Dear Governor

Since his final state appeal at the end of last season, a stellar team of attorneys has assembled around Jarvis Masters, pledging to represent his death penalty case at federal level. We will follow his riveting case and meet some of those experts as they work to help Jarvis find freedom after over forty years of incarceration. And we will dig deeper into facets of Jarvis’s life as well as the deeply flawed criminal justice system. 

If you’d like to support Jarvis Masters’s cause, please considering signing a petition on his behalf at www.freejarvis.org 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Due to the coronavirus, all phone communications in and out of San Quentin have been cut off. Like a wildfire, covid-19 has devastated the prison. The last we heard from Jarvis Masters he had been ravaged by the virus. It is unconscionable that family members and friends have no idea how their loved ones are faring on the inside. Dear Governor Newsom, Jarvis has a solution. On behalf of Jarvis, Actor Dion Graham voices his plea.

Last week Shambhala Publications released Jarvis’s latest autobiographical book, FINDING FREEDOM: HOW DEATH ROW BROKE AND OPENED MY HEART. Also available at Audible.

Jarvis’s op-ed, “Letting prisoners use cellphones makes sense – now more than ever.”

Theme song SENTENCED, is complements of the band Stick Figure, from their album “Set In Stone.”

Have a question for Jarvis that you’d like to hear him answer on the podcast, please leave a message on our hotline: 201-903-3575 or, [email protected]

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This verdict is in. And despite all of the compelling new evidence that bolsters Jarvis’s innocence, the California Supreme Court chose confirm his death sentence. You will hear Jarvis’s reaction to the courts decision, and what this means for the future of his life. The vast majority of the legal insights into Jarvis’s substantial claims of innocence were published in the article: “Unrequited Innocence in U.S. Capital Cases: Unintended Consequences of the Fourth Kind” by Rob Warden and John Seasly

The late Geronimo Pratt was imprisoned at San Quentin for 27 years for a murder he did not commit and awarded 4.5 Million Dollars from federal and local governments as settlement in a wrongful-imprisonment suit. While at San Quentin, he befriended Jarvis. 

Hear him bearing witness to his young friend, at the launch party for Jarvis’s first book, “Finding Freedom, Writings from Death Row.”

Theme song SENTENCED, is complements of the band Stick Figure, from their album “Set In Stone.”

Have a question for Jarvis that you’d like to hear him answer on the podcast, please leave a message on our hotline: 201-903-3575 or, [email protected]

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Jarvis was charged with the conspiracy to commit murder back in 1985, and was sentenced to death in June of 1990. Find out why Jarvis, who never stabbed the corrections officer was sentenced to death, while two others involved in the murder, for whom there was much more damning evidence, were sentenced to life without parole. Hear about his case, and learn about the notorious prison snitches who testified on behalf of the state to implicate Jarvis to the murder.

Hear Jarvis’s haunting a PEN Award winning poem, “Recipe for Prison Pruno,” which intertwines his death sentence with his now famous recipe for prison hooch.

Theme song SENTENCED, is complements of the band Stick Figure, from their album “Set In Stone.”

Have a question for Jarvis that you’d like to hear him answer on the podcast, please leave a message on our hotline: 201-903-3575 or, [email protected]

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode we will hear details of the bloody murder of a corrections officer, the crime that landed Jarvis Masters on death row. You will hear Jarvis’s recollections of that fated night, along with the memories of the Head Warden who was in charge, and one of the attorneys that represented Jarvis at the murder trial in the late 1980’s. You will also learn the mind-blowing way in which Jarvis first learned that he was implicated in the conspiracy to commit murder.

Meet Michael Satris, a defense attorney that sat second chair on Jarvis’s murder trial and believes it a travesty that Jarvis is still in prison, much less on death row.

Theme song SENTENCED, is complements of the band Stick Figure, from their album “Set In Stone.”

Have a question for Jarvis that you’d like to hear him answer on the podcast, please leave a message on our hotline: 201-903-3575 or, [email protected]

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For obvious reasons, Jarvis has a very personal take on the morality and ethics of capital punishment. Having been an inmate at San Quentin for 40 years, he has personally known men who have been executed. He has counseled fellow inmates who suffer from great depression, as they face their own mortality daily. And, he believes that if people on the outside knew that there were innocent people on death row, they could not in good conscience allow the government to execute them. You will also hear from the lead executioner who was in charge the day of the murder in which Jarvis was implicated.

Meet Pema Chodron, beloved Buddhist teacher, author and nun, who has been Jarvis’s spiritual advisor for over two decades.

Theme song SENTENCED, is complements of the band Stick Figure, from their album “Set In Stone.”

Have a question for Jarvis that you’d like to hear him answer on the podcast, please leave a message on our hotline: 201-903-3575 or, [email protected]

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

To share in the sorrow, and join in solidarity with the families of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Brianna Taylor, and so many more families of color who have lost loved ones for absolutely no reason; to show respect to the hundreds of thousands of courageous individuals across the country protesting the injustice and brutality; and to use our voices to echo the self-evident truth that BLACK LIVES MATTER, this week, “Dear Governor,” is disrupting our regular feed in order to participate in the #PodcastBlackOut. Death row inmate, Jarvis J. Masters weighs in on the loss of George Floyd, the civil unrest, and the vitality of the Black Lives Matter movement. And we share the stories of so many men of color who were sentenced to death, only to be found innocent after decades in prison.

Theme song SENTENCED, is complements of the band Stick Figure, from their album “Set In Stone.”

Have a question for Jarvis that you’d like to hear him answer on the podcast, please leave a message on our hotline: 201-903-3575 or, [email protected]

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The juvenile justice system taught Jarvis how to fight, and while still a boy, defined for him what it meant to be a man, fierce, angry and proud. There were times when he tried to rise above and escape the cradle to prison pipeline, but the gravitational pull was too strong to resist. Excerpting sections of his memoir, “That Bird Has My Wings: The Autobiography of an Innocent Man on Death Row,” we will hear how Jarvis had to fight to survive, and about the “damn fool behavior,” he admits initially put him in prison at the ripe young age of 19.

Meet Marty Krasney, a decades long friend and confidante of Jarvis and the former Executive Director of Dalai Lama Fellows.

Theme song SENTENCED, is complements of the band Stick Figure, from their album “Set In Stone.”

Have a question for Jarvis that you’d like to hear him answer on the podcast, please leave a message on our hotline: 201-903-3575 or, [email protected]

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Though only 6.5 percent of Californians are black, African Americans make up 29 percent of the prison population and 36 percent of those condemned to death. Jarvis was born into poverty and abuse so extreme, he shot past the “cradle to prison pipeline,” straight to the “cradle to death row pipeline.” Enlil McRae, from the Truthworker Theatre Company, reads passages from Jarvis’s memoir, “That Bird Has My Wings: The Autobiography of an Innocent Man on Death Row,” You will learn about Jarvis’s formative years, his struggles to survive and the foster parents who imprinted on him the meaning of love.

Meet David Sheff, author of a new biography on Jarvis, “The Buddhist on Death Row: How One Man Found Light in the Darkest Place.” David has spent the last several years visiting with Jarvis, and has amassed hundreds of hours of interviews with him, and those people who had the greatest impact on Jarvis’s life. David is also the author of the memoir, “Beautiful Boy: A Father’s Journey Through His Son’s Addiction.”

Theme song SENTENCED, is complements of the band Stick Figure, from their album “Set In Stone.”

Have a question for Jarvis that you’d like to hear him answer on the podcast, please leave a message on our hotline: 201-903-3575 or, [email protected]

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Host, Corny Koehl, attends the oral arguments for Jarvis Master’s final state appeal before the California Supreme Court. His writ of Habeas Corpus was filed back in 2005, and Jarvis has been languishing in wait all this time. As his appellate attorneys present new evidence that bolsters Jarvis’s claims of innocence, will the Court decide to exonerate him or confirm his sentence to death?

Meet Connie Pham, an outspoken advocate for Jarvis. As a 15 year old student, she was so moved by Jarvis’s first book, “Finding Freedom: Writings from Death Row,” that she wrote to him behind bars, and they’ve maintained a close friendship ever since. 

Theme song SENTENCED, is complements of the band Stick Figure, from their album “Set In Stone.”

Have a question for Jarvis that you’d like to hear him answer on the podcast, please leave a message on our hotline: 201-903-3575 or, [email protected]

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.