[PDF] From Death Row To Freedom eBook

Author : Jarvis Jay Masters
Publisher : Shambhala Publications
Page : 171 pages
File Size : 14,77 MB
Release : 2020-07-14
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 1611809118

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There are many forms of liberation—some that exist at the mercy of circumstance and others that can never be taken away. In this stirring and timely collection of stories, essays, poems, and letters, Jarvis Jay Masters explores the meaning of true freedom on his road to inner peace through Buddhist practice. He reveals his life as a young African American man surrounded by violence, his entanglement in the criminal justice system, and—following an encounter with Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche—an unfolding commitment to nonviolence and peacemaking. At turns joyful, heartbreaking, frightening, and soaring with profound insight, Masters’s story offers a vision of hope and the possibility of freedom in even the darkest of times.

Author : John Hollway
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 496 pages
File Size : 18,38 MB
Release : 2010-05-18
Category : True Crime
ISBN : 1626369143

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In 1984, John Thompson was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of a prominent white man in New Orleans, Louisiana. He was sent to Angola Prison and confined to his cell for twenty-three hours a day. However, Thompson adamantly proclaimed his innocence and just needed lawyers who believed that his trial had been mishandled and would step up to the plate against the powerful DA’s office. But who would fight for Thompson’s innocence when he didn’t have an alibi for the night of the murder and there were two key witnesses to confirm his guilt? Killing Time is about the eighteen-year quest for Thompson’s freedom from a wrongful murder conviction. After Philadelphia lawyers Michael Banks and Gordon Cooney take on his case, they struggle to find areas of misconduct in his previous trials while grappling with their questions about Thompson’s innocence. John Hollway and Ronald M. Gauthier have interviewed Thompson and the lawyers, and paint a realistic and compelling portrait of life on death row and the corruption in the Louisiana police and DA’s office. When it is found that evidence was mishandled in a previous trial that led to his death sentence in the murder case, Thompson is finally on his road to freedom—a journey that continues with his suit against Harry Connick, Sr. and the New Orleans DA’s office to this day.

Author : Anthony Ray Hinton
Publisher : St. Martin's Press
Page : 270 pages
File Size : 43,28 MB
Release : 2018-03-27
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 1250124719

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"A powerful, revealing story of hope, love, justice, and the power of reading by a man who spent thirty years on death row for a crime he didn't commit"--

Author : John Hollway
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 504 pages
File Size : 30,25 MB
Release : 2013-06-01
Category : True Crime
ISBN : 1626364559

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In 1984, John Thompson was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of a white man in New Orleans, Louisiana. He was sent to Angola prison and confined to his cell twenty-three hours a day. However, Thompson adamantly proclaimed his innocence and just needed lawyers who believed that his trial had been mishandled and who would step up to the plate against the powerful DA's office. But who would fight for Thompson's innocence when he didn't have an alibi for the night of the murder and there were two key witnesses to confirm his guilt? Killing Time is about the eighteen-year quest for John Thompson's freedom from a wrongful murder conviction. After Philadelphia lawyers Michael Banks and Gordon Cooney take on his case, they struggle to find areas of misconduct in his previous trials while grappling with their questions about Thompson's innocence. John Hollway and Ronald M. Gauthier have interviewed Thompson and the lawyers regarding the case and paint a realistic and compelling portrait of life on death row and the corruption in the Louisiana police and DA's office. When it is found that evidence was mishandled in a previous trial that led to his death sentence in the murder case, Thompson is finally on his road to freedom—a journey that continues to this day. Complete with an updated afterword describing Thompson's 2011 civil suit against Harry Connick Sr. and the New Orleans DA's office and the Supreme Court's shocking verdict.

Author : Phillip A. Hubbart
Publisher : University Press of Florida
Page : 347 pages
File Size : 50,5 MB
Release : 2023-06-13
Category : History
ISBN : 0813072832

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An insider’s account of a wrongful conviction and the fight to overturn it during the civil rights era This book is an insider’s account of the case of Freddie Pitts and Wilbert Lee, two Black men who were wrongfully charged and convicted of the murder of two white gas station attendants in Port St. Joe, Florida, in 1963, and sentenced to death. Phillip Hubbart, a defense lawyer for Pitts and Lee for more than 10 years, examines the crime, the trial, and the appeals with both a keen legal perspective and an awareness of the endemic racism that pervaded the case and obstructed justice. Hubbart discusses how the case against Pitts and Lee was based entirely on confessions obtained from the defendants and an alleged “eyewitness” through prolonged, violent interrogations and how local authorities repeatedly rejected later evidence pointing to the real killer, a white man well known to the Port St. Joe police. The book follows the case’s tortuous route through the Florida courts to the defendants’ eventual exoneration in 1975 by the Florida governor and cabinet. From Death Row to Freedom is a thorough chronicle of deep prejudice in the courts and brutality at the hands of police during the civil rights era of the 1960s. Hubbart argues that the Pitts-Lee case is a piece of American history that must be remembered, along with other similar incidents, in order for the country to make any progress toward racial reconciliation today. Publication of this work made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Author : Mumia Abu-Jamal
Publisher : South End Press
Page : 326 pages
File Size : 28,63 MB
Release : 2004
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780896087187

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In his youth Mumia Abu-Jamal helped found the Philadelphia branch of the Black Panther Party, wrote for the national newspaper, and began his life-long work of exposing the violence of the state as it manifests in entrenched poverty, endemic racism, and unending police brutality and celebrating a people's unending quest for freedom. In We Want Freedom, Mumia combines personal experience with extensive research to provide a compelling history of the Black Panther Party--what it was, where it came from, and what rose from its ashes. Mumia also pays special attention to the U.S. government's disruption of the organization through COINTELPRO and similar operations. While Abu-Jamal is a prolific writer and probably the world's most famous political prisoner, this book is unlike any of Mumia's previous works. In We Want Freedom, Abu-Jamal applies his sharp critical faculties to an examination of one of the U.S.'s most revolutionary and most misrepresented groups. A subject previously explored by various historians and forever ripe for "insider" accounts, the Black Panther Party has not yet been addressed by a writer with the well-earned international acclaim of Abu-Jamal, nor with his unique combination of a powerful, even poetic, voice and an unsparing critical gaze. Abu-Jamal is able to make his own Black Panther Party days come alive as well as help situate the organization within its historical context, a context that included both great revolutionary fervor and hope, and great repression. In this era, when the US PATRIOT Act dismantles some of the same rights and freedoms violated by the FBI in their attack on the Black Panther Party, the story of how the Party grew and matured while combating such invasions is a welcome and essential lesson.

Author : Brian W. Stolarz
Publisher : Skyhorse
Page : 228 pages
File Size : 12,87 MB
Release : 2016-10-25
Category : Law
ISBN : 9781510715103

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A Washington Post bestseller! A chilling and compassionate look at how close an innocent man was to being put death with a foreword by Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking. What is worse than having a client on Death Row in Texas? Having a client on Death Row in Texas who is innocent and not knowing if you will be able to stop his execution in time. Grace and Justice on Death Row: A Race Against Time to Free an Innocent Man tells the story of Alfred Dewayne Brown, a man who spent over twelve years in prison (ten of them on Texas’ infamous Death Row) for a high-profile crime he did not commit, and his lawyer, Brian Stolarz, who dedicated his career and life to secure his freedom. The book chronicles Brown’s extraordinary journey to freedom against very long odds, overcoming unscrupulous prosecutors, corrupt police, inadequate defense counsel, and a broken criminal justice system. The book examines how a lawyer-client relationship turned into one of brotherhood. Grace And Justice On Death Row also addresses many issues facing the criminal justice system and the death penalty – race, class, adequate defense counsel, and intellectual disability, and proposes reforms. Told from Stolarz’s perspective, this raw, fast-paced look into what it took to save one man’s life will leave you questioning the criminal justice system in this country. It is a story of injustice and redemption that must be told.

Author : David Sheff
Publisher : HarperCollins UK
Page : 272 pages
File Size : 25,34 MB
Release : 2020-08-04
Category : Religion
ISBN : 0008395454

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From the #1 New York Times bestselling author, an extraordinary story of redemption in the darkest of places.

Author : Jarvis Jay Masters
Publisher : Harper Collins
Page : 321 pages
File Size : 37,74 MB
Release : 2009-09-22
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 0061937371

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OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK 2022 "When I think about the fact that society, a nation, has sentenced me to death, all I can do is turn inside myself, to the place in my heart that wants so desperately to feel human, still connected to this world, as if I have a purpose." The moving memoir of a Death Row inmate who discovers Buddhism and becomes an inspirational role model for fellow inmates, guards, and a growing public In 1990, while serving a sentence in San Quentin for armed robbery, Jarvis Jay Masters was implicated as an accessory in the murder of a prison guard. A 23-year-old Black man, Jarvis was sentenced to death in the gas chamber. While in the maximum security section of Death Row, using the only instrument available to him—a ball-point pen filler—Masters's astounding memoir is a testament to the tenacity of the human spirit and the talent of a fine writer. Offering us scenes from his life that are at times poignant, revelatory, frightening, soul-stirring, painful, funny and uplifting, That Bird Has My Wings tells the story of the author’s childhood with parents addicted to heroin, an abusive foster family, a life of crime and imprisonment, and the eventual embracing of Buddhism. Masters’s story drew the attention of luminaries in the world of American Buddhism, including Pema Chodron, who wrote a story about him for O Magazine and offers a foreword to the book. Thirty-two years after his conviction, Masters is still on Death Row. A growing movement of people believe Masters is innocent, and are actively working within the legal system to free him.