2005
Twenty male inmates in a Kentucky prison form an unlikely Shakespearean acting troupe.
93 min
CLEAR ALL
Incarcerated in San Quentin at the age of 19 for armed robbery, Jarvis Masters was accused four years later of participating in a conspiracy that resulted in the death of a prison guard.
Jarvis Jay Masters’s early life was a horror story whose outline we know too well. Born in Long Beach, California, his house was filled with crack, alcohol, physical abuse, and men who paid his mother for sex.
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Jarvis Jay Masters has spent almost 30 years on death row for a crime many think he did not commit. Rebecca Solnit celebrated his 56th birthday with Masters as he seeks freedom through meditation until the day his conviction is overturned.
Jarvis Jay Masters has taken an extraordinary journey of faith. Strangely enough, his moment of enlightenment came behind the bars of San Quentin's death row.
There are many forms of liberation—some that exist at the mercy of circumstance and others that can never be taken away.
Like a lot of people with newfound interest in Buddhist meditation, Jarvis Jay Masters struggled at first to sit still and quiet his mind.
In September 2019, Jarvis Jay Masters exhausted his final state appeal. The Buddhist author and death-row inmate at San Quentin had a hearing before the California Supreme Court in Los Angeles and did not prevail in getting the California appeals court to re-examine his case.