"Thou Shalt Not Murder"

I just read one of Dee's articles that published the last words of several inmates who were murdered by Texas last year.
The way I see things there are several types of murder; hot-blooded, cold-blooded and many in-between types. I'll give here just one example of what I mean by in-between; a man who, in a domestically violent incident may often threaten to kill his woman and then later on, perhaps months or years later does so. For years or so prior he may threaten to kill her.
When he does eventually kill her it can be seen to be done in hot-blood. To express his frustration with her he one day steps right over that line and does kill her. And when he was in his 'rage space' he vehemently felt that she deserved it or even 'asked for it'. In other words his mind was primed to the possibility of murdering her (cold blood) but the murder itself was committed when he was in a rage (hot blood).

'Vengeance is Mine Sayeth the Lord" and I think there are many prisoners in my part of the world who, when they hear this saying will think of me.
I do not believe that murdering prison inmates by the imposition of a Death Penalty can be argued to be anything other than cold-blooded murder albeit by the State. Any Body or person who claims to be acting on behalf of a Higher Power surely has a great deal to answer for.
Nor do I believe in 'taking sides'; the world is a grey place and is only black and white in the minds of those people who need things to be simple and who also often need excuses to treat others in ways other than they would like to be treated themselves. Every one of us on this Earth has 'got their own story', which is the answer I would give prisoners who asked me such things as, "How can you talk to those f******* rock spiders"*, etc.

Anyways I came here to talk about Jarvis Masters., a prisoner of San Quentin's Death Row who wrote one of the weightiest books I've ever read. His book is written in parable form.
I used it often in my prison work. In fact people who read my copy would sign their autographs in the back.
His writings had a very big impact on many of the prisoners I came into contact with.

I haven't sought permission to quote anything from this book but I would dearly love to. Suffice to say that I would add it to everyone's must-read list if I could. To report it secondhand would be to do injustice to this man's great eloquence.
However the site does contain a couple of excerpts, one that I reprint here;

SCARS

I remember the first time I really noticed the scars on the bodies of my fellow prisoners. I was outside on a maximum-custody exercise yard. I stood along the fence, praising the air the yard gave my lungs that my prison cell didn't. I wasn't in a rush to pick up a basketball or do anything. I just stood in my own silence.

I looked at the other prisoners, playing basketball or handball, showering, talking to one another. I saw the inmates I felt closest to, John, Pete, and David, lifting weights. I noticed the amazing similarity of the whip like scars on their bare skin, shining with sweat from pumping iron in the hot sun.

A deep sadness came over me as I watched these powerful men lift hundreds of pounds of weights over their heads. I looked around the yard and made the gruesome discovery that everyone else had the same deep gashes-behind their legs, on their backs, all over their ribs-evidence of the violence in our lives.

Here were America's lost children-surviving in rage and in refuge from society. I was certain that many of their crimes could be traced to the horrible violence done to them as children.

The histories of all of us in San Quentin were so similar it was as if we had the same parents. Though I was a trusted comrade of most of these inmates, and to a few of them I was their only family, normally I wouldn't dare intrude on their private pain. Even so, I made up my mind that I would bring John, Pete, and David together to talk about their scars. These men had probably never spoken openly of their terrible childhood experiences. I doubted that any of them would ever have used the word "abuse." They looked hardened to the core, standing around the weight-lifting bench, proud of their bodies and the images they projected.

It occurred to me, as I approached them, that such a posture of pride symbolized the battles they had "made their bones" with. This was prison talk for "proved their manhood." At one time I had been hardened as well and had made my own denials. The difficulty I would have in speaking with them would be interpreting the prison language we all used when talking about our pasts. Shucking and jiving was the way we covered up sensitive matters.

John was a twenty-eight-year-old bulky man serving twenty-five to life for murder. I had met him when we were both in youth homes in southern California. We were only eleven years old. Throughout the years, we traveled together through the juvenile system until the penitentiary became our final stop.

When I asked him about the scars on his face he said, "They came from kickin' ass and, in the process, getting my ass kicked, which was rare."

John explained that his father had loved him enough to teach him how to fight when he was only five years old. He learned from the beatings he got. In a sense, he said, he grew up with a loving fear of his father. He pointed to a nasty scar on his upper shoulder. Laughing, he told us that his father had hit him with a steel rod when John tried to protect his mother from being beaten.

Most of us had seen this scar but had never had the nerve to ask about it. As we stared at it, John seemed ashamed. Avoiding our eyes, he mumbled a few words before showing us his many other scars. He could remember every detail surrounding the violent events that had produced them. I realized that these experiences haunted him. Yet as he went on talking, he became increasingly rational. He had spent more than half his life in one institutional setting or another, and as a result he projected a very cold and fearsome, almost boastful smile. He wanted nothing of what he shared with us to be interpreted, even remotely, as child abuse.

This was especially apparent when he showed us a gash on his back that was partially hidden by a dragon tattoo. It was a hideous scar-something I would have imagined finding on a slave who had been whipped. John motioned me closer and said, "Rub your finger down the dragon's spine." I felt what seemed like thick, tight string that moved like a worm beneath his skin.

"Damn, John, what in the hell happened to you?" I asked.

There was something in the way I questioned him that made John laugh, and the others joined in. He explained that when he was nine his father chased him with a cord. John ran under a bed, grabbed the springs, and held on as his father pulled him by the legs, striking his back repeatedly with the cord until he fell unconscious. He woke up later with a deep flesh wound. John, smiling coldly, joked that that was the last time he ever ran from his father.

David and Pete recounted similar childhood experiences. Their stories said much about how all of us had come to be in one of the worst prisons in the country. Most prisoners who were abused as children were taken from their natural parents at a very early age and placed in foster homes, youth homes, or juvenile halls for protection, where they acquired even more scars. Later in their lives prisons provided the same kind of painful refuge. It is terrifying to realize that a large percentage of prisoners will eventually reenter society, father children, and perpetuate what happened to them.

Throughout my many years of institutionalization, I, like so many of these men, unconsciously took refuge behind prison walls. Not until I read a series of books for adults who had been abused as children did I become committed to the process of examining my own childhood. I began to unravel the reasons I had always just expected to go from one youth institution to the next. I never really tried to stay out of these places, and neither did my friends.

That day I spoke openly to my friends about my physical and mental abuse as a child. I told them that I had been neglected and then abandoned by my parents, heroin addicts, when I was very young. I was beaten and whipped by my stepfather. My mother left me and my sisters alone for days with our newborn twin brother and sister when I was only four years old. The baby boy died a crib death, and I always believed it was my fault, since I had been made responsible for him. I spoke to them of the pain I had carried through more than a dozen institutions, pain I could never face. And I explained how all of these events ultimately trapped me in a pattern of lashing out against everything.

But these men could not think of their own experiences as abuse. What I had told them seemed to sadden them, perhaps because I had embraced a hidden truth that they could not. They avoided making the connection between my experiences and theirs. It was as if they felt I had suffered more than they. That wasn't true. What they heard was their own unspoken words.

Eventually, we all fell silent around the weight-lifting bench, staring across the yard at the other men exercising.

John and I spoke again privately later. "You know something?" he said. "The day I got used to getting beaten by my father and by the counselors in all those group homes was the day I knew nothing would ever hurt me again. Everything I thought could hurt me I saw as a game. I had nothing to lose and just about everything to gain. A prison cell will always be here for me."

John was speaking for most of the men I had met in prison. Secretly, we like it here. This place welcomes a man who is full of rage and violence. He is not abnormal here, not different. Prison life is an extension of his inner life.

Finally, I confided to John that I wished I had been with my mother when she died.

"Hey, didn't you say she neglected you?" he asked.

John was right, she had neglected me, but am I to neglect myself as well by denying that I wished I'd been with her when she died, that I still love her?

Taken from (http://www.freejarvis.org/book/book_2.html) 12^th May 2008.

Please go check out the website and his writings. And if I may implore you to take up one of the options on the site which is to, "buy a copy to send to an inmate" may I assure you it will probably be widely read and shared amongst them and rest assured that you will have 'lived amongst sinners' for yet another day.

PS - I note that I didn't discuss here the incidences where I think murder may be justified. This will follow in another article.

*Rock spider is prison talk for pedophiles and sex offenders. The lowest of the low.