Three weeks ago, at 6pm on a Friday night, we all waited by the phone. The call was supposed to come around then, but by 6:15 it hadn’t. By 6:20 I was certain. By 6:35,…
On July 8th, nearly 30,000 prisoners locked up inside 24 of California’s 34 prisons began a hunger strike to protest conditions in the state’s Security Housing Units. For the next two weeks, the California Department…
In a few hours I’ll get on a red-eye and take some sort of pill that will help me sleep so I can wake up bright eyed for the first day of the Public Radio…
Justin Helzer died Sunday night, April 14th. He committed suicide inside his cell on San Quentin’s Death Row (the cell in this photo). If you look closely you can see him sitting on his bunk,…
What do we really know about death row in California? When we don’t know we create, we imagine.
In California, there is one place where people considered to be the most dangerous inmates are incarcerated, it’s called the Security Housing Unit at Pelican Bay State Prison. Life of the Law Executive Producer, Nancy Mullane, pushes for access to this prison’s most restricted cells and to the people who are living inside them.
In California, there are hundreds if not thousands of people practicing criminal law though they’ve never passed a bar exam. They don’t wear suits. They don’t have secretaries. And they can’t bill for their time. They’re called Jailhouse Lawyers. They’re inmates who pursue the equivalent of a lawyer’s education and who work as lawyers from within prison walls.