Word: lifers
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...since then but heard over Christmas that he was well on the way to his destiny. He joined the army as soon as he could and has since been rejected by West Point three times. Although he might never be an officer, he still has his future as a lifer in the Regular Army or "R.A." as he most likely calls...
Given his predicament and character, why not? He was a savage racist. He was a 40-year-old escapee with 13 years still to serve for robbing a supermarket and with more to be added for the escape, if caught. In effect, he was a lifer, and he was convinced that no Southern jury would condemn a white to death for murdering a black. He had nothing to lose. What had he to gain...
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...