmonary artery, was sentenced to life without the possibility
Speaker 1: of parole. Jarvis Masters, accused of manufacturing the tip of
Speaker 1: the spear, was sentenced to death after a penalty phase
Speaker 1: hearing at which a prisoner named Johnny Hose, a member
Speaker 1: of the Black Guerrilla Family, testified that Jarvis had bragged
Speaker 1: about murdering a San Quentin prisoner in nine four, though
Speaker 1: this case had never been adjudicated. Subsequent to the trials
Speaker 1: and sentencing, all three States witnesses Rufus Willis, Bobby Evans,
Speaker 1: and Johnny Hose have recanted and sworn statements saying that
Speaker 1: they had lied at the trial in hopes of obtaining
Speaker 1: favorable treatment for themselves. The rufus Willis statement also said
Speaker 1: that he had coerced Jarvis, out of fear for his
Speaker 1: own safety, to write the incriminating kites, which Masters copied
Speaker 1: from the writings of Willis and Woodard. Finally, Andre Johnson,
Speaker 1: Jarvis's co defendant convicted of actually stabbing Birchfield to death,
Speaker 1: provided a sworn statement saying that Masters had no role
Speaker 1: in the murder. Were you surprised when they came back
Speaker 1: with the death penalty? Yes, Jeffrey Rockline, lead defense counsel
Speaker 1: for Jarvis Masters from nineteen eighty six to nineteen Jarvis
Speaker 1: testified and he was very compelling, very believable, very likable,
Speaker 1: very human, very warm, sympathetic. You know, he told a
Speaker 1: story about his life that was, you know, really sad,
Speaker 1: very upsetting, and you know, he testified to the jury,
Speaker 1: I thought, in a very communicative way. And then we
Speaker 1: had other experts on the stand about you know, his background,
Speaker 1: Craig Haney was was excellent. So yeah, I was surprised
Speaker 1: that they came back with death, very very surprised. Do
Speaker 1: you remember talking to Jarvis about it after? Oh? Sure,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, how was that to him? Well, it was hard,
Speaker 1: So yeah, it was difficult thinking with him. But you know,
Speaker 1: he Jarvis is a is a tough, strong guy, you know,
Speaker 1: and he's a real fighter. And I really grew to
Speaker 1: like Jarvis, you know, and like him very much like
Speaker 1: him and feel for him and have sympathy for him
Speaker 1: and as as a human being, as a person who
Speaker 1: was able to actually pull himself out of you know,
Speaker 1: that whole gang prison culture and the criminal culture. Um.
Speaker 1: So I have a great deal of respect for him.
Speaker 1: And number one number two, there was so much evidence
Speaker 1: that was kept from us. Um, there's so much of
Speaker 1: the bad evidence that has flipped over, has reversed that.
Speaker 1: You know, if he were tried now, whether I would
Speaker 1: handle it or another defense lawyer would handle it, you know,
Speaker 1: they'd get an acquibble. I think there's this overwhelming reasonable
Speaker 1: doubt that Jarvis was was guilty of the crimes. That's
Speaker 1: what I feel. So I'm glad you're doing this work.
Speaker 1: It's very important. He should not be on death row.
Speaker 1: He shouldn't be in prison actually for this crime. You know,
Speaker 1: it's really a tragedy. Um, it really is. You know,
Speaker 1: it's really unfair. How do you hear the decision? Who
Speaker 1: told you? How did you find out? Art from at
Speaker 1: least a dozen people, you know, they were coming at
Speaker 1: me from all over the place, and what I noticed
Speaker 1: about most of them was they wanted a response. They
Speaker 1: wanted to know my first reaction, and they wanted to
Speaker 1: know it in a way that it's so really really
Speaker 1: sickening to me. It's almost like people are looking right
Speaker 1: down you, right down your throat and wanting to know
Speaker 1: what aposted to feel like, you know, how does it
Speaker 1: feel for that to happen? I'm sorry, but I really
Speaker 1: want to know how you're dealing with this. I wanted
Speaker 1: to look in your eyes and see something you know
Speaker 1: that that all, yeah, I can see, I mean that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. So I think what happened was I
Speaker 1: dealt with it by trying to fear show I was
Speaker 1: not defeated, you know, and I was ready to take
Speaker 1: it to the next level that it's not as bad
Speaker 1: as it was supposed to be. You know, the court
Speaker 1: basically preached us with some really good issues, and that
Speaker 1: was the issue by Blue and the other justice speak
Speaker 1: the two issues that really we can really really build
Speaker 1: on the two issues that Jarvis is referencing that may
Speaker 1: help as he navigates the federal appeals process. Written by
Speaker 1: California Supreme Court Justice Goodwin lou in his concurring opinion
Speaker 1: on Jarvis's habeas corpus petition, he writes, we have no
Speaker 1: occasion in this posture to consider whether, in light of
Speaker 1: the trial evidence, as well as the reference hearing and findings,
Speaker 1: we can be confident of the verdict beyond a reasonable
Speaker 1: doubt and to quote, nor do we have occasion here
Speaker 1: to consider whether, in light of all of the relevant circumstances,
Speaker 1: the fact that Masters was sentenced to death while his
Speaker 1: co defendants were not maybe indicative of arbitrary nous in
Speaker 1: the application of the death penalty. I had the last
Speaker 1: god I killed executed was on my watch with my
Speaker 1: client in two thousand and six. And that's another thing
Speaker 1: that makes me so sick death. I'll tell you when
Speaker 1: you have that kind of direct experience of it, as
Speaker 1: well as the experience of standing up there next to
Speaker 1: my client, Jarvis, and having the judge condemned him to death.
Speaker 1: Attorney Michael Satras sat second chair on Jarvis's defense team
Speaker 1: from nineteen through nineteen nine, and his death penalty sentence.
Speaker 1: I've always been against that penalty. I get a add
Speaker 1: taste in my mouth from it, and every experience that
Speaker 1: I have of it to me, just shows how wrong
Speaker 1: and arbitrary and capricious it is. And for Jarvis to
Speaker 1: end up with the death penalty when wood or jury
Speaker 1: hangs on the issue, which is the same jury we had.
Speaker 1: Woodard is the he's the true believer. If anybody is
Speaker 1: in participation in the gang, he is indisputably the leader
Speaker 1: of those three. So the jury hangs on him and
Speaker 1: then comes back with the death penalty for Jarvis. And
Speaker 1: then you have Johnson, the actual killer, who gets the
Speaker 1: death penalty by his jury, and the judge modifies it
Speaker 1: because it is kind of arbitrary. He's sort of a
Speaker 1: fall guy in some ways from Woodard and the higher
Speaker 1: ups picking him as as the good soldier who wants
Speaker 1: to make his bones and whatever to commit the killing.
Speaker 1: But he's kind of just this not very bright, innocent
Speaker 1: young man. And so the judge, to me, that was
Speaker 1: a very good move on her part. And then we
Speaker 1: come up for pronouncement of judgment, and by all rights,
Speaker 1: by all signs of justice and whatever should have been modified.
Speaker 1: In reference to the three States witnesses recanting their testimony,
Speaker 1: the California Supreme Court wrote that while Jarvis had demonstrated
Speaker 1: them to be generally liars, he does not offer any
Speaker 1: persuasive reason to credit their recantations over their trial testimony.
Speaker 1: In other words, we know that prison snitches are prison snitches.
Speaker 1: We know that prison snitches lie when it benefits them.
Speaker 1: We know that there was a chance that they were
Speaker 1: lying in the original trial, and there's an equal chance
Speaker 1: that they lied in their recantations, and because of that,
Speaker 1: we unanimously endorse the execution of a man because you know,
Speaker 1: we really don't know in this prison context. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: you're accurate in observing that these people, many of them,
Speaker 1: the snitches, are unreliable. They tell different stories. Jeffrey Rotwine,
Speaker 1: again lead defense counsel for Jarvis during his murder trial.
Speaker 1: We attacked Ruvius Willis. We attack you know, Johnny Hoes,
Speaker 1: Bobby Evans, the people that were, you know, cooperating with
Speaker 1: the government. And typically there's a whole history of cooperation,
Speaker 1: you know, and and and requests for leniency or money
Speaker 1: or reduction and sentences or dismissal of cases, and you
Speaker 1: have to kind rely on the institution, the district attorney
Speaker 1: and the you know, the prison and the Department of Corrections,
Speaker 1: you know, to disclose and and produce all the records
Speaker 1: and information varying on that person's character and background and
Speaker 1: motives for testifying. I asked Larry Marshall, a professor of
Speaker 1: law at Stanford who happens to be consulting on Jarvis's case.
Speaker 1: Now that the habeas corpus opinion has been rendered on
Speaker 1: the state level, what is next for Jarvis? So the
Speaker 1: next step, after one goes through the state system of
Speaker 1: the direct appeal and then the habeas is we give
Speaker 1: a defendant capital or otherwise the right to go into
Speaker 1: federal court. And two show that the state court was
Speaker 1: unreasonable in rejecting his or her ca institutional claims. So
Speaker 1: it's not enough to convince a federal judge that my
Speaker 1: rights have been violated and that I should have been
Speaker 1: given relief. You have to show, and this is since
Speaker 1: since the anti terrorism and effective death penalty app you
Speaker 1: have to show that the state court was reasonable, that
Speaker 1: it unreasonably applied settled law, Settled Supreme Court, United States
Speaker 1: Supreme Court precedent. So it's a very high burden. But
Speaker 1: on the other hand, it's a burden that has met
Speaker 1: at times in outrageous cases. And it also has to
Speaker 1: be the claims have to be federal constitutional claims, and
Speaker 1: this is a very This federal habeas is a very
Speaker 1: odd bird in the structure of our court system because
Speaker 1: it kind of puts it does put a federal district
Speaker 1: court judge and then a federal Court of Appeals in
Speaker 1: the role of reviewing the reasonableness of what the state
Speaker 1: supreme court has done. We don't do that in civil cases.
Speaker 1: And civil cases, if there's a federal issue, you go
Speaker 1: straight to the Supreme Court. You don't get to go
Speaker 1: into federal court and have a judge sort of second
Speaker 1: guess at some level what the state court has done.
Speaker 1: But again, because we do recognize that constitutional rights in
Speaker 1: the criminal setting are particularly cherished, we do provide we
Speaker 1: do provide this remedy. And just as an historical note,
Speaker 1: it was born in large part over the fact that,
Speaker 1: let's say, during reconstruction, a lot of states in the South,
Speaker 1: we're not respecting the constitutional rights of black defendants. Congress
Speaker 1: had a mechanism, they had those defendants had a mechanism
Speaker 1: of going into court um and saying to the federal
Speaker 1: court book, our constitutional rights are being violated, and there
Speaker 1: was a sense that the federal courts would be more
Speaker 1: independent and more willing to recognize those constitutional rights. I've
Speaker 1: told Jarvis that I will work very hard to help
Speaker 1: put together a terrific team of the lawyers pro bono
Speaker 1: lawyers who will take on his representation in federal court.
Speaker 1: That I will be more than willing to consult with
Speaker 1: those lawyers as they as they as they work through
Speaker 1: the case and to the you know, part of the
Speaker 1: team in that sense, um, in an informal in an
Speaker 1: informal way, but I do believe they play that he
Speaker 1: needs to get some lawyers who are both passionate and
Speaker 1: brilliant and and very eager to get involved in a
Speaker 1: in an injustice like this. I asked Larry what he
Speaker 1: believes that we as a society oh to those who
Speaker 1: have languished on death row and in prison in general,
Speaker 1: only to be found innocent years, if not decades later
Speaker 1: after their incarceration. I believe that and this might sound corny, um,
Speaker 1: which I guess is appropriate, but I'm pumped there you go.
Speaker 1: I I believe that the main thing we owe them
Speaker 1: is to learn from our mistakes. Is the main thing
Speaker 1: we owe them is that their pain have not been
Speaker 1: in vain and that um other people will not suffer
Speaker 1: because of what they went through and what we've learned. Now,
Speaker 1: that's not all that we were. We owe them, We
Speaker 1: owe them, we need to make them whole as best
Speaker 1: we can really can't. Part of the way we do
Speaker 1: that is through money, uh, and judgments and the ability
Speaker 1: to try to rebuild or build a life. Um and
Speaker 1: I think those are vital as well. But it does
Speaker 1: seem to me as a society that if we go
Speaker 1: through that with an individual, we learned that the individual
Speaker 1: was wrongly convicted, and then we nonetheless just go back
Speaker 1: to business as usual. That is just this massive slap
Speaker 1: in the face to the person who has been exonerated
Speaker 1: and two people coming down the pike. The late Geronimo
Speaker 1: Pratt served two tours in Vietnam, where he earned two
Speaker 1: bronze stars, a silver star, and two purple stars. When
Speaker 1: he returned to the States, he became a high ranking
Speaker 1: member of the Black Panther Party and was eventually imprisoned
Speaker 1: in San Quentin for twenty seven years for a murder
Speaker 1: he did not commit, and was awarded four point five
Speaker 1: million dollars from federal and local governments as settlement in
Speaker 1: a wrongful imprisonment suit. Here we have Geronimo on tape
Speaker 1: decades ago bearing witness to his friend Jarvis J. Masters,
Speaker 1: at the launch party for Jarvis's first book, Finding Freedom,
Speaker 1: Writings from Death Row. Hey, UM, met Jarvis Masters in
Speaker 1: prison while we were in the hole in San Quentin's
Speaker 1: adjustment center, shortly after he was charged with the murder
Speaker 1: of Sergeant Burstville. No, I should say, wrongfully charge. And um,
Speaker 1: he's a very beautiful brother. I kind of two did
Speaker 1: like I do with Uh. I did, but most youngsters
Speaker 1: kind of took him under my way for a minute
Speaker 1: the brief time we were together, and uh I noticed
Speaker 1: that specialness about him that made him stand apart from
Speaker 1: most youngsters his age. And uh later on when I
Speaker 1: learned that he had written a book and that he
Speaker 1: had continued just practices and to his disciplines that we
Speaker 1: had been trying to promote as older prisoners, and I
Speaker 1: was very proud of that. And then when I got
Speaker 1: the book and read it, and I knew he was there,
Speaker 1: and so uh, even though he sits on death row
Speaker 1: and facing death, I was also up there for eighteen months,
Speaker 1: but I was not facing officially the death. I know
Speaker 1: what it's like. But now that I know, he has
Speaker 1: reached this nirvana at this level, and I'm sure that
Speaker 1: the Jarvis is this in a safe place, even though
Speaker 1: he still physically needs our help to get him off
Speaker 1: of death row. And hopefully through these methods and channels
Speaker 1: now we'll we'll be able to generate enough support, enough
Speaker 1: funds or whatever to effect his release from uh the gallows.
Speaker 1: And I want to encourage all of you to get
Speaker 1: this book. Read it. You will find a lot of
Speaker 1: knowledge and a lot of freedom in this book. And
Speaker 1: it might sounds fames that you will find freedom from
Speaker 1: a guy locked up, but take my word from it.
Speaker 1: Read this book. You will find a lot of freedom.
Speaker 1: Where do we find our freedom? I describe situations where
Speaker 1: someone has a very very beautiful home or two door
Speaker 1: garage right off the beach, great job, a trained dog,
Speaker 1: and how their lives are so miserable. At the same time,
Speaker 1: their life is so miserable, and every time they pull
Speaker 1: out the parking lot, they don't. There's a stretch of
Speaker 1: beach that they never get to see going to work
Speaker 1: and coming back, and to think that you have all
Speaker 1: these proper tilities two find your own freedom, to be blessed,
Speaker 1: to be fortunate to not have that, but always with
Speaker 1: a sense of being on death row is doesn't have
Speaker 1: to be in prison, you know you can't. Don't do that.
Speaker 1: Don't learn just from people in prison on death row
Speaker 1: in San Quentin. We'll learn from the misery that you
Speaker 1: see other people have when they when they're alcoholics, when
Speaker 1: they are dope finds are very abusive to their spouse,
Speaker 1: where Vinus is right in the next door, not necessary
Speaker 1: on the streets. You know, just because you're out doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that they're free. That's a myth. That's a very
Speaker 1: very clear myth to me. And I learned that they
Speaker 1: beat me in the Buddhist I really did that. There's
Speaker 1: something that I can directly relate to. Having exhausted his
Speaker 1: state appeals, Jarvis now heads to the federal courts. Brian
Speaker 1: Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative introduced Jarvis to Stanford
Speaker 1: professor Larry Marshall, who in turn introduced Jarvis to the
Speaker 1: prestigious international law firm Kirkland and Ellis. They have recently
Speaker 1: committed to represent Jarvis pro bono and his federal habeas
Speaker 1: proceedings and other post conviction proceedings. His lead attorney, William F. Williams, said,
Speaker 1: after decades of litigation in the California state courts, we
Speaker 1: now have the opportunity to raise in federal courts the
Speaker 1: serious constitutional issues that deprived Jarvis of a fair trial,
Speaker 1: and we look forward to presenting his claims to a
Speaker 1: federal judge. We will continue to support Jarvis and help
Speaker 1: tell his story far and wide as the riveting details unfold,
Speaker 1: and we remain optimistic that Governor Gavin Newsom will hear
Speaker 1: our open letter and revisit the unjust case of Jarvis
Speaker 1: j Masters. The vast majority of legal insights into Jarvis's
Speaker 1: substantial claims of innocence were published in the article Unrequited
Speaker 1: Innocence in US Capital Cases Unintended Consequences of the Fourth
Speaker 1: Kind by Rob Warden and John Seasley, published in the
Speaker 1: Northwestern Journal of Law and Social Policy in the spring
Speaker 1: of twenty nineteen. Not only does this fascinating read profile
Speaker 1: Jarvis's case, but the cases involving twenty four more condemned
Speaker 1: men and women whom the authors believed to be innocent
Speaker 1: as well. We linked to the article in our show notes.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Alan Sinaki for providing legal insights into
Speaker 1: Jarvis's case as well. Today's episode was written and produced
Speaker 1: by Donna Fazzari and myself, Corny Cole. Our theme song
Speaker 1: sentenced is compliments of the band's stick figure from their
Speaker 1: albums Set in Stone. Stu Sternbach has composed the original music.
Speaker 1: Nate Defort did the sound design. Visit free Jarvis dot
Speaker 1: org to find out more about Jarvis's case and to
Speaker 1: sign your name to our dear Governor Newsom petition. And
Speaker 1: if you have questions for Jarvis, please leave a message
Speaker 1: on our hotline at two zero one nine zero three
Speaker 1: thirty five seventy five. That's two zero one nine zero
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