By Glen Cornwell
Woke up from a deep sleep at around 6:00 a.m., looked around and saw iron mesh with thirteen black bars surrounded by concrete and cement. Whoever thought of this place had a sick sense of humor. Sheets and clothing hung from a line along my cell, drying from yesterday. Probably dry but I’ll give them another day to be sure. Hit the sink, wash up then do my morning ritual. Bits and pieces of conversations come from all directions; free staff mixed with inmates produce unintelligible sounds I’d rather ignore, sounding like babble.
This morning I woke up thinking back to my first day on trial when the district attorney looked at me and said, “I know the informants are lying.” This is true. They claimed I was born, raised and went to school in Sacramento, California with them until I went to Youth Authority (YA). All a lie, of course, I was born and raised in Watts and Compton, California. Joined the US Navy, turned 18 in boot camp, and never went to YA. Of course, my dumptruck lawyers didn’t think the jury needed to hear the truth. Threatened to gag me if I blurted it out. Thirty years later facts like that still haunt me. Like dozens of dead friends, I like to socialize with, long gone by the token of time. It took a 
while but mentally I eventually changed the theme. Get up, fix my rack, put coffee on, and start my day. Promised a good friend I’d write something about death row (DR). After about forty-five minutes this is what I’ve managed so far.
By 6:30 a.m. a corrections officer (CO) slides my breakfast tray through the tray slot, mystery meat with onions, oatmeal, roll, half a carrot and milk. I take down half of it and slide my tray back out when they come back around. If they miss a tray East Block will get torn up in a massive search. It’s happened before.
Since I have a group today from 11:00 a.m. until 1:00 p.m., my morning’s main focus is to get ready for that. Then from 1:30 p.m. until 3:00 p.m. I have yard, with a yoga class. Half the time I teach that class so I must always be ready if I’m called upon. By about 10:40 a.m. the CO comes cell front and searches everything I’m taking out. Between now and then the cages on the first tier are filled with prisoners going to various ducats. I’m on the second tier. It’s so loud they may as well be sitting in my cell. The strange thing was if I fell back to sleep after breakfast, I wouldn’t hear them at all, no matter how loud they grew. A side effect of thirty years in cages, sleeping in the middle of a herd.
Luckily the houses are single cells. If I want to give a neighbor a bag of food, it’s a serious task. Can’t think of any other prison whose grade “A” program enforces such a rule.
There’s seven yards here with between fifty and one hundred prisoners. Certain cliques can’t be on the same yards as each other. At some point, back in the day, they attacked each other. The sad thing is, for some of them, they weren’t even born when the original beef began.
Several guys here happened to catch their murders in another prison. Thinking they’d never get out, they committed several acts of violence since they arrived. Especially the people who came in under twenty-five years of age. What they didn’t know is the law would change, giving everyone who caught their case under the age of twenty-five special consideration. Something to do with the young brain being underdeveloped. Sadly there’s not even a conversation about DR prisoners in their seventies with the same mentality they had when they drove up in their twenties.
So many people have gotten reduced sentences and been sent to mainline or home, I never would have thought it possible when I arrived back in April of 1995. Thanks to the people of California, a law called Prop 66 was passed a few years ago that calls for all of us to be transferred to other prisons within California. I think this might put most of us in a better situation. In fact, there’s been a list of laws that may even allow me to be resentenced or released. Gov. Newsom and Attorney Rob Bonta are giving many of us a real bite at the apple. They’re creating integrity units all over the state and exposing issues previously ignored. If there is one thing that changed this system, that must be it.
It’s 3:30 p.m. and I had an awesome day for a Friday. My group had interesting conversations about current events. My yoga teacher called on me to teach the class. For about an hour we had a ball. Which helped my confidence.
Saturday Morning I was dead asleep like a newborn baby, somehow I thought I heard the guys around me talking about the DR being ended, the fellas were up in deep banter. I was sleeping like a sixty-eight-year-old who had worn out a group of thirty-something-year-old youngsters the previous day. Which I am, and I did.
When the yard came back in at 12:30 p.m. I asked about the DR news. Yes, there’s news: They’re emptying San Quentin’s death row. Now that I know I can have such vivid dreams, my next one might be of me finally being free.
