Condemned inmate Jarvis Masters moved from San Quentin as he fights for freedom

By Edie Lambert

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    California (KCRA) — For the first time in 43 years, a condemned inmate is serving his sentence far from San Quentin State Prison on the shores of Marin County.

Jarvis Masters was recently transferred to the Sierra Conservation Center, a state prison in Tuolumne County, as part of the program that’s clearing San Quentin’s death row.

When the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation first announced the transfer program, Masters said he was afraid it would lead to violence, including suicides and forced extractions of prisoners. Instead, in a phone call with KCRA 3 just before his transfer, he said the Condemned Inmate Transfer Program has gone very smoothly as the state’s moratorium on executions led the CDCR to phase out its segregated death rows.

“They have made this thing so much easier than what I thought it would be, and I can’t stop telling them thank you,” Masters said.

When asked who he’s been thanking, he included the prison guards, mental and medical health workers, and others.

But while the transfers have been going smoothly, the real move Masters seeks is his freedom. For more than three decades he has maintained his innocence, and in recent years some high-profile people have joined the movement calling for his release.

Masters was sent to San Quentin in 1981 for armed robbery. In 1985, corrections officer Sergeant Hal Burchfield was stabbed to death in a different section of the prison from where Masters was being held. In 1990, Masters was convicted of making the weapon used in that murder.

While the inmates who ordered and carried out the murder were sentenced to life in prison, Masters was sentenced to death. Since then, the inmates who testified against Masters have admitted their testimony was false. Another San Quentin inmate later confessed that he was the one who made the murder weapon, the crime that put Masters on death row.

One of the victim’s own children, Jeremiah Burchfield, is among those calling for Masters to be set free.

“This is a man’s life at stake,” he told KCRA 3 in a 2022 interview. “I don’t want my father’s death to be in vain. I don’t want somebody innocent to be paying for it.”

At the time KCRA 3 interviewed Burchfield, Masters’ legal team believed a decision from a federal court would be coming at any time. A year and a half later, Masters is still waiting.

He pointed out that it took state courts 22 years to rule on his appeals, and he said it can be hard not to worry that the federal process will move at the same speed.

“It’s really difficult, especially when your legal team’s done everything they can,” Masters said. “Your innocence is there, and you wonder, why has it taken so long?”

There’s now a growing list of legal experts, Buddhist leaders and celebrities asking the same question. From prison, Masters wrote a book about his life, including his journey to becoming a Buddhist, called “That Bird Has My Wings.” Oprah Winfrey chose it for her powerful book club two years ago, and just this past March, she included it in her list of “20 Life-Changing Book Recommendations.”

In a recorded telephone conversation with Masters, Oprah told him, “I think of you in the moments when I feel my greatest sense of freedoms, of you not being able to see the same sky I see.”

Masters said those words help during the excruciatingly long wait for a decision from the courts that could set him free.

“When someone says to me, you’re making a difference in my life, it tears me up. I don’t care where they’re coming from. It can be a guy next door, it can be Oprah Winfrey, it can be anyone, but when someone says that, it brings out your reason for being,” he said.

As for what he dreams about, if a federal judge orders his release? Masters talked about finding a place in nature where he can walk in one straight line for a distance, after living most of his life contained in short corridors and cells.

He said he pictures a beach that’s so expansive, he can walk along the edge of the waves, filling his lungs with fresh air, looking down a shoreline that appears to stretch out for miles.

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