Word: lifers
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
California statute 4500 dictates the death sentence for any lifer convicted of assault on a correctional official. If Jackson was convicted he would have paid with his life for the death of John Mills. An eye for an eye, a life for a life, the vengeful justice of the Old Testament, yet more than justice would have been served if George Jackson had gone to the gas chamber--if, in fact, justice would have been served by his execution. His death at the hands of due process would have resolved the dilemma with which his life confronted the prison system...
However, Jackson also had a number of reasons to expect that he might be released within a year or at least within a few years. The average time served by a California lifer is less than 15 years. So, at worst, Jackson might have anticipated parole by the time he was 35. Moreover, that average includes the times served by lifers before California established the Youth and Adult Authorities in the 1940's and adopted the indeterminate sentence. Before those two actions, which were both hailed as enlightened reforms, incarcerations of 40 years and more were not unusual, and many...
...primary links of the part of the chain that entangled George Jackson was the nature of the terms of his imprisonment. As has already been noted, Jackson was, at the beginning of his term, only a potential lifer, for his sentence was indeterminate...
...Prison last summer, Plummer Shearin of the Circuit Court for Montgomery County, Md., came away shaken by the experience. But he saw a way to help at least one of the real prisoners. During seminars with "con-sultants," he had met and been impressed by Thomas Eisentrager, 48, a lifer. Checking further, Shearin found that Eisentrager was also highly regarded by both prison officials and fellow convicts for his thoughtful views on penology and probation, his reliability in prison jobs and his efforts at self-rehabilitation. Trouble was, he had been sent to prison for the murder of his girl...
...board. Though it had unanimously turned down the convict's parole bid once before, the board this time voted 4 to 2 for his release. One of the dissenters, Justice John Mowbray, who had sentenced Eisentrager originally, asked, "Why is this man being treated any differently than any lifer? Others in his same position think that release is a matter of chance meeting." But the majority was apparently persuaded that the convicted murderer's rehabilitative effort-not chance alone-was the key element...