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Come laugh, cry, laugh with us because storytelling is magic and magic is story. It's take it while you can. SnapJudgment.org About two years ago, something amazing happened. I had an invitation to speak at San Quentin State Prison.
They have a media lab and wanted to know if I could talk about storytelling. I'm approaching San Quentin. It looks like a dark brown fortress and it has that name, San Quentin. Everyone knows this place.
With Nigel Poore, a volunteer at San Quentin and Snap producer Eliza Smith, we're triple checked. Asked to remove everything on us, our wallets, our phone, everything. Two reinforced doors buzz open and then escorted. We walk in.
To the left, there's a maximum security area. Death row is over there. You can see men being led in shackles, but we walk the other direction, right past the big SWAT building, and it's the yard, which I have to say, it looks exactly what you think of when you think of a prison yard. Dozens of men, everyone in the blue prison uniform.
Some are doing pull-ups. Some walking around this track. Others are just talking to each other. But almost everybody's cool.
They give me the what's up head nod as we walk to the media lab. And this place is a buzzing hive. It's where they create the San Quentin prison newspaper and they send it to other correctional facilities. A bunch of fellas, they pile into the room.
I talk a little about storytelling and everything, spread some open love. Really, I wanna hear what's going on with them. Two of the guys, one Erland Woods and Antoine Williams, are super engaged and friendly, curious about narrative. They tell me that sometimes they can hear Snap when it airs on the radio.
And together with Nigel Poore, they're really hoping to make their own podcast from right there out of San Quentin. And it's the best idea I've ever heard. I just don't know how it can work. The bureaucracy and the place and the stuff.
I just don't know. But they work. They get the permissions. They work.
They send a submission to the highly prestigious Radiotopia podcast contest, and they win the whole thing. They work some more. They launched their new podcast, Ear Hustle. It goes to the top of the iTunes charts and is now one of the most lauded narrative programs on the planet.
And Snappers, I really, really, really, really want you to hear it. So that's why today on Snap Judgment from WNYC Studios and San Quentin State Prison, we're gonna break format quite a bit and proudly present the Ear Hustle special. Remember, never, ever let somebody tell you what you can't do. You're listening to Snap Judgment.
Now, I'm gonna get out of the way to play you an Ear Hustle episode called Left Behind. Due to the nature of this program, explicit listeners are advised. This episode is dedicated to one of our fellow brothers, Arnulfo Garcia, who was executive editor of the San Quentin News, which is a prisoner-based newspaper. Arnulfo was a three-striker who got his sentence of 65 years to life overturned.
We just learned that he lost his life along with his sister Yolanda in a tragic car accident on September 23, 2017, two months after he was released from San Quentin. This brother changed so many people's lives to where I know that in his name, a lot of change is gonna happen. Arnulfo was featured in Ear Hustle's episode 3, Looking Out, when asked what type of animal would he be. I would like to be a dog because I know that someone would adopt me.
Hey, wait, we gonna miss you, brother. Until we meet again, I'll remember you good friend with deep fondness until then, and I'll hear you in the wind until we meet again. You're now tuned in to San Quentin's Ear Hustle from PRX's Radiotopia. You know, I just don't make no promises anymore.
I'm here today. I'm making it today. You know, I'm making it through this hour. And that's kind of like where it's at for me.
I'm Earlon Woods, a prisoner at San Quentin State Prison in California. I'm serving a 31-year-to-life sentence for being a getaway driver of an attempted second-degree robbery. I'm Nigel Poore, a visual artist, and I've been volunteering at San Quentin since 2011. And together, we're gonna take you inside.
This episode starts some time ago, election night, Tuesday, November 2nd, 2004. George W. Bush was running for a second term. John Kerry was his opponent.
But no matter who they wanted to win, prisoners could not vote. Nope. But a lot of guys in prison had been following the campaign on TV. And for some of those guys throughout the California penal system, the presidential election was a sideshow.
All we were thinking about was Prop 66. Proposition 66, I remember watching the TV that night, and I was sitting in my prison cell, and I went to sleep knowing that we were way ahead. And I thought, tomorrow morning when I wake up, I'm gonna go home at some point. The idea of Prop 66 was to reform the California Three Strikes law.
One reform was that if your third conviction was not a violent or serious crime, under Prop 66, your sentence might be dramatically reduced. Yeah, it was gonna be a huge change. Here's how Curtis got his third strike. The crime I committed was I walked into a liquor store.
I snatched two $20 bills out of the cash register, no weapon. After I got a cop for stealing the $40, I pled guilty to burglary, robbery, and they gave me 50 years to life. Currently, I'm on my 23rd year. The first time I'm eligible for parole is 2044.
But on Wednesday, November 3rd, 2004, Curtis and other three strikers woke up hopeful that Prop 66 had passed and they just might be getting out sooner than expected. Then when I turned on the news and I saw that Prop 66 had fallen, that it did not get passed, I, along with a lot of other three strikers, it was, you could cut the tension with a knife. It was a really sad, sad moment. I mean, it was.
It was devastating. And a lot of three strikers were very at their wit's end, I would say. This is life in prison. Things on the outside, with the law, with our families, they happen beyond our control.
Our hopes go up. Our hopes go down. And when they're down, you've got to figure out how to carry on. That's what we're talking about on this episode, hope and hopelessness in the face of these really long sentences.
Some prisoners have every reason to hope because they may only have a few years left on their sentence, so they see light at the end of the tunnel. But for guys under the three strikes law, hope is harder to come by. They gave me biblical time. I was like, they thought people could live that Joseph and all them people lived in the Bible with you.
We know that ain't a factor. What is it for a man about 75, 70, you know, what have you? Ian and I went out to the yard to talk to some three strikers about their sentences. My name is Stacey Bullock, and I have 150 years to life.
So how old will you be when you go to parole with the 150 years? I'll be like 280 years. I have four 25 to life, so I have to do at least 100 years before I'm eligible for parole. I was sentenced to 1000 10 years and 19 life terms for armed bank robbery.
My name is Fennell Figures. I'm serving a sentence of 200 to 10 years to life. When I go to my first board appearance, I'll be approximately 250. I won't go up for parole until Jesus comes back first.
Erlon, Curtis said he'll be eligible for parole when he served 50 years. So compared to those guys in yard talk, dare we say he actually got a light sentence? Yeah, he got a light sentence because if he gets up in, let's see, 2044, he'll only be 82, meaning he'll only be on crutches, a walker, a wheelchair, a cane. They're going easy on him.
I mean, you know, but as we know, Curtis don't feel that way. I feel like somehow I have fallen into this type of loop or hole or whatever you want to call it, that I have been labeled the worst criminal in the history of the United States of America. I've never shot a gun. I've never molested no kids.
Never raped nobody. Never put my hands on nobody. I mean, surely they're gonna see the error of their way of giving me 50 years of life. Okay, when I hear a sentence like that for the kind of crime he committed, the first thing I think is that this guy's giving me some bullshit.
And you know, we always say we aren't investigative journalists. We can't do that much fact checking on the stories people tell us. But I found this so hard to believe that I actually asked Curtis and I've never done this before for any story if I could see his legal status summary. That's the sheet that lists your crimes and convictions and all that.
Every prisoner has a copy. And as far as we could tell, what he told I didn't even know I was a three-strike candidate. You're thinking the system is against you. That's what you're thinking like, are they f***ing me?
Yeah, I don't even know how you can take it in. I'll tell you what, let's go back to the yard and talk to some other three-strikers about this. Do you remember what was going through your mind when you first learned of your sentence? I didn't hurt and cry.
I cried. I couldn't critically think. I couldn't process anything. I was just overwhelmed for a year and a half later.
At first, I was in denial. I was thinking, no, there's no way they're going to give me a life sentence at 21. And when the judge slammed the gavel down and said, I'm sentencing you to life in prison, then I was just like, wow, it just totally dumbfounded me. That one blank.
Do you remember what was going through your mind when they first sentenced you? Life's over. It don't matter no more. And I quit caring.
Life may be over, but here's what maybe works. You still have to keep on living it. And to live in this environment, you got to have some hope that you're going to get through it. It's up to each prisoner to find their own reasons to keep going.
Back to Curtis. You know, when I came to prison, the goal I set for myself was not to make it out alive. That wasn't the goal. The goal was that I didn't lose myself in the process.
And I remember when I was going through my reception process at Tehachapi prison and the whites came to me and they wanted to put a knife in my hand and told me to go stab a child molester. And they said, you know, you've got to do this. You've got to prove yourself. You know, I didn't come in here stabbing child molesters.
I didn't come in here being a gangbanger or a thug. I'm a stupid idiot that stole some money. I'm just not going to pick up a knife and go stab somebody. And I would rather die than lose my integrity.
I've heard this before from other guys here. The way to deal with an impossible situation like solitary confinement or 50 years to life, whatever it may be, is to maintain your dignity. And that's not so easy in a place like this. But Curtis did what he was supposed to do in prison.
He got his shit together. My daily activities in the prison was, you know, I'd go to work, play some sports, you know, live life, be very active in the church. You know, I was just living life. I was trying to make the best out of being in prison.
He got off drugs and he started taking his health and his mental health very seriously. My mindset with the 50 years to life was, I want to show these cops, society, that the sentence that you give a man does not dictate the behavior. He was doing real good. But then in his 13th year, it went all bad.
2008 came and I was raped in prison. And it took something out of me. I don't know. Maybe I had such a fantasy about, you know, society is going to come along and they're going to look at this and they're just going to correct all this.
And then when the rape happened, it was like, ain't nobody coming to rescue Curtis. Ain't no way getting out of this. And this is what you had to live with for the rest of your life. We should point out that rape is not as common in prison as people think.
And for something like this to happen at San Quentin, it was really shocking, right? Very shocking. I mean, I know during the course of the season, I've been saying that that type of shit don't happen like that. But the truth is, this did happen to Curtis.
Curtis was raped and hopelessness took him over. And I stopped all sports. I stopped really communicating with people. I went into a shell.
I went into a massive like protect myself mode. The rape and its aftermath was a low point for Curtis. Yeah, the low points. We all have them.
The lowest point of my prison term was when I arrived at a level four and realized that I was in a war zone. How in the hell am I going to do 30 years to life? I think that first night that I found that I wouldn't be only doing five or six years, that I would instead be faced with a life sentence. I wouldn't see my family anymore.
They were 2000 miles away and how I had just messed up everything. When I exhausted all my remedies, my appeals remedies, when I was fighting to have my case overturned, I felt like I had some good issues and that the court should have overturned it. But when they were exhausted and I had no other way out, I felt very depressed. My mom passed away.
I lost it. I was, you know, I was seizing out and I was having seizures in my sleep and everything. I was just, it was, it was a bad time in my life. Yeah.
I think when I was sent to the level four institution in Lancaster and I realized I was finally in prison, when I seen especially all the older people coming up to me, guys are tatted, you know, tatted down from head to toe and they're staring at me. And so I'm trying to make sure I'm not showing my fear or anything, even though the fear was there. When I was on a level four yard and we were just going through back to back lockdowns, I had to kind of like really turn into a shell and not pay attention to what was going on around me. Um, that was a good about eight years.
For me, the lowest point of my time was actually not being able to go to my wife's funeral. There was a single car rollover and my boys were with her and they broke both their legs and she passed away. And it was terrible. She was my soulmate.
Back to Curtis again and his struggle. Suicide from that point was a very easy step. It was almost like necessary. Um, I, um, I, I, Life for Curtis in prison is, is pretty hopeless.
I long for the day that it ends one way or another. 50 years to life, getting raped. I mean, it's easy to see why Curtis saw very little reason for hope. But something else happened in his life around this time.
And he calls it the miracle of the diaries. The miracle of the diaries. In Snap Judgment, the Ear Hustle special continues. Stay tuned.
Welcome back to Snap Judgment, the Ear Hustle special. Today, we're shining a light on the podcast Ear Hustle that tells the story of life in prison by those living it. Now we continue following the story of one inmate, Curtis, who's currently incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison. The story does deal with some adult situations.
As such, listener discretion is advised. Curtis was a drug addict. He robbed to get money to pay for drugs. And after three convictions, he got 50 years to life under the California three strikes law.
And that, of course, had a devastating effect on his family life. My wife divorced me the same week I got the 50 years. We made an agreement. My plea and guilty, she was going to get the house.
She got 100% care of our child and all the money we had in our savings account. And in exchange, I was going to be able to see my daughter at least once a year, no matter where I was. Well, next thing I know, our house was sold and she has vanished. Here I am on my 23rd year and I haven't seen my daughter yet.
His daughter was five when he went to prison. She's 28 now. Once you're in prison, if your family wants you out of their lives, there's nothing you can do about it. You have no control.
Well, in Curtis's case, he did try to do something. And this is where hope comes back into the picture. First, he wrote some letters to his daughter. But they came back stamped return to sender.
He didn't have anyone on the outside to help find where she was at. So he did the only thing he could think of. You know, when I first came in in 1995, I started writing a diary. And I've never written a diary in my life.
You know, and I remember a few of my cellmates were telling me that men call it journals. Okay, whatever. But it was for my daughter. I would write her letters in there.
What's the difference between a journal and a diary? Truthfully, a journal is like, it's very manly. A diary is very feminine and it's very personal. Okay, this is a hard question.
Can you give me a sentence that would be, okay, two sentences that say the same thing. One would be in a journal and one would be in a diary. I'm just curious how they would be crafted in a different way. A journal would say, Dear Christiana, this is your dad.
I'm in prison. I miss you. Hope you remember me. A diary would say, My dearest darling, Christiana, this is your daddy.
I have never forgotten you. I want you to know that I'm the idiot that put myself here. It was not because of you and that I love you and I am so sorry. Curtis kept up that diary to his daughter for years.
I wanted her to know that her father really loved her and this was not a reflection of her at all. This was a reflection of the turmoil within her father and not her. I wanted to be very clear with that. There's a voice inside of me that questions, What was it about my own mom and dad that they didn't want me?
So I carried that voice. What was it Then Jay gave Christiana a big box with diaries of the first three years. And then when she's, the diaries, when she has stayed up all night reading these diaries as much as she could, she writes me, which I received the second letter. Now it's daddy.
She's drawing hearts and I love yous and it was quite different. After not communicating for 13 years, Curtis and his daughter started exchanging letters. Dad, here's a letter, 100 things that you should know about your daughter. So she wrote me a list of 100 things, her top 100 things.
And when she got to the very bottom of the list, she says, my number one thing that you should know is that daddy, I love you. Oh my God, he just tore me up. I remember carrying that letter around with me for over a week. So Erlon, from utter hopelessness to hope.
But this is real life and not a fairytale story. Their communication lasted less than a year. I thought it was going to be happily ever after and that she would come visit me here in prison. And it didn't work that way.
You know, there's a lot of healing that obviously needs to be done. I've caused a lot of pain. And Christiana has elected to go live her life. And that's what she's doing.
And sadly, I'm not a part of that right now. They were last in touch about 10 years ago. But for Curtis, the miracle of the diaries continues to lift his spirits. There is a part, as far as my heart is concerned, that knowing that the diaries had reached her hands, it brought tremendous relief to my heart.
Because now she knows that I never forgot her. It was a big deal for Curtis, but it may not be enough to keep him going. He's got another 27 years before he's up for parole. You know, I just don't make no promises anymore.
I'm here today. I'm making it today. You know, I'm making it through this hour. And that's kind of like where it's at for me.
No promises. It's just a tough road. Tough, tough road. You know, E, you've been in prison 20 years and you have another 11 to go.
So how do you keep going? What keeps your hopes up? Well, I just keep getting up every morning, you know, thankful that I have another day. Thankful that I'm alive.
You know, in my mindset, regardless of where I'm at, I'm going to live to the best of my ability. You know, prison, I'm going to live to the best of my ability. Look, I'm on a podcast. What gives you hope in prison?
Good. Damn. Getting out. That's all I can hope for.
Just getting out. What gives me hope is all the positive programs here in San Quentin. I was introduced to a thousand mile club and I started running. And that's, that's two years ago.
I've lost 60 pounds and I've ran 3000 miles since I've been here. My faith in God is the greatest source of my hope today. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound. I think just the opportunity, you know, to be able to read, to write, you know, to be able to engage people, you know, who know something about life, you know, 50, 60, 70 year old men, you know, who can actually teach me something.
That gives me hope because if they can make it to 75 and know something better, then that gives me the hope that, you know what, I can reach that age too and know a lot more than them. I wash my hands in dirty water. I guess this is what I get. It's raining from a clear blue sky.
Hasn't it been? And yesterday is a memory. Like my dreams, it's dead and gone. I'm looking out through these prison bars, trying to carry on.
That's prison Richie Morris with Dwight Crisman and Charlie Spencer. Together, they are the band Quentin Blue. This is their song, Trying to Carry On. And yesterday's face, like a rose when summer's gone.
I'm looking out through these prison bars, trying to carry on. Thanks to Curtis for telling us his story. And thanks to all the guys who participated in Yard Talk. There are too many to mention here, but you can find them on our website, yourhustlesq.com.
Also, this episode was sound designed by Erlon Woods with tracks from Antoine Williams, David Jossie, and Joshua Burton. Pat Messy Miller is our outside production advisor. Our story editor is Curtis Fox. And our executive producer for Radiotopia is Julie Shapiro.
We also want to thank Warden Ron Davis. And as you know, every episode has to be approved by this guy here. Hi, I'm Lieutenant Sam Robinson, the public information officer at San Quentin State Prison. And normally, right after I say my title and my name, I normally say that I approve this story.
But today, I believe it's important that I do something a little different. This past weekend, one of the people who was instrumental in the development of the media center here at San Quentin, Arnulfo Garcia, who was editor-in-chief of the San Quentin News, unfortunately, passed away in a tragic accident two months after his release from prison. And I think I would be remiss not acknowledging his contributions to this prison, to the community inside of San Quentin, and helping to build a foundation to allow the voices of men inside the walls of this place to have a medium to get out. And so, on behalf of the men here at San Quentin, on behalf of the administration, I want to acknowledge Arnulfo Garcia.
And now I can say, I approve this story. Thanks to those of you who have sent us postcards with questions and comments. Nigel was finally able to bring them in, and I read them all. So which ones stood out to you?
I think, off the top of my head, the one with the Stanford Law School, because they want to bring their future prosecutors and defense attorneys in to meet us. I think that was cool. Speaking of people wanting to meet us, we actually had a very cool thing happen today. Sergeant Sino brought some people down from the Indiana Department of Corrections.
Yeah, the commissioner. And the deputy commissioner, James Passinger. And he's a super Ear Hustle fan, and he said that he actually would be interested in trying to get Ear Hustle aired inside their institutions. Indiana Corrections, yeah.
So we would love to have that happen. So if there's any other listeners out there that are affiliated with correctional facilities, get in touch because we'd love to share the show with you. And for more information about all things Ear Hustle, visit our website, earhustlesq.com. I'm Nigel Poore.
And I'm Erlon Woods. Thanks for listening. Big thanks to Erlon Woods, Antoine Williams, and Nigel Poore for making this happen. And a special, special thank you to Curtis and all the guys inside for sharing their stories.
Remember, subscribe to the Ear Hustle podcast however you get your podcasts. And I know they are working hard on season two. It's set to launch very, very soon. We're thrilled that Snaps, Patton C.
Miller, is working with the team. Big love to our friends at PRX's Radiotopia. We'll have a link to Ear Hustle and stories from Ear Hustle on our website, snapjudgment.org. Don't you dig it?
I know you dug it. The good news is there's more. There's so much more at snapjudgment.org. Get the podcast however you get your podcasts.
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