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Damien Echols: Innocent on Death Row—How I Survived 18 Years | Big Think

By Damien Echols — 2018

Damien Echols was a member of the West Memphis Three, a group of young men who were wrongfully convicted of murdering three children. He served nearly 20 years on death row before being exonerated and released. See more...

12:07 min

Another Birthday on Death Row

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.

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The Buddhist on Death Row: How One Man Found Light in the Darkest Place

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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Finding Freedom: Writings from Death Row

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.

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That Bird Has My Wings: The Autobiography of an Innocent Man on Death Row

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.

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David Sheff Follows the Buddhist Journey of a San Quentin Inmate in Latest Book

Like a lot of people with newfound interest in Buddhist meditation, Jarvis Jay Masters struggled at first to sit still and quiet his mind.

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Innocence Lost

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.

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Incarceration